DIGAMBARA PATRA
Recently, an article published in an English daily newspaper said bauxite mining of Vedanta in Niyamgiri hill in Kalahandi district as antithetical to the interest of the local tribes and scrapping of the project as a boon for the State.
However, despite concerns for mineral loot, pollution and devastation of the hill’s ecology, the project must not be seen from political or environmental light alone.
Rather an unbiased assessment of the situation says the Vedanta project is not altogether a bane in the area. Illegal expansion of Vedanta’s refinery can’t be an excuse for not giving mining right to the company in the Niyamgiri hill. The author has said that if Vedanta’s 5 MTPA refinery is operated to full capacity by raw materials from the Niyamgiri hill, all the bauxite deposits of about 72,000 million tonne would be exhausted in just less than four years.
If the raw material would run out, then the refinery would stop operation. Will any company commit the blunder of investing in huge amount of money in a project just for four years as did Vedanta in Kalahandi? The Saxena Committee, of which the author is a member, had recommended that the mining rights to the company should not be given.
But the question is if the panel had felt that Vedanta project would come to a standstill in just four years with no bauxite left in the locality, it would have asked the company to limit its capacity to only 1 mtpa and stopped the expansion of the project. But it had not done anything of that sort.
Further, Dongria Kondh or Jharnia Kondh (by mistake author says Kutia Kondh) did not start the protest against Vedanta until Niyamgiri mining snowballed into a major issue. The tribals are rather divided on the issue; a section of Dongira Kondh has been supporting Vedanta mining, while another is protesting it. Jitu Jakasia is a well known figure in support of Vedanta.
All the campaign against Vedanta started initially during the refinery construction when forest laws were found to be broken in which NGOs spearheaded the campaign, which was subsequently supported by a few local Congress leaders in Odisha.
When NGOs and local leaders failed in their initial motive to stop the refinery (Congress lost the State election and in Kalahandi miserably in 2004), they shifted the focus to Niyamgiri and instigated the Dongria Kondh against Vedanta. Secondly, use of mining area by Dongria Kondh is controversial. An honest committee would have invested time, patience and knowledge to understand the fact with a neutral bent of mind before depending on the data of the politicians who are well known anti-Vedanta campaigners in Odisha.
As per official records, there are no inhabitants in the mining region of Niyamgiri. So not a single family will be displaced, nor will any body lose any agricultural land if mining is done in the hill. A State Government record also verifies that the whole Niyamgiri is not proposed for mining, except the hill top region where bauxite is concentrated.
NGOs have used selective data of Niyamgiri to sell the story of their interest, but none of them has shown ever the video of actual mining region. The NC Saxena Committee has used very nice green picture with even buffalos grazing in the mining area to bring home the point of opposing the mining in the serene location. Some NGOs have given beautiful image of plantation, trees, rivers, paddy, etc in the mining region too. Some even showed that Vansadhara and Nagavali rivers are flowing out from Niyamgiri which is completely false. The Google Map shows origin of both the rivers is in Thuamul Rampur -Kalyansingpur region. Being a committee member, the author has tried her best to defend the issue but unfortunately only politically rather than looking into the actual interest of a backward and poor area which was well known for starvation death just a year before Vedanta came to the location.
The skin disease issue is also fabricated. I do not think chimney and water or air pollution can be a cause to stop such a project because the same thing is happening in public sector Nalco, Balco and Hindalco, to name a few, in Odisha and other parts of the nation. Many of them have worst records than Vedanta in terms of pollution and chimney. In general, Forest Act has not been able to regulate well all big projects across the nation.
Compared to many other mining areas, Niyamgiri could be relatively better positioned in terms of environmental hazards in the country.
However, taking advantage of weakness of Vedanta in terms of violating forest laws, the NC Saxena Committee decided to keep the ignorant tribals and local people in Lanjigarh/Niyamgiri poor and starve for another generation and gave unwittingly the Congress a vantage point to score political benefit.
(The writer, a local of Kalahandi district, works as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at American University of Beirut in Lebanon)
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