India's environmental activists are gloating after a UK-based mining company, Vedanta, was prohibited from extracting bauxite in the hills of Niyamgiri in the economically backward state of Orissa. Congress, the principal party in the ruling coalition at the national level, has sought to depict this decision as a great triumph for environmental concerns and tribal rights. Some commentators in the Indian press with a strong anti-corporate orientation, meanwhile, are also gleeful that the project has come to a halt.
Ostensibly, this delight stems from having stopped a greedy multinational corporation from ruthlessly exploiting the natural resources of a remote part of the country and the traditional homelands of some of India's adivasi (original), tribal population.
Yet despite the delight of these disparate groups with the decision, a more sober and dispassionate analysis suggests that the ultimate losers may well be the hapless tribal population who are the inhabitants of this region.
Generations of governments, despite loud promises, have done woefully little to improve their lot. The region lacks adequate roads, has few public clinics, limited educational facilities and an appalling lack of employment opportunities. Consequently, the locals remain mired in harsh and abject poverty.
The mining investment might not have been a panacea for their many woes. However, it did offer the promise of new schools, better roads, the opening of hospitals and above all the prospects of better-paid work. With the seemingly sagacious decision, none of those possibilities will materialize despite the rather facile promise from a popular Congress member of parliament, Rahul Gandhi, that he would act as the ‘sipahi’ (guard) of their interests in New Delhi.
What is being portrayed as a great victory of environmentalism is sadly little more than a crass effort to win the votes of the tribal population in a desperately underdeveloped state. The Indian state that has long failed to protect and improve the plight of the country's tribal population needs to do far better than what transpired this week. More to the point, romantic environmentalists and their cheerleaders in the press should think about how they are becoming unwittingly complicit in the Congress' Party's feckless quest for votes.
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Praveen Kumar
While it would be naive to articulate about the issue from only reading about the facts and progress in the newspaper, this pattern of delays and cancellations is not new in India. The core of this conflict is the tribals’ own ignorance and their lack of will to subjectively analyze their options. Their fears are loss of livelihood, domination by an educated workforce etc..These issues need to be handled first.This is what most Indians feel. The media-savvy NGO activists and the politicians are nothing but a parasite on our developing nation who earn their livelihood by opposing and maligning even decent corporate firms. Take the case of TATA in WB. Though i am not a bug fan of TATAs but they were recently given SA 8000 award for the third straight year, which is for Social Accountability.
Rick Steinman
The Saxena report’s litany of evidence on the laws broken by Vedanta and Odisha govt contradicts your analysis that it’s all just politics. I’d encourage people to read the report itself. It makes for astonishing reading.
@Praveen – what a load of colonial rubbish. The tribals’ “ignorance and their lack of will”… seriously? As you admit, their fears are a loss of livelihood — along with the land that provides it (as well as providing their food, water, medicines and religious identity). That will obviously happen if a mine is built in their midst by none other than Vedanta. Take a look at their other projects to see what happens. They knew what would have happened (so hardly “ignorant”) and weren’t going to stand by and wait to be destroyed (hardly a “lack of will” then, either).
Akash
Rick,
Do you even live in India?