I Me Mine

"I've been to the Niyamgiri hills in Orissa and seen the forces of money and power that Vedanta Resources have arrayed against a people who have occupied their land for thousands of years, who husband the forest sustainably and make no great demands on the state or the government. The tribe I visited simply want to carry on living in the villages that they and their ancestors have always lived in.”

- Michael Palin, 23 July 2010

It’s a small world after all. I’ve only recently arrived from London, but an event being held there today could have huge repercussions for Orissa’s Dongria Kondh tribe.

Today is Vedanta Resources’ AGM, and it will be attended not just by its shareholders but also by protestors from Survival International and many other groups angry about the treatment of the tribe, and of the Niyamgiri mountain where they live.

Vedanta Resources want to start open-pit bauxite mining on Niyamgiri. For the Dongria Kondh, the mountain is sacred, but it’s not just ancient gods at risk – their lives are too. A report by Amnesty found that Vedanta’s existing alumina refinery is already causing river pollution and damage to crops. For the 8,000 Dongria Kondh people who live there, that means disease and impoverishment.

The campaign to stop the mine opening is gathering pace. Organisations including the Church of England and the Joseph Rowntree Trust have already disinvested from Vedanta because of their concerns over its human rights record. Today, shareholder lobby group Pirc will recommend that investors vote against the re-election of three non-executive directors because of the company’s performance on environmental, social and governance issues. In particular, Pirc opposes the election of Naresh Chandra who chairs the company's health and safety committee.

Here in India, Vedanta suffered a further setback when the Indian government announced that it is widening the mandate of the committee charged with deciding the fate of the proposed mine. They will now look into the “likely physical and economic displacement due to the project, including the resource displacement of forest users and the rehabilitation plan”. This is in addition to their original remit to investigate “the implementation of the Forest Rights Act in the area, the impact of the project on the livelihood, culture and welfare of the Dongria Kondh tribals, and the impact on wildlife and biodiversity in nearby areas.”

What have Vedanta had to say for themselves? They recently issued this statement: “We work with more than 90 non-governmental organisations and numerous authorities in India. This is to ensure full compliance with all environmental standards, as well as contributing to India's development. Over the last five years, Vedanta has invested $75m [£49.2m] on a number of social development programmes. These include child care, health and hygiene, nutrition, and sanitation.”

Which sounds laudable, but for many here it’s nothing more than sleight-of-hand. As Arundhati Roy wrote in her essay, ‘Gandhi, but with guns’:

“On the outskirts of Raipur, a massive billboard advertises Vedanta (the company our home minister once worked with) cancer hospital. In Orissa, where it is mining bauxite, Vedanta is financing a university. In these creeping ways, mining corporations enter our imaginations: the gentle giants who really care. It's called CSR: corporate social responsibility. It allows mining companies to be like the legendary actor and former chief minister, Nandamuri Taraka Rama Rao, who liked to play all the parts in Telugu mythologicals – the good guys and the bad guys, all at once, in the same movie. This CSR masks the outrageous economics that underpins the mining sector in India. For example, according to the recent Lokayukta Report for Karnataka, for every tonne of iron ore mined by a private company the government gets a royalty of Rs27 (40p) and the mining company makes Rs5,000. In the bauxite and aluminum sector the figures are even worse. We're talking daylight robbery to the tune of billions of dollars. Enough to buy elections, governments, judges, newspapers, TV channels, NGOs and aid agencies. What's the occasional cancer hospital here or there?”

Delhi's Demolition Plan

Just around the corner from the Habitat Centre, a fashionable arts centre and hotel complex in Delhi, there is a narrow strip of rubble. There are strips of rubble like it all over the city. They used to be people’s homes. Not any more.

In preparation for the Commonwealth Games, which are being held here in October, government bulldozers have been scouring the city for unsightly shanty houses and flattening them. Typically, the demolition men have given families just a couple of hours notice before moving in and destroying their homes.

The Indian government is desperately rushing to clean up Delhi’s image before wealthy and influential guests arrive to enjoy their sport. India is a growing economic power, and it sees the Commonwealth Games as the perfect opportunity to flaunt its wealth.

The problem is that these newfound riches are not being evenly distributed. A recent United Nations-backed study by Oxford University found that in at least eight Indian states there are more extreme levels of poverty than in sub-Saharan Africa.

The booming capital Delhi has a gleaming new airport and an ever-expanding Metro network, but even here there is a vast population living on the edge of society - and the edge of the road. It is these houses that have been most at risk from the recent round of demolitions. They were homes that had developed along roadsides because their inhabitants had nowhere else to go. Now they must find somewhere, although the government has not offered them any alternatives. Local newspapers report that police have beaten residents who refused to leave.

There is something odd about the fact that the rubble still remains. It seems that it was not the buildings the Indian government were most concerned about causing an eyesore. I think their fear was that the sight of their inhabitants would prove too much for the sporting delegations. It is the people, not the houses, which the Indian government is pushing out of sight and out of mind. That’s the thing about the Commonwealth Games: the preparations haven’t considered the common people, only the wealthy.

Published in Ctrl.Alt.Shift