Stop the Vedanta Project in Orissa

Economic Times, March 17, 2010
In the long-term interest of internal security, survival of an endangered primitive tribe and justice and fairness , the government should withhold clearance to the bauxite mining project spread over Orissa’s Kalahandi (South) and Rayagada forest divisions, proposed by minerals major Vedanta.


The core issue is violent disruption of a tribal people’s life for the sake of mineral extraction in a manner that would mock the ruling ideology of inclusive growth, and give legitimacy to the Maoists. Maoists represent themselves as the only champions of India’s dispossessed and exploited rural masses, especially the scheduled tribes.

The state has identified Maoists as India’s primary internal security threat, and launched an offensive , labelled Operation Green Hunt, against them. Its premise is that Maoists obstruct the reach of the uplifting arms of the state as they delve deep into rural India’s swamps of underdevelopment. If only the Maoists would step aside, in peace or at the point of a bayonet, the state would take care of the poor.

This claim would be blown to smithereens if the state were to facilitate a classic case of development that impoverishes a defenceless populace, perhaps to extinction. Vedanta’s treatment of the Dongria Konds, who live on and off the land sought to be mined, has led many ethics-sensitive large investors in Britain to exit the company. A fact-finding team of the ministry of environment and forests has come up with findings that discourage further progress in the project.

India can progress with some of its bauxite continuing to lie underground for some more time. India cannot progress with a growing internal security threat, fed by the state’s failure to live up to its commitment to the common people. One of the UPA government’s major legislative achievements, in its previous term, was the Forest Rights Act, whose sincere implementation would deprive Maoists of a crucial support base.

The law is being subverted all over the country, for want of political mobilisation in its support. The Lanjigarh bauxite mining project, if it goes through, would be yet more subversion of a key instrumentality of inclusive growth.