Mining and Movements - Causes of Tribal Militancy - Indian Social ...

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228SOCIAL ACTION VOL. 60 JULY – SEPTEMBER 2010Bauxite deposits just below the summits of south Orissa’s biggestmountains hold monsoon water in suspension, releasing it slowlythroughout the year in perennial streams. When the bauxite is mined,this water runs straight off, and streams dry up. But bauxite is studiedalmost entirely from the point of view of extracting and processing it bythe mining industry – not its links with hydrology etc.Similarly with the loss of forest. A “Green Accounting Project”, forwhich Deutsche Bank was a main funder, calculates the ‘Net PresentValue’ of forests (NPV), but this economic value placed on foreststakes little or no account of forests’ biodiversity, cultural value andother features. The judgement in the case on Niyamgiri by the SupremeCourt (8.8.2008) simply asked the Special Purpose Vehicle (i.e Vedanta’ssubsidiary Sterlite with the Orissa Mining Corporation) to pay NPVreplacement costs. Interestingly, Deutsche Bank is a key investor inVedanta. So in effect the foreign banks indirectly buying up rights tokey resources are also funding “green” studies that facilitate thiscorporate takeover.In all these ways, these mining projects have intensely destructive allroundeffects on the environment. What is happening should properlybe termed Ecocide, defined as“the extensive destruction, damage to and loss of ecosystem(s) of a given territory,whether by human agency or by other causes, to such an extent that peacefulenjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory has been severely diminished”.(Higgins 2010)This destruction needs to be seen as damaging the “sacred trust” byGovernments to promote the well-being of inhabitants of non-selfgoverningterritories, as defined by the 1945 UN charter (Chapter XIArticle 73). Most lawyers and legislators have little knowledge of ecology:“at the moment the governance systems of most countries and of the international‘community’ actually facilitate and legitimise the exploitation and destruction ofEarth by humans.” (Cullinan 2002: 30).Ecocide being perpetrated by mining projects under a rationale ofeconomic growth means a destruction of the fabric of life, and is theprime cause of unrest throughout Central India.Impacts on human populations displaced or invaded by the industry arefrequently catastrophic, and should properly be termed as culturicide or
MINING AND MOVEMENTS – CAUSES OF TRIBAL MILITANCY 229cultural genocide. Tribal communities in particular lose everything theytraditionally value when displaced: their social structure exists in relationto their land, environment, and identity as skilled cultivators. From beingin control of their own environment and social relations, they findthemselves swamped by outsiders, at the bottom of a cruel and corruptcorporate hierarchy. From being largely self-sufficient in terms ofproducing food on their own land by their own labour, they are reducedto an unskilled industrial labour force. Women and children, especiallyexperience a drastic drop in their standard of living, from a place ofconsiderable independence in charge of growing and selling. Materialculture is changed beyond recognition – from houses people made outof natural materials, people are placed in concrete shells. Traditionalartefacts – often collected into a “tribal museum” during thedisplacement process – lose their meaning and become relics of thepast. Tribal people’s traditional forms of knowledge are underminedand negated.Gap Between Projection and Ground RealityEven World Bank studies conclude that the vast majority of tribalcommunities displaced by dams and industry in India, as worldwide,experience a drastic fall in their standard of living. For almost everyWorld Bank funded project, “the first rule...that all parties to theproject should be better off” has been broken, and “projects meantto reduce poverty are the ones adding to the numbers of the poor.”In “packages” for the Resettlement and Rehabilitation (R & R) ofpeople displaced by dams and factories there is a reality gap: nocorrelation between theory and practice – between what is supposed tohappen and facts on the ground.This reality gap is evident at many levels. Models of economic growthreducing poverty in schemes funded by World Bank loans and “foreignaid” from the Department for International Development of the UKGovernment (DFID) are basically a con, showing a fundamentaldisjunction between theory and practice. Projects bringing in foreigninvestment distort the economy and induce unrepayable debt – Enronwas a noteworthy early example in India. This in a context where the“black economy” of bribes and underhand payments is little studied,and virtually absent from conventional economic models, yet has amassive effect in motivating deals for projects.
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