The big fat tribal land grab

Newly appointed Odisha chief minister Mohan Charan Majhi may be a tribal, but he has no qualms about handing over pristine forest land for mining purposes.

A few weeks into Majhi's chief ministership, deputy chief minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka submitted a memorandum urging Majhi to expedite the transfer of forest and private land in Naini block to the Singareni Collieries Company Ltd, insisting they had received all environmental and forest clearances.

This despite the fact that only last week, both Majhi and Vikramarka had to cancel a scheduled meeting in Kashipur because of protests by tribal women against the expansion plans that have been put in place by Vedanta and Hindalco.

Odisha-based Dalit activist Lingaraj Azad, who has been part of the anti-mining protests for the last two decades, said, “Despite our telling the state government that excessive amounts of mining threaten our water security and ecosystems, Anil Agarwal’s Vedanta has been given the go-ahead to expand its alumina refinery at Lanjigarh from one to 6 million tonne per annum. Entire mountains in Kalahandi and Rayagada districts have been handed over to different corporations like Vedanta and the Adani Group for bauxite mining.”

He added, “They may not presently be tapping the bauxite reserves below Niyamgiri thanks to the Supreme Court intervention, but it is only a matter of time before these will also be handed over to different companies operating here.”

In neighbouring Madhya Pradesh, one of the first decisions taken by the new BJP chief minister Mohan Yadav was to approve the setting up of 13 coal mines within a period of six months. Yadav also okayed the setting up of 5,895 mines for minor minerals.

Smita, an activist who lives in Betul district in Madhya Pradesh pointed out, “The government has started mining for uranium in the village of Kochamau near Betul but those in charge have not bothered to inform the villagers about the dangers of uranium mining.”

With the Centre having given its approval for the construction of 10 new nuclear plants, officials from the Atomic Minerals Directorate for Exploration and Research (AMDER) zeroed in on Kochamau. Villagers here belong to the Gond and Korku tribes and are covered by the Fifth Schedule, whereby any exploratory work or mining requires prior permission from gram sabhas. Villagers say not only have they been harassed and refused access to local forests by AMDER officials, they have also not been informed about the ill-effects of uranium mining.

Smita believes this concealment is deliberate. “Look at the ill health of villagers living in Jadugora in Jharkhand where radioactive waste has been dumped in ponds resulting in large numbers of children being born with congenital deformities. Naturally, villagers here are scared.”

Following state elections, Chhattisgarh saw the swearing-in of the state’s first tribal chief minister Vishnu Deo Sai who, disregarding a unanimous resolution passed by the Chhattisgarh state Assembly in 2022, green-signalled the felling of forests under heavy security. When questioned why forests were being cut down indiscriminately, he said he was merely “executing a decision taken by the earlier Congress regime”.

Leading up to the recent state Assembly election, the BJP had promised to overturn the Congress’s decision to grant permission to mine the Parsa East and Kanta Basan (PEKB) block. But after coming to power, one of Sai’s first decisions was to hand over prime forest land for PEKB Phase-II mining despite protests by gram sabhas of villages such as Salhi, Hariharpur, Fatehpur and Ghatbarra. In Chhattisgarh, the Adani Group alone is known to be targeting coal mines with a potential output of 3.7 billion tonne of coal.

Prior to general elections, Modi had assured Adivasis that their jal, jangal, zameen (water, forests and land) would not be threatened. Following the formation of the BJP government, Adani has been given a carte blanche to cut down forests. The Adani Group stated that it had plans to invest more than Rs 25,000 crore in two projects in Chhattisgarh. These included a Coal to Poly-generation (CTP) facility and a rice bran solvent extraction plant and refinery.

“We understand that all three BJP-ruled states plan to hand over their pristine forests to corporate houses,” observed activist and editor Aflatoon Desai, who heads the Samajwadi Jan Parishad.

The ministry of coal has been boasting about India’s coal production having risen to 784.41 million tonne between February and April 2023, an increase of over 15 per cent. Their target is to touch 1.31 billion tonne by 2024-25. To achieve this goal, 141 new coal blocks have been auctioned.

