Violence recently erupted over resistance to mining in Odisha’s Rayagada district. The administration’s attempt to remove adivasis protesting the construction of a road escalated into a major confrontation, leaving over 60 police personnel injured. While the tribal inhabitants alleged the police swooped down on their villages early in the morning, snapped power supply and lobbed teargas shells, the administration claims the force faced intense stonepelting and a life-threatening situation while searching for a man accused in multiple criminal cases. At the heart of the conflict is displacement of locals for a 2.98-km road connecting the state highway to the Sijimali hilltop bauxite reserve, allocated to aluminium giant Vedanta in February 2023. Three years down the line, mining is yet to take off. Clearances have taken time, with the in-principle diversion of 708.2 hectares of forest for the 1,548.7-hectare project obtained last December. Meanwhile, resistance over displacement has built up.
The run-up to the gram sabha meeting to seek consent for the project three years ago had witnessed similar protests, followed by arrests by police. The agitators allege the administration fabricated the permissions to push the project; the counter-narrative alleges the hand of an anti-mining lobby. In the crosshairs are the tribal communities who have lived on their ancestral land for centuries and depend on natural resources for livelihood.
The face-off must agitate the Odisha government, which banks on metal-based industries to quicken economic growth. At the same time, conflict over displacement is not new to the state, where some big-ticket projects have fallen through for that reason. However, a stand-off with the local community is not the right prescription, as Vedanta knows through its own history at the nearby Niyamgiri hills. Peaceful industrialisation has to be the way forward, and it can only be achieved with tribal communities as key stakeholders—not by pushing them to the margins or taking them for granted. Taking gram sabhas into confidence honestly and adopting a transparent approach to obtaining statutory clearances will help restore the trust in the government. It must happen in an empathetic setup—not in an environment of fear where a posse of policemen are snapping at the heels of the original inhabitants of the land.