It ought to be counted as one of India’s most downplayed stories of the day. It is about the struggle to save an ecosystem called Niyamgiri in Orissa from mining, deforestation and devastation. It is about indigenous people and the rights over their land.
Vedanta Resources, a stinking rich British company owned by NRI Anil Agarwal, intends to dig an open-pit bauxite mine in Niyamgiri. This mine will destroy the forests on which the Dongria Kondh depend and wreck the lives of thousands of other Kondh tribal people living in the area. The Supreme Court has given the go ahead for the project, but the battle rages on. Albeit silently. This project, by the way, will also see the death of the centuries-old sacred groves of these people. The Dongria Kondh do not live anywhere else and there are just 8,000 of them left.
If you know all about this, it is probably because you keep your eyes open for updates about Niyamgiri / Vedanta. And if you don’t, then you surely are not to blame. After all, newspapers are not replete with heart-wrenching stories from the hotspot. News channels don’t go blaring with animated, heated debates about the issue. And when on Facebook, you are not flooded with invites to join Niyamgiri causes or anti-Vedanta groups. No one asks you to light candles for the Dongria Kondh tribals either. You remain in the dark, for all the wrong reasons. You remain in the dark because the Indian media, by and large, chooses to let you be.
Last month, when Amnesty International released a report Don’t mine us out of existence, it did not so much of create a flutter anywhere. In most news outlets which carried the item, the story was buried under those of arguably more national consequence. Others brazenly looked through it. The report, should you want to know more, documents how the alumina refinery operated by the subsidiary of UK-based FTSE 100 company Vedanta Resources in Orissa, is causing air and water pollution that threatens the health of local people and their access to water. And it is also violating human rights in more ways than one. Orissa, in case you did not know, is the state which has diverted the maximum forest land for mining purposes. [To read Amnesty International’s report
Don’t mine us out of existence,
download a PDF file]
NOT OUR LAND ANYMORE: A villager stands on land he once owned, beneath an unfinished conveyor belt designed to transport bauxite ore. Photo © Sanjit Das / Amnesty International
Incidentally, another event last month ended up being bracketed as news of mere financial import. A fourth European investor sold its multi-million pound stake in the company, citing “serious concerns about its [Vedanta’s] approach to human rights and the environment.” The decision of the United Kingdom-based Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust to sell a £2.2 million stake (along with other investors who follow its ethical policy) in Vedanta followed the Church of England’s decision to sell its £2.1 million stake a week earlier. The Norwegian government’s pension fund had been the first high-profile withdrawal, selling its $13 million stake in 2007, while the Martin Currie Investment sold its £2.3 million stake last year. Serious allegations those; major decisions by influential investors those. Yet you remain in the dark.
It ought to surprise and shame us too that the biggest campaigns today to save the Dongria Kondhs are not being waged in India. The most effective one outside, so far, has been carried on by Survival International. In other words, it is a UK-based organisation taking on a British company. For the same reason there have been more stories about the Dongria Kondhs of Niyamgiri in the British press than in India. Back home, unfortunately, there are not too many people fighting for these tribals. And whatever news emanates from the region are turned a blind eye to by those who decide what news to carry and what not. [To see Survival International’s 10-minute film
Mine: Story of a sacred mountain,
visit this page]
To the Dongria Kondh, Niyam Dongar hill is the seat of their god, Niyam Raja. To Vedanta, it is a $2billion deposit of bauxite. To the media, the conflict is not news.