Many of these coal blocks are located in central India and will involve chopping down vast swathes of forests, namely the Tara block in Chhattisgarh’s Hasdeo Arand forest and the Mahan forest in Madhya Pradesh. While Tara has a forest cover of 81 per cent density and is spread over 1,596 hectares, Mahan has a forest cover of 97 per cent, spread over 372 hectares.

Hasdeo Arand, one of the last contiguous stretches of dense forest in central India with a land mass stretching over 1,70,000 hectares, has 22 coal blocks underneath it. The Mahan forest extends to the Sanjay-Dubri National Park and Tiger Reserve on its west and the Guru Ghasi Das National Park on its southern boundary.

A decade ago, the Union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) categorised these parks as inviolate. The former environment minister Jairam Ramesh had dubbed them “no-go” areas. But the problem with Ramesh and subsequent ministers was that they failed to give their observations legal sanctity.

Villagers from 54 villages in the Mahan forest belt have organised themselves under the banner of the Mahan Sangharsh Samiti. Coal mining in this forest, they say, would result in the displacement of over 25,000 people and loss of livelihood. The tribals earn around Rs 1 lakh a year from the produce they collect from the forest.

The government’s record in rehabilitation and compensation inspires little confidence. Elderly tribal Jeetlal Vaiga was displaced when the Reliance Sasan Ultra Mega Power Plant came up in Singrauli. Vaiga found it impossible to start life afresh in a tin shack with the hot summer sun beating mercilessly down on his new home, and narrated the plight of many villagers who had preferred to die by suicide rather than relocate.

The situation is the same in Hasdeo Arand, where 15,000 tribals depend on the forest for their livelihood, food, water and medicinal needs. Their land is irrigated by the Hasdeo river. Though the mine was allotted to the Rajasthan Rajya Vidyut Utpadan Nigam, the Adani Group has operated it since 2013 and has a 74 per cent share in the project (and its earnings).

Chhattisgarh Bachao Andolan activists told this reporter that the local administration had conducted fake sabhas or meetings in which signatures were forcibly obtained behind locked doors. They said the opinion of the majority of villagers was never sought.

Alok Shukla, who has campaigned for years to save these forests and is the founder of the ‘Save Hasdeo Aranya Resistance Committee’ pointed out, “Forests like Hasdeo are precious carbon sinks. Allowing coal mining in such a biodiverse area, when 85 per cent of India’s coal deposits are outside dense forests, reflects mental bankruptcy.”

Caveats against excessive mining by different government organisations have been ignored. The Central Mine Planning & Design Institute Limited, involved in planning for coal exploration, had cautioned the MoEF that coal deposits in Mahan would provide optimum coal only for seven to eight years. They questioned why such a key forest was being destroyed for such a short-lived gain.

The ministry of coal hoped to get around this criticism by arguing that the proposed coal mine in Mahan will be underground (not open cast). But experts alert that the spillover in terms of residue and construction of roads etc. will destroy a large swathe of forest area.

Debadityo Sinha, who leads the climate and ecosystems practice at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, has emphasised the irreversible damage being done to these forests by mining, thermal power plants and the damming of rivers.

“This is probably the last term for the Modi government so a lot of projects are being cleared. This is not to say that the Congress governments did not give clearances, the only difference was that they did not tinker with the law or undermine the functioning of our institutions,” said Sinha.

Retired forester Prakriti Srivastava questions the modus operandi by which coal mines are allocated. “No permission is sought. State governments auction blocks and the successful bidder is given two years to develop them. These proposals are then sent to the MoEF for approval but that remains a formality. Following the amendment to the Forest Conservation Act, the government is now granting non-revenue land for compensatory afforestation. Few statistics are available on how much land has been diverted for mining purposes,” Srivastava pointed out.

Beneath these forests lie some 5.6 million tonne of coveted coal. Corporates are eyeing it to make a quick buck. The government claims to be committed to reducing carbon emissions by 1 billion tonne by 2030. Who does it think it is fooling?