Save A Mountain For Me

Everything takes longer than expected in India, but some things are worth waiting for. Four days after a decision was expected to be made, the Indian Government today announced that they are rejecting Vedanta's plans for a bauxite mine in the Niyamgiri hills.

As reported in The Hindu, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said:

“There has been a very serious violation of [the] Environment Protection Act, Forest Conservation and Rights Acts by the Orissa Government and Vedanta’s bauxite mining in the Niyamgiri Hills.”

The Hindustan Times summarised the panel's key findings here.

Survival and ActionAid are both rightly celebrating the role they've played in ensuring that the inhabitants of this land got their voices heard.

It's the result the Dongria Kondh wanted. For people like this mother and her son, who I met in a tribal village recently, it's also a sign that, against all odds, they do have a say in what happens to the land they call home.

Village People

Meet Lulu. He’s 24 and he works as a Village Facilitator in a project run by Ekta, a human rights organisation here in Koraput, India.

He’s about to start work on a UNICEF-backed project that will see him and his 59 colleagues, in total 30 men and 30 women, visit 1,000 villages over the next two months. Their job is to raise awareness amongst village people about a whole range of health issues. This ranges from simply knowing that you should wash your hands before eating and after going to the toilet, right through to HIV/AIDS awareness, the importance of breast-feeding, health checks during pregnancy, routine immunisations for children and why girls need to go to primary school as well as boys.

They work in pairs, so Lulu will normally be accompanied by a female colleague like his friend Bharati. They are provided with a range of resources written in Oriya, the local language, and by working in male-female teams they are able to better target themselves to the audience, particularly as they are often dealing with gender-sensitive issues.

Lulu says that he does this job because he’s from this region himself, and wants to help “inter-area” people. By this, he means those people who fall through the cracks because they live in villages so remote that they are cut off from the services available in towns and cities. “There is no education to help them provide a livelihood for their children,” he says.

He’s got some long days ahead of him. “We have to manage our time,” he tells me, “because we have to do things the people’s way, not our way.” They work in two days cycles and a normal working day will start at around 6 or 7am, when he’ll meet villagers at their homes and invite people to take part in focus groups later in the day.

As Lulu says, they always have to be ready to adapt to specific circumstances, but usually from 9 until 11 he and his colleague will go to the local school to talk to the children about hand-washing and why girls should be in class too.

At lunch time, they’ll make sure everyone is washing their hands properly, and explaining about the rather unappetizing risks of diarrhoea.

During the afternoon they’ll work in focus groups with people from target groups – they’ll talk to 15-24 year olds about sexually transmitted diseases, and young women about the health checks they’ll need if they become pregnant.

In the evening they’ll show a video – or, if electricity isn’t available, they’ll rope in some local people and school children for a community theatre production.

The following day they’ll be back in town to interact with the community again and make sure that the previous day’s activities are being put into use. Then it’s off to a new village to meet with key people and discuss what issues the town needs addressing.

This sort of outreach work is the only way to reach people in a world far removed from instant global communication. The only way to spread essential messages is to go out and visit each village. For Lulu, it is a way of serving his community. As he puts it, “I just want to help people lead a healthy life.”

For more information about Ekta, please visit www.ekta.org.in

Published in Ctrl.Alt.Shift

Independence Day

Independence Day starts early in Koraput. Yesterday I received a text message from Umesh Ku Patra, one of Ekta's Joint Secretaries, reading:

"Be prepared at 7.30am 2moro 4 celebration of our Independence day of our country at Duruguda. Thanks"

Despite his warning, at 7.30am this morning I was not prepared, certainly not for the glorious sunshine which greeted the day. There was still some last minute preparation to be done as Raghu tied a bundle of flowers inside the flag and raised it, still folded.

Fittingly father of the nation Gandhi, or Gandhiji as he is more commonly and respectfully referred to, was in attendance.


The opening of the flag was followed by several speeches, not to mention lots of shouting of 'Jai Hind!' - 'Victory to India!'.

This being monsoon season, however, the sunshine turned out to be as temporary as the flagpole.

Indian Takeaway

Today was my first experience of a rural Indian packed lunch. When it was time to eat, my colleagues all had identical meals and presented me with one of my very own: three small plastic bags and a ball of leaves the size of a child’s head.

Unwrapping the bundle revealed, inevitably, a block of sticky rice. The leaves handily double up as a plate. Today’s accompaniments were:

• One bag yellow daal. To be poured over the rice.
• One bag curried eggs. In curry sauce.
• One bag chillies. I’m pretty sure this was a practical joke.

There’s no cutlery, so just dig in with your right hand and start shovelling. Who needs sandwiches?

Buckets of Rain

Ram Mandir, in Bhubaneswar, in the rain

2010's rainy season has started in earnest over the past few days. In Pakistan, the weather has brought with it destruction. The Disasters Emergency Committee is appealing for help here for the thousands affected.

In Orissa, the rains have been greeted as good news for the many people whose livelihoods depend on the land, not just farmers but also those others who are supported along the chain of production.

In other positive news, The New Indian Express reported on Monday that Vedanta Resources are now being investigated by the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests for alleged violation of forest laws.

Josh Strauss wrote an excellent article for Ctrl.Alt.Shift entitled "Vedanta Resources = Expendable Homelands" about last week's protest in London, which you can read here.