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Oct 6, 2009

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Manmohan's smile masks Indian woes
By Santwana Bhattacharya

Industry honchos have also been asking the central government and the states to work out a strategy so that mining projects caught in similar movements can be put on the fast track. Even President Pratibha Patil in her speech to parliament, considered an annual policy statement by the government, said that India would need 13,000 megawatts of extra power capacity every year.
India's coal shortage is likely to touch 228 million tonnes by 2012 in the face of rising demand that may reach 731 million tonnes a year by then. A number of mining companies such as the London-based JSW Steel and India's Essar Mineral Resources are all waiting in the wings for mining projects to come to life.

In West Bengal alone, 13 captive blocks allotted over 2,100 hectares with an estimated coal reserve of 23 million tonnes have

been activity deferred on account of land acquisition issues. In Jharkhand, 196 captive blocks with an estimated 40 billion tonnes of coal reserves have been allotted. Barring a few blocks, work has not begun on any.

The mines up for leasing mostly fall in the forest zones of West Bengal, Orissa, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh where there has been fierce resistance from local tribals - Maoists often step in to hijack these movements, or steer them from the sidelines. It's in such situations that people's protests at India's grassroots get yoked willy-nilly to a revolutionary agenda: they "co-operate" in an uneasy continuum.

Kishenji, also known as Koteswar Rao, a top Maoist leader, boasted in an telephone interview, "We organize the people better. We have done it across these states. We have local squads. We are well trained in guerrilla warfare, we are ready to fight and defeat any number of forces [Home Minister] P Chidambaram sends in. The more they fight us, the more we increase in strength and number."

Their jungle warfare skills have mostly relied on classic guerrilla elements: surprise, local intelligence, landmine traps and ambushes laid on the basis of advance information, and the rest of it. Most dangerously, the ability to meld into the local population - a tactic that typically damns the whole population. The locals, who know the jungles, are helping them, says Kishenji. "Who will help Chidambaram's forces?"

Any outright pitched battle is likely to see them at a disadvantage. In Lalgarh, where Kishenji was operating, the state police and elite paramilitary forces are fighting a strange battle - when they moved in to take control of an area that had been seized by villagers, they found a ridiculously smooth passage right into the heart of the zone. All the Maoists simply melted away into the bush - later reappearing here and there to instigate the locals against ruling Left Front members.

By August 2009, more than 1,405 Naxal-related violent incidents had been reported in which 580 persons were killed. In 2008, there were 1,591 incidents and 721 killings. Maoist-linked violence has killed 6,000 people in India over the past two decades.

According to official estimates, Naxalite violence has affected 2,000 police stations spread over 223 districts across 20 states in India. In the early 1990s, the number of districts affected by Maoist violence stood at just 15 in four states.

Big industry held at bay
It's a nervy battle for industry too. It's not just coal mining that is held up in these struggles. A delay in allotment of iron-ore leases is holding up Tata Steel's six-million-tonne project at Kalinganagar in Orissa. The memorandum of understanding between the state government and Tata Steel was signed in 2004. The company reportedly lined up $3.2 billion and acquired most of the 1,360 hectares needed for the project. Afterwards, it found it difficult to cross the human barrier that formed in the form of protesting villagers.

Another five-million-tonne project is stuck in the lushly forested Bastar region in Chhattisgarh, an old Maoist redoubt with jungle vastness never really penetrated by the modern Indian state. Tata Steel signed an agreement with the state in June 2005. Nearly 80% of 2,063.06 hectares identified for the project across 10 villages in the Lahandiguda block were acquired despite stiff opposition from local farmers.

Not much has moved since that acquisition. Similarly, a string of greenfield projects in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Orissa have been delayed due to resistance movements. Typically, they start as spontaneous protests by the local peasantry and subsequently acquire a Maoist signature.

The Dharma Port project in Orissa faces the same fate - it posed an existential problem for not just the famous Olive Ridley turtles but also the villagers of the coastal area whose land was taken away. The resistance movement there, it seems, has been getting support from other globally linked communities suffering similar evictions owing to "development" projects.

The most startling case among the mega-projects is that of British-based Anil Agarwal's Vedanta Resources. The $830 million bauxite mining operation in the remote and ecologically fragile Niyamgiri hills in the poverty-ridden Kalahandi district of Orissa has few parallels. These lush-green surroundings, a treasure-trove of biodiversity, are sacred to the Dongria Kondh tribespeople, for whom this has been home for many thousands of years.

Even after five years of struggle by the tribals, the Supreme Court cleared the decks for Sterlite, a subsidiary of Vedanta, to begin mining. No fewer than 66,749 hectares of forest land will be exploited to feed an aluminum plant. (Recently, some 100 people died after a chimney collapsed in a plant run by Bharat Aluminum, a former government-overseen enterprise now run by Vedanta, in Korba, Chhattisgarh.)

The pattern is similar throughout. Whether it is Tata Steel, ArcelorMittal or Posco, most controversial mega-projects are struggling with land issues. Even when not, a heavy Maoist presence is normally the kiss of death for industrial activity - scores and scores of projects, extant and pending, hinge on how the most recent crackdown, involving more than 100,000 federal paramilitary forces, goes.

The top-down view has no ambiguity on this score. If the Maoists were eliminated, experts say India could have staggering economic growth over the next few years. Some 30% of India's energy needs are now met through imports of oil, coal and gas. If new power stations can come up, with fuel supplies met at least partially from internal sources, this import bill could be trimmed.

Little wonder the government wants these zones liberated from Maoist clutches. In the melee, if a few genuine people's movements get crushed, so be it - that seems to be the overriding sentiment. The arrest of Chhatradhar Mahato, the tribal leader from Lalgarh, offers a stark example. The man has now been branded a Maoist and been slapped with sedition charges for "raising funds for banned organizations".

But, in an interview with this correspondent in late June just hours before he went underground after an operation by security forces to break the Lalgarh protest, he said the tribals of Lalgarh had only four demands - an apology from West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya for the police atrocities unleashed on them; suspension of the area's police superintendent; proper implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in that area; and also that of the Tribal Rights Act.

He even alleged the Maoists were allowed inside the territory by officials to "hijack" the legitimate tribal rights movement so that central paramilitary forces could be called in to crush their long siege. That may sound far-fetched, but most members of the People's Committee Against Police Atrocities - filmmakers, activists, writers - formed in solidarity with the tribals of Lalgarh, said there was something to Mahato's formulation.

One of them, also fearing arrest, insisted on a separation of the two entities: Mahato "was inconvenient for both the Maoists and the state police. He was coming in the way of an all-out violent clash." It's difficult to know who to believe in the current circumstances: it was a police party posing as journalists that finally got to Mahato. It's also being said that two pro-Maoist journalists led the police to Mahato's hideout.

Civil-rights groups working in the tribal areas are critical of the methods used by the Maoists and believe the rebels have given the government an excuse to target the genuine struggles of the tribal people - the poorest of the poor in India - and enable it to take over their lands and resources.

It's perhaps too much to say, as some do, that the Maoist threat has been inflated manifold to camouflage the real motive. But this much is clear: without the armed ultra-left rebels lurking in the jungle as a convenient target for official demonology, the government action might have looked unflatteringly like a civil war against its own people.

Santwana Bhattacharya is a New Delhi-based journalist who writes on politics, parliament and elections. She is currently working on a book on electoral reforms and the emergence of regional parties in India.

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