MANY COLOURS HIDDEN IN THE SHADOW OF A MOUNTAIN

The Telegraph, Nov 23, 2010
A visit to Vedanta’s refinery in Lanjigarh makes Uddalak Mukherjee ponder some of the challenges that confront India’s development model


In August 2010, the Union minister of environment and forests denied permission to Vedanta Aluminium Limited to mine bauxite from Niyamgiri. Two years earlier, in a controversial judgment, the Supreme Court had permitted operations at VAL’s refinery in Lanjigarh and directed the company to invest five per cent of its profits or Rs 10 crore (whichever amount was greater) in development works within 50 kilometres of the project area. Subsequently, a special purpose vehicle — the Lanjigarh Project Area Development Foundation — was created with a corpus of Rs 20 crore to develop this block located in Orissa’s Kalahandi.

As someone interested in the complexities spawned by development, I was keen to examine VAL’s welfare activities in Lanjigarh. My objective, however, was not to see whether VAL had violated environmental norms. What I wanted to explore, instead, was whether the development that VAL claimed to have brought about was more inclusive and effective than the programmes undertaken by the State. Also, how had the tribal community, such as the Dongria Kondhs, and the people of Lanjigarh responded to VAL’s initiatives?

Before travelling to Lanjigarh, I got in touch with a VAL official and informed him about my intent to do a story. The response was prompt and warm, and, in a way, expected. After the spate of recent setbacks — the freeze order on mining has been followed by the Orissa High Court declaring illegal the government land on which Vedanta had proposed to set up a university in Puri — the company was keen to demonstrate how Lanjigarh had benefited from its corporate social responsibility projects. In a matter of hours, my travel itinerary had been made, a comfortable accommodation arranged and the places that VAL thought I should visit identified. From a journalistic point of view, the arrangement was far from ideal. There was the possibility that I would be shown only VAL’s version of the truth. Yet, I consented to the proposal for two reasons. Given the paucity of time, I had to depend on the logistics, thoughtfully provided by my host, to gain access to the trouble spot and, hopefully, the truth. My stay in Lanjigarh would also give me an opportunity to experience how institutions — the State, civil society or large corporations — try and influence neutral attempts to discern the truth.

An overnight journey to Kesinga and a difficult, but enchanting, three-hour road trip brought me to VAL’s guest house in Lanjigarh. Soon enough, a sleek power-point presentation was organized to share the details of the CSR activities — 50 childcare centres catering to the educational and nutritional needs of 1,500 children; 400 anganwadis in Kalahandi and 600 in neighbouring Rayagada; an adult literacy programme covering 118 adults in the nearby Rehabilitation Colony; a state-of-the-art English medium school, the only one in Lanjigarh; mobile health units that provide healthcare to 115 villages (malarial cases, I was told, have come down from 80 to 20 per cent in Lanjigarh, while the malaria mortality rate has declined to 0.8 per cent from 1.1 per cent) ; livelihood programmes such as leaf-plate making, pineapple and bamboo farming to augment the income of Dongria Kondhs; electrification drives that have lit up 11 villages comprising 700 households in Lanjigarh (the electrification drive under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Bidyutikaran Yojana has managed to bring electricity to only two villages in Lanjigarh).

These programmes may be localized, and are certainly inadequate to address the district’s overall backwardness. But given the State’s indifference, the people in this remote area have been forced to rely on whatever little VAL is providing. The State’s failure in this aspect is borne out by chilling data. Kalahandi is among India’s 10 most backward districts. The Food Security Atlas of Rural Orissa 2008 states that in 2005-06, the infant mortality rate stood at 119 per 1,000 live births, the highest in the world; the district also has the highest malaria mortality in the region; according to the last census, the literacy rate is 45.94 per cent; the Orissa Monitoring Report by a member of the Central Employment Guarantee Council revealed that of the Rs 56.6 crore allocated under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, the district has spent only Rs 11.9 crore; Kalahandi also has 5,625 days of pending unemployment allowance. The last two facts indicate that even when funds are available, the absence of an effective delivery mechanism has impaired State welfare programmes.

To see how people have responded to what VAL claims to be equitable development, I was taken to a couple of places the next day. The first, Phuldumer, a village on the lower slopes of Niyamgiri, was where I met the spirited Katli Majhi, a Dongria Kondh woman, and her friends. Thirteen families reside in this picturesque village that has not received a single day’s work under the MNREGA and whose residents are illiterate. In a local dialect, the women parroted what I had been told the night before. Thanks to VAL’s livelihood programmes, they now depended less on cultivating lentils, mustard, turmeric and more on the income generated by leaf-making. Each family earned approximately Rs 3,000 every month, and possessed bank accounts. The women agreed that these days, they ate, dressed and lived better but seemed unsure whether their prosperity had made them equal to men. After all, unlike the men — most of whom had gone to the local haat on the day of my visit — they cannot dress in the manner they like or work at the refinery. While iniquitous social relationships remain unchanged, what has altered is their tie with the surrounding mountain and the jungle. The first taste of material comfort has reduced their dependence, and perhaps respect, for the natural world.

