Will anti-Naxal drive pave way for mining giants?
The shadowy civil war of the Indian paramilitary forces against Left Wing Extremism (LWE) has caught the news pages in recent days. Police spokespersons have claimed significant victories in encounters with the rebels. In operations around the Karreguttalu Hills, at the in the junction of Chhatisgarh and Telangana, 31 Naxalites were gunned down last month. More recently, government forces have eliminated Basavaraju, a top leader of the banned CPI (Maoist).
The campaign to eliminate left extremism in what is called the ‘Red Corridor” running through the tribal belts extending from Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district through Bastar and Chhatisgarh, and to Jharkhand in the East, has ‘neutralized’ 380 insurgents since January 2014, says a 10th April government release. The target, according to the press release, is to “completely eliminate Naxalism by 31st March 2026, since Naxalism is seen as the biggest obstacle in the development of remote areas and tribal villages.”
Is the government campaign aimed at ‘finishing off’ the extremists, or are the larger goals to open up central India’s mineral and natural resources for exploitation? Or both?
It is ironic that, in a parallel development, the Ministry of Environment has granted in-principle permission to clear 937 hectares of forest land and the felling of 1.23 lakh trees to pave the way for Lloyd Metals’ beneficiation plant in Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district. The company was granted a mining lease in 2007, but mining operations have been stalled in the face of Maoist attacks, and protests by local communities over tribal and forest rights.
It is no surprise, with the insurgents now on the back foot, the Maharashtra government has pushed ahead with the formation of the Gadchiroli District Mining Authority.
Forced evictions
India’s current mineral production is pegged at around Rs 2.23 lakh crore (around $24 billion), a fraction of the $18-20 trillion worth of minerals and natural resources of the country. Most of the unexploited deposits sit below the forests of central India, sparsely populated by tribal communities. Besides logistical issues, forest laws and traditional tribal rights have been a barrier to expanding corporate interests.
Over the years, Maoists, NGOs and even priests like Stan Swamy have mobilized these tribal communities to resist corporate expansion. The state forces, on the other hand, haveintervened to crush the protests. Human rights lawyers like Bela Bhatia have documented how the official number of ‘rebels’ killed hides the one-sided elimination of scores of village youth, and the brutal eviction of entire villages. Beyond what meets the eye, is the long-term target: the opening of the natural resources and evicting the local communities.
There’s a parallel in the eviction of native, American tribes in the US. They were forcibly removed from their ancestral land, and confined to reserves.The Indian Act of 1876 legalized the exploitation of their resources, and the 18th and 19thcentury saw waves of genocidal massacres by US Army and white settlers.
The violence and evictions of indigenous people in India is no less brutal. In 2005, state backed vigilante groups under the banner of ‘Salwa Judum’ (peace march) herded thousands of Gond tribals into barbed wire-enclosed makeshift camps. It was to give right of way to the companies who had signed mining leases but were facing ground opposition. By July 2011, the Supreme Court declared the militias illegal and ordered their disbandment. The Salwa Judum movement fell apart by 2013, but not before hundreds had been killed and lakhs displaced.
Sustainable development
The cycle of violence and eviction of indigenous people is not peculiar only to the ‘red’ zones of central India. A little over a decade ago, the Niyamgiri Hills in Odisha, was the scene of a bitter conflict between the Dongaria Kondh tribal community and mining giant, Vedanta Resources.
Vedanta wanted to mine the bauxite under the hills for their alumina refinery at Lanjigarh, but resistance was stiff as the tribal community considered the hills sacred. Despite the government's support for the project, the Kondhs, along with various activist groups, successfully blocked the mining operation, highlighting the importance of indigenous rights and environmental protection.
Similarly, the South Korean steel behemoth POSCO had planned a 12-million-tonne steel plant in Paradip, Odisha, slated to be among the largest in India. From the start, the company faced heavy weather. Land acquisition is where it fell apart. Posco’s target land was among the most productive in the region with hundreds of hectares of betel leaf cultivation that earned local farmers good returns. Fish farming and rice cultivation too were thriving enterprises in this coastal belt.
This writer, who toured the region extensively during the protests, was frankly told by the farmers the compensation and jobs offered by Poscocould never match the earnings from betel cultivation and fish farming. Finally, by 2017, the company withdrew surrendering the land allotted for the project.
This is not meant to be an anti-development treatise. There can be no progress without economic development. But there’s another word for it: sustainable development. Factories, mines, roads and airports must be built; but not by trampling on the people and the resources that sustains them. Tribal communities depend on natural produce like the tendu leaf used to make bidis, or by harvesting the mahua flower and the honey from the forest. They worship the totems that sustain their lives. These communities cannot be torn asunder because there is bauxite or coal under their villages waiting to be mined.