Children of a lesser God

Justice  |  3 September 2010  | print

The MEF’s rejection of the Vedanta mining proposal in Orissa is just a beginning. Much more needs to be done to protect the enviroment and people of Niyamgiri

A Dongaria Kondh woman

Environmentalists and human rights activists cheered last month when the Central Government’s Ministry of Environment & Forests rejected Vedanta’s bauxite mining proposal in Niyamgiri, Orissa. Predictably, the motives behind the rejection were soon questioned. Jairam Ramesh was accused of political deviousness in targeting a ‘beneficial’ project in a non-Congress state.

Such allegations trivialise serious concerns, and these are not only about the environment or human rights. They are about our constitution, democracy, development and fundamental freedoms.

Vedanta is an $8 billion mining and industrial behemoth that portrays itself as a benevolent big brother spreading prosperity and cheer wherever it goes. The truth is somewhat darker. The Niyamgiri project is $1.7 billion bauxite mining operation to feed Vedanta’s aluminium refinery. Opposing the project all the way from the Niyamgiri hills to the plains of New Delhi and the Supreme Court are the indigenous Dongria Kondh tribe. To them, the hill is sacred, the home of a pantheon of deities. To them, the Vedanta plant is a demon. Till recently, the Kondhs have been short-changed and ignored. What would they know? They are tribals, therefore poor, therefore stupid, and therefore clueless about what’s good for them.

The project has earned widespread opprobrium, from the Environmental Protection Group to Amnesty International (on whose behalf Bianca Jagger visited the site and who later published an account in the Guardian). But perhaps the most damning indictment is in the 120-page 16 August report by the Dr N.C. Saxena committee, on which the MEF acted. Despite its dry language, the report is compelling. There is little doubt about the concern over fundamental issues; and even less doubt that there are simply no political motivations behind it. In fact, given the report, it would have been impossible for the MEF not to act on it; and no one has even suggested that this report is fraudulent. Without that charge being established, allegations of political machinations are spineless prattle.

Of the many charges in the report, these are the most serious: grabbing village forests without permission; sourcing raw material from illegal mines in violation of an express condition; the wholly illegal six-fold expansion of its refinery capacity without any permission whatsoever; innumerable violations of a slew of statutes; falsification of EIA reports; and committing contempt of the Supreme Court.

The MEF’s action is just a beginning. What is now required is this: a full investigation into the company’s operations; a revocation of all permissions; the imposition of severe penalties; and tougher laws for environmental protection. No corporate should be allowed to think that the law in India is impotent.

The Niyamgiri hills

The expanded refinery needs 16 million tons of bauxite per year. Getting this will annihilate: 20 species of orchids; two wildlife sanctuaries, habitat of elephant, tiger, antelope, deer, and the very rare golden gecko; innumerable natural streams and springs; and several hundred acres of dense forest. Over 7 sq kms of the Niyamgiri hilltop will be stripped.

All this destruction is necessary, advocates of the project say, to “integrate the poor tribals in the mainstream of Indian life.” This vapid cliché presumably means this: nylon, radios, alcohol and television advertisements of soap, shampoo and SUVs, of detergents that make plastic housewives glow with a post-coital radiance.

There’s also this. The “poor” tribals are told of the “benefits” of this kind of (dis)”integration”. They will get schools, health care centres, hospitals and “proper” houses, roads, electricity. This is absurd, and it is dishonest. There is no quid-pro-quo. Can it be suggested that but for Vedanta, or anyone else for that matter, these basics will not be provided? Or that in exchange for these magnanimities, the Kondhs must surrender their world (for a price they cannot negotiate)? These are not lollipops to be distributed by beaming magnates. What is at stake here are fundamental concepts of freedom, democracy and self-determination. The people of Niyamgiri have rights. They have the same freedoms as the rest of us, and the most fundamental of our constitutional freedoms is the right to choose, the right to say no. They are entitled to preserve their way of life, and to choose how they wish to live.

As citizens of the country, the Kondhs are entitled to everything that is promised them. They have a right to it, and it cannot be bartered for their hills, their forests and their streams. And their gods are none the lesser for existing outside television sets.