Indian supreme court rejects indigenous appeal against industrial projects
New Delhi (AsiaNews) - The Indian supreme court has rejected the attempt by farmers to block two industrial projects in the state of Orissa. A human rights activist explains to AsiaNews that similar projects often destroy the lives of entire communities.
The British company Vedanta is now free to extract bauxite from the Niyamgiri mountains in Orissa, which the tribals consider sacred, in a project estimated at 2.5 billion dollars. It has also invested a billion dollars to build a giant refinery at the foot of the mountain, to produce aluminum from the bauxite. In its turn, the South Korean company Posco will build an iron foundry at a value of 12 billion dollars, the country's largest foreign investment, and a project that will displace at least 22,000 people (in the photo: protests in May of 2007 against the project).
Duskar Barik, secretary of the Keonjhar Integrated Rural Development and Training Institute, explains to AsiaNews that such initiatives damage natural resources and the environment, and destroy entire rural communities. "The government", he says, "is prioritizing their own interests without taking into consideration the interests of the tribal community, their beliefs, their cultural life, their connection to the land. This decision of the highest court of our land will definitely have affects on the indigenous tribes, ecology and biodiversity, mining, forest land, water resources of the entire region, environmental degradation caused by development projects damages the surrounding land". And "it has only reinforced the conviction of the indigenous peoples that their voice in their interests are not considered, their life and their social security mean little to the authorities".
"When the government drafts plans they systematically declare that tribals and those alienated will benefit, but that rarely works out". "The illiteracy rate of the tribal is very high, so they are not even qualified for the selection process". "Moreover", he continues, "outsiders will flood these areas, depriving the original inhabitant of every opportunity that may have otherwise come their way with these projects". "The first world countries conserve their own resources and deplete the natural resourses of other nations without conscience of their damaging effects on the most vulnerable indigenous peoples of the world. The government shouts aloud that the tribal will be rehabilitated, but our poor indigenous people displaced by so called development projects rarely make this transition from dependence on the forests and other natural resources. Those who lose land to development projects and those whose land is alienated to immigrants or encroachers are impoverished. The law treats land - their livelihood and the centre of their identity and culture - as a commodity to be sold or leased to the highest bidder".
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