In fact, Natarajan, Ramesh and Rahul Gandhi formed a formidable combination to preside over the fate of mega mining and infrastructure projects. The combination was particularly severe on mining ventures. Projects promoted by certain business houses were chosen for more rough treatment than those by others. The shocking instance of Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi himself visiting Odisha in 2010 to get a $9-billion integrated bauxite mining-to-aluminum smelting project by the UK-based NRI Anil Agarwal of Vedanta Resources by inciting local tribal groups to kill the venture, bears testimony to the length the nexus could go to block projects. Incidentally, Reliance Industries (RIL) is believed to be the biggest rival of Vedanta Resources, which have been dreaming big to become a global player in metals and hydrocarbon taking off from its India operations. RIL and Vedanta were the biggest early beneficiaries of the government’s public sector disinvestment programme with RIL grabbing India’s No. 1 petrochemical venture, IPCL, while Vedanta was happy to set its foot on BALCO to bolster its non-ferrous metals ambition. With IPCL under its belt, RIL became a big global player in petrochemicals supported by upstream hydrocarbon production and refining projects.

Ramesh-Rahul attack on the Vedanta project may be considered as an act of beniyam (irregularity) at Odisha’s Niyamgiri Hills and a clear example of Congress playing politics with national assets. At heart, neither Rahul Gandhi, nor the then union environment minister Jairam Ramesh may disagree that national mineral resources are meant to be scientifically exploited for the country’s economic development and for the improvement of the quality of life of those impoverished people sitting on the piles of idle sub-soil wealth for generations. But, the Rahul-Ramesh act to block the bauxite mining venture of Vedanta Resources in Orissa’s tribal stronghold in the Kalahandi region gives a different impression. It remains a mystery why and at whose instance they were playing with the lives and livelihood of the poor tribal population of the country to sub-serve their own petty political ends at the cost of development. Was it sponsored?

All over the world, most mineral deposits – be they coal, iron ore, lime stone, bauxite, chromites, copper, zinc, uranium, zircon, gold or diamond — are found in often remote or less accessible places, which are generally inhabited by local tribes or their likes and aborigines. While exploitation of such resources invariably leads to dislocation of original settlers, in the end the latter are the single largest beneficiary of the development as it is witnessed in mineral rich Australia, Zambia, South Africa, Ghana, South Korea, Malaysia, Brazil, Chile and, more recently, China, the world’s largest coal miner. Proper rehabilitation and job creation for the people affected by mining operations should be the primary goal of any such economic and industrial activity in any part of the world, including India, which is endowed with a lot of mineral wealth, much of it remaining unexplored and unexploited.

Painfully, those political leaders who propped up governments in states and the centre did not blink once even to kill or get killed genuine tribal leaders in the mineral rich hills of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Bastar, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh over the decades. Tribal uprisings seeking social justice for tribesmen and their families were often branded as Maoist or Naxalite movements. Their leaders are often hunted and jailed or even killed by the police to protect vested interests such as politicians, contractors and businessmen. Even the likes of the late A K Roy of Dhanbad, the firebrand champion of the Jharkhand movement, or Bastar fugitive, the slained Shankar Guha Neogi, were not spared. Neogi was shot dead at the behest of certain businessmen linked with iron ore mining at Bastar. Yet, thanks to such movements, tribal communities, who lost land to industrial promoters such as Tata Steel, Steel Authority (SAIL), Coal India, National Aluminum (NALCO), Hindustan Aluminum (HINDALCO), National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC), Orissa Mining Corporation (OMC) and Sponge Iron India, have been able to extract their due share of development from these private and public sector corporations. Few will agree that tribal land acquisition by these well-known business corporations complied with all environment laws and tribal welfare acts and was completed without hassle and local tensions.

Jayanti Natarajan was not unhappy to play to the tune of Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi, who, she claimed, sent frequent fillers on the need to strictly follow rules to protect environment – a missive meant to stall certain chosen large development projects as against others. What turned her play belligerent to the duo was the way she was made a scapegoat of it and dumped when the entire government came under fire in 2013 for administrative paralysis, holding back large investment proposals for years, resulting in economic downturn, price rise and unemployment, as the Lok Sabha elections were nearing. Rahul Gandhi’s outburst against Natarajan might have been meant to also identify her as a corrupt minister. By then, corruption had deeply entrenched into the government. After all, by 2013, several UPA ministers were facing corruption charges. Narendra Modi’s ‘Jayanti tax’ jibe was probably encouraged by Rahul Gandhi’s posturing against Natarajan. It may be possible that industry, as in the case of coal block allocation, spectrum distribution, had to pay ‘Jayanti Tax’ for environment clearance of projects though it may have been actually pocketed by the party or the people whose tune she played happily. No investigation may establish the real truth and identify culprits as bribes are not recorded by givers or their takers. However, the Jayanti episode provided another insight into the dark days of the UPA II. (IPA Service)