Mining of iron ore, coal, bauxite, and manganese ore has become a public menace in India, particularly in the tribal heartland comprising Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Orissa. These states now face the “resource curse”—an affliction in many African countries, where great mineral wealth generates overexploitation and intensifies poverty.

Orissa is being ravaged by huge projects promoted by powerful global corporates like South Korea's Posco—once the world's biggest steelmaker—, the Tatas, and Vedanta, run by Anil Agarwal, Britain's 10th richest person, who has just bought a $9.6-billion stake in Cairn Energy. The promoters, backed by the servile state government, are pitted squarely against the people, whose livelihoods will be destroyed as their land is acquired, forests are cut, mountains flattened and water diverted. Popular struggles against these projects, sustained over a decade, seem to be bearing fruit.

The Centre is putting some of these projects under ecological and legal scrutiny. This is a victory for environmentalism. Vedanta's proposal for bauxite mining in the Niyamgiri Hills to feed their nearby alumina refinery was examined by an expert committee appointed by the Ministry of Environment and Forests, headed by former IAS officer NC Saxena. It was found to have violated the Forest Conservation Act, Environment Protection Act, Forest Rights Act (FRA) and Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act (PESA) “in active collusion with the state”. The committee wants Vedanta's proposal rejected.

One hopes this is the last nail in the proposal's coffin. I say this not only because the proposal is environmentally and socially unsound, and because Vedanta has been boycotted by ethical investment funds the world over, but also because the Saxena committee's report (available at www.moef.nic.in) is worthy and remarkably sensitive to vulnerable Adivasis. The committee included retired forester Pramode Kant and two scholars, Tata Institute of Social Sciences director S Parasuraman and sociologist Amita Baviskar.

To paraphrase the report, Vedanta's proposal would cause the destruction of the Niyamgiri hills' precious grassy meadows ecosystem. This is home to the Dongaria Kondh and Kutia Kondh Adivasis, notified as “Primitive Tribal Groups” eligible for special protection, who regard the hills “as sacred and believe that their survival is dependent on the integrity of its ecosystem.”

One-fifth of all Dongaria Kondhs, who totally number less than 8,000, live here. Mining would undermine the way of life and violate the rights of this vulnerable group, including “traditional, customary, and often formalised access to the project area …[and]… surrounding thick forests ….” This will threaten the community's “very survival” and its biological and social reproduction.

Mining will destroy significant tracts of forest land. Since the Kondh heavily depend on forest produce, this will cause “a decline in their economic well-being”. Mining-related activities such as tree-felling, blasting, removal of soil, road building, and movement of heavy machinery will deny them access to the lands that they have used for generations. They will also adversely affect the surrounding slopes and streams that are crucial for their agriculture.

The ecological costs will also be high, including severe degradation of the Niyamgiri hills, destruction of wildlife, felling of 1.21 lakh trees and killing of perennial springs, which will produce “a hydrological disaster”. The Niyamgiri hills are part of a continuous, long forest corridor important for the conservation of elephants and tigers.

More than 7 square kilometres of undisturbed forest protected for ages by the Dongaria Kondh, and essential for the region's fertility, will be stripped of its vegetation and soil and become a vast barrenness. Mining will build roads through Adivasi territories, opening them to outsiders, “a trend that is already threatening the hills' rich biodiversity”. Yet, it will provide only 3 million tonnes-per-annum (mtpa) of ore out of the Vedanta alumina refinery's total requirement of 18 mtpa.

As if this weren't bad enough, Vedanta has violated numerous laws. It has failed to obtain clearances mandatory under the FRA from the Gram Sabhas for the project. Each Gram Sabha must give its consent to any diversion of forest land. This was not done. In fact, several Gram Sabhas have passed unanimous resolutions protesting the project.

Argues the report: “The MoEF cannot grant clearance for diversion of forest land for non-forest purposes” unless the process of recognition of rights under the Forest Rights Act is complete and satisfactory and the consent of the concerned community is granted. Both points must be certified by the Gram Sabhas. The three conditions are not satisfied; “therefore the application of the Orissa government for diversion of forest land should be rejected”.

Vedanta has blatantly violated the Forest Conservation Act by illegally occupying 26 acres of forest land within its refinery. “This is an act of total contempt for the law on the part of the company and an appalling degree of collusion on the part of the concerned officials”. Similarly, Vedanta has illegally expanded its refinery capacity six-fold from the licensed one mtpa—without environmental clearance. “This expansion, its extensive scale and advanced nature, is in complete violation of the EPA and is an expression of the contempt with which this company treats the laws of the land.”

Nor has the Orissa government implemented PESA, which is vitally important to tribal self-rule. PESA mandates consultation with Gram Sabhas and empowers them “to safeguard and preserve the traditions and customs of the people, their cultural identity, community resources and the customary mode of dispute resolution” and to “prevent alienation of land in the Scheduled Areas”.

Hence, the committee says it's of “the firm view that allowing mining in the proposed mining lease area by depriving two 'Primitive Tribal Groups' of their rights over the proposed mining site in order to benefit a private company would shake the faith of tribal people in the laws of the land, which may have serious consequences for the security and well-being of the entire country.”

It would be a travesty of justice if the report's recommendations were diluted. These are in consonance with some excellent analysis in Felix Padel and Samaraendra Das's book, Out of This Earth: East India Adivasis and the Aluminium Cartel (Orient Blackswan), which traces the history of aluminium production and its enormous ecological costs. Aluminium refineries (which convert bauxite into alumina) and smelters (in which electric current is passed through molten alumina to produce the metal) consume about 15,000 units of power per tonne of aluminium. The processes use large amounts of toxic chemicals like cyanide and leave enormous residues.

Vedanta isn't the only project that has been put on hold by the MoEF. It recently stopped Posco's steel project, following the recommendations of another committee, also headed by Mr Saxena. But Posco is making every effort to get clearance for its enormous 12 million tonnes-per-annum plant which will cause extensive destruction. It will annually need 20 million tonnes of iron ore, besides 4,000 acres of land, including 438 acres of private land and over 3,000 acres forest land, whose transfer was wrongly cleared by the MoEF last December.

Posco recently announced a measly Rs 400-crore rehabilitation package for the 1,200 families who will be displaced—a minuscule fraction of its total project cost of Rs 56,000 crores. But the people rejected the package and refused to sell their land. The anti-Posco agitation has been sustained since 2005. Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh says his Ministry's clearance to Posco isn't valid because it violates the Forest Rights Act.

Now, however, Posco may be rescued by the Centre, which is under South Korean and multinational industry pressure to clear the project. Last year, the South Korean president lobbied Prime Minster Manmohan Singh, who is himself loath to lose India's highest Foreign Direct Investment proposal hitherto. So the Centre has set up yet another committee composed of pro-industry former bureaucrats, which might clear the project. That would be disastrous.

Such disasters must be prevented at any cost. So must illegal mining. The Reddy Brothers' ugly racket in Karnataka exposes the toxic influence of the mining lobbies on society, politics and governance. Illegal mining thrives everywhere, especially in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, from where millions of tonnes of iron ore are smuggled to China. Recently, a fly-by-night company, Pushp Limited, with a capital of Rs 1 lakh, was given a mining lease worth Rs 380 crores in Chhattisgarh. It has failed to start operations even after five years.

The Centre has done well to set up a committee on illegal mining. But what we badly need is a coherent, comprehensive policy for sustainable mining and against displacement and expropriation of people. Unsound mining projects will poison our society, make nonsense of the rule of law, create a “might is right” regime, and undermine what little is left of the state's legitimacy. (IPA Service)