The residents of Niyamgiri Vedanta Nagar, which I visited next, appeared equally mesmerized by the seductive powers of development. The Lanjigarh refinery has displaced six tribal-dominated villages — Kinari, Borbhatta, Kothadwar, Sindhbahal, Narayanpur and Rengapeli — and nearly 120-odd families have been rehabilitated in Niyamgiri Vedanta Nagar, Most of the residents I spoke to seemed content with the compensation. Large portions of the money, they said, had been spent in procuring consumer products like television sets and motorbikes. The men worked in the refinery, but they could not tell me whether they were permanent employees, what they did or whether they were entitled to employee benefits. Some women now worked in self-help groups and the children were receiving an ‘English’ education. An education, a house, a vehicle — each of these is an important marker of respect and equality in the eyes of the residents.

Evidently, the exposure to a different economy had shifted their cultural and ethical moorings. Despite their tribal roots, very few of the colony’s residents sported the brass jewellery or tattoos that I had seen in Phuldumer. They loathed farming, dismissed the allegations of VAL posing a threat to Niyamgiri’s environment as a “conspiracy of NGOs”, and swore that they can let go of the mountain but not the refinery.

But a great number of people are battling to save the mountain, and it was time to hear what they had to say. Meeting them proved to be more difficult than I had imagined. For the first time during my brief stay, my hosts seemed to be irked when I demanded that I be taken to meet those agitating against VAL. Yet when I attempted to set up a meeting with two men who were leading the agitation against Vedanta, they declined to meet me. They informed me over the phone that villagers near the refinery had tracked my movements with the Vedanta team, thereby strengthening the suspicion that I was disinterested in independent inquiry. They relented much later, and a clandestine meeting was set up in Bhawanipatna. A night’s journey brought me to Bhawanipatna, and early next morning, I found myself talking to two members from Green Kalahandi and the Niyamgiri Suraksha Samity. Not surprisingly, they tore into most of the facts that Vedanta had touted as evidence of development. Phuldumer was only one of the 112 villages inhabited by the Dongria Kondhs, and many of the villages — especially the ones situated on the higher slopes in Rayagada — were battling the company’s incursions into their lives. Two years back, pollutants emitted from the refinery had reached Bhawanipatna and two deaths had been reported as a result of the contamination in the Bansadhara waters (VAL, which has signed a MoU with the Institute of Mineral and Materials Technology, claims that a zero discharge system is in place in Lanjigarh). The men also accused the local administration of colluding with VAL to terrorize protesters. The police, they said, had imprisoned five women in Chattrapur village after implicating them in false charges of theft and only one FIR could be filed against the company in the last seven years. However, the two activists were forced to concede that if VAL were to be ousted, the people would have no choice but to depend on the crumbs thrown intermittently at them by the State.

Much of what I saw in Lanjigarh was consistent with what I had seen during my travels elsewhere in an India threatened with a painful transition. After failing to provide the most rudimentary facilities for health, education and employment to marginalized communities, the State is now increasingly depending on private enterprise such as VAL to bring welfare to the people. However, in the process, it has also bartered its monitoring role, thereby increasing the possibility of irregularities on the part of private corporations. The Saxena committee report, which was examined by the Forest Advisory Committee and the Union minister before the latter stalled VAL’s plans, alleges that the company is guilty of flouting environmental norms. In India, it is often alleged that even the law sides with the affluent. But before congratulating the MOEF for its unprecedented act of putting the interests of tribes over those of big business, one must pause and reflect how, in Niyamgiri’s case, both “in principle” forest clearance and environmental approval had been given by the FAC earlier. Had there been a lapse in the FAC’s 2007 assessment? And if VAL is indeed guilty of wrongdoing, should not the earlier lapse be investigated?

Another disturbing feature is the complete breakdown of dialogue between VAL and its opponents. Without dialogue there can be no democracy. Lanjigarh’s vitiated atmosphere is a reminder that the need for dialogue can be replaced by a willingness to speak the language of violence. Company officials complained bitterly that activists often burnt down vehicles carrying essential supplies. On their part, VAL’s opponents point out how the murder of Adasi Mahi, a Dongria Kondh who had deposed before the Saxena committee, remains unresolved. It this lack of trust that sharpens the need to co-opt and exploit the media. The subtle attempts by VAL’s officials to thwart my visit to the villages surrounding the refinery and the initial hostility exhibited by the two men I met in Bhawanipatna point to the shrinking ground for objective enquiry. The media ought to resist the encroachment of this critical space more vigorously to protect its credibility.

I had visited Lanjigarh in the hope of finding some answers, but I returned with two questions that troubled me particularly. The Dongria Kondhs in Rayagada continue to resist VAL in the name of protecting the fragile environment, and their community rights and customs. But the tribal women in Phuldumer seemed to have unquestioningly embraced the markers of modernity and development. Is India’s development model equipped to include such seemingly contradictory needs?

Second, informed choice is integral to a democracy. But the ineptness of the State has made the equipment needed for informed choice — particularly education and awareness — a rarity among marginalized communities. The tribal voice — cleverly appropriated by politicians, corporations, civil rights activists and the media — is as complex and layered as the outlook towards development. Is the State willing to address this complexity and thus make tribal people equal partners in the process of change?

Two days after the Centre vetoed VAL’s plan to mine Niyamgiri, Rahul Gandhi declared himself a sipahi of the tribal people. After Lanjigarh, I often wonder whether he knows that he leads an army of the mute.