Out of this Earth: East India Adivasis and the Aluminium Cartel
By Felix Padel and Samarendra Das
Pages: 772
Price: Rs 895
Have you never won an award or prize for outstanding contribution to society? Have no regrets! You may well rank among the better grade of citizen! Well, this is what I felt after reading this book. However, not being among the lesser villains of the piece is not an excuse to escape our little power to choose, and this is where Padel and Das’ book comes in extremely handy. It is a brilliantly well-rounded study of the outreach of the aluminium octopus, “so that people can see the whole picture more clearly”.
“Anthropology” of the aluminium industry refers to the works: from social relationships and connections that link the people extracting bauxite in Orissa or Brazil, or those opposed, to metal factory operators and traders on other continents. This offers great scope to weave together a number of intersecting histories: of Orissa’s Adivasis; the mining and aluminium industries; armaments; company operations and, strangely, even paintings!
To glance at just some of the important sections: Adivasis “may be much more developed (than the mainstream)… in their subtleties of human interaction and social structure, and in a relationship with nature based less on domination and exploitation and more on a living, equal relationship. Adivasi culture does not treat nature as just matter: it is always also spirit... is what the authors say, and they substantiate this with a good account of the way of life of the Khond.
Three chapters discuss the aluminium plants of Utkal (Kashipur) and Vedanta (Lanjigarh). The industry’s “worst pollutant is toxic red mud,… dumped in ponds or lakes…” Other shocking practices are disposal of “pot linings — components of the plant — that are laced with cyanide and need to be replaced every few weeks.” Then there are fluoride gases whose “emissions put fluoride into groundwater for several miles around the plant” resulting in skeletal fluoridosis, which has been documented and yet denied by several aluminium companies. “The aluminium industry is thus notorious as one of the world’s most electricity-consuming and polluting industries.”
The history of the company Vedanta and understanding how it works makes for good reading. It is particularly timely, now that the Union government has placed a ban on mining in the Niyamgiri hills. Vedanta’s
annual report speaks of sustainable development and includes an itemised plan for accountability for safety risks, health hazards, wastage, pollution etc. Yet what is the reality behind these claims? This is taken up in a later chapter ‘‘Homo Hierarchicus: Company Man’’, which deals with the way hierarchy lends immense power to individuals at the top and how the real operations of trade are fogged out of the public eye.
A story about the apparent conflict between Roosevelt and his Republican rival at the time, Mellon is particularly revealing regarding the way cartels operate and continue to exist. “As we saw, peace was made between Mellon (Roosevelt’s Republican rival at the time) and Roosevelt through Mellon’s donation of his art collection to a new National Gallery of Washington, where the Hermitage paintings he had bought secretly from Stalin assumed pride of place. And Roosevelt became a leading patron of the aluminium industry. Thus, while companies compete on the surface, is pretty much like the “‘Indian dance’ enacted by Morgan and Roosevelt... Companies’ famed tendency to compete is secondary to their tendency to consort”The authors do not leave you with just a criticism and a “but what else?” feeling; instead, the elements of a different vision of development and sustainability are discussed in the concluding chapter, “Sense of Sacredness”. The book is never tedious and is a must read for anyone harbouring complaints against the apparent simplicity or “merely” emotional quality of arguments usually presented by environmental activists.
— shuba.desikan@gmail.com