Note

Judgement on Niyamgiri
Parimal Bhattacharya

Rarely, if ever, is a court verdict written in evocative language. But an image leaps to my mind as I read the Supreme Court order of 18 April 2013 on bauxite mining atop Odisha's Niyamgiri hills. It is the image of a giant conveyor belt snaking up a lush green hillside. I had seen it in November 2010; it was lying abandoned, rusty and covered with wild creepers. A few months earlier, the central Ministry of Environment and Forests had banned mining activities on top of Niyamgiri, thus effectively quashing Vedanta's plan of extracting bauxite clothing the hilltop and feed its massive alumina refinery below at Lanjigarh.

'But they won't give up so easily,' Patra Majhi had said. 'They have invested millions of dollars in this project, and their greed is as deep as their purse.'

Patra Majhi was a member of the Niyamgiri Suraksha Samiti. We had just returned after a brief stopover in two hill villages of Dongria Konds. It was late in the afternoon, a pale November sun was slipping behind Niyamgiri. I gazed upon the darkening hillside, at the conveyor belt corridor running along it, and suddenly it resembled the bleached skeleton of a gigantic serpent.

As I read about the latest Supreme Court verdict on Niyamgiri, that disquieting image returns. Will the dead serpent be buried finally, or will it spring back to life?

Undoubtedly, this is a landmark judgement. The apex court in the country has reaffirmed the democratic rights of a so-called 'primitive' tribe living in remote Eastern Ghats hills of western Odisha to choose the path of their future development. The verdict is also a recognition of the battle these poor unlettered people had been waging for nearly a decade now against a multinational mining company to save their habitat called Niyamgiri, the abode of their god Niyamraja. Now the gram sabhas, the lowest democratic bodies at the village level where all adult members of the community can participate, will take a decision on whether the Vedanta group's nearly 2 billion dollar bauxite mining project in Niyamgiri Hills can go forward or not. The Supreme Court bench gave its ruling on a petition which challenged the MoEF's 2010 decision to cancel the bauxite mining project's forest clearance—on the grounds that environment and forest laws had been violated, as well as the rights of primitive tribal groups such as the Dongria Kondh.

The judgement is historic on two counts. Firstly, it has validated the gram sabha's powers under the Forest Rights Act 2006. The court has elaborated on the spirit of the act by saying that the gram sabha can decide on rights, that decision is final, and that the gram sabha has the power to decide on protecting forests and natural heritage. Secondly, and in consequence of this elaboration, the court is treating the gram sabha as a statutory, legal authority. It now has the same rank as, say, the forest advisory committee, or even the Ministry of Environment and Forests.

Naturally, the tribal people of Niyamgiri, the Dongria Kondhs and the Kutia Kondhs who inhabit the forested hill slopes, are jubilant. They had been fighting a long and difficult battle against a powerful mining company of dubious antecedents in cahoots with the state government, and now this has come as an acknowledgement of their struggle. But so are the people connected with Vedanta. On 18 April, the day the apex court's judgement was announced, a yajna was performed and firecrackers were burst at the Lanjigarh refinery site. Now Mukesh Agarwal, the CEO of Vedanta Alumina Limited, has gone on record saying that they hope to revive the mining project by 'getting' the approval of the gram sabhas. One recalls the way a gram sabha meeting was rigged earlier in 2008 by paid goons of the company and armed policemen. Since then, Vedanta has cast the net of money and muscle power tightly around the Niyamgiri hills. Also, the district magistrate who played a most dubious role during that period now heads Odisha Mining Corporation, the public sector undertaking that has a contract with Vedanta. Naturally, all efforts will be made to manufacture consent of the gram sabhas.

So, it is still a long haul for the tribal people of Niyamgiri—to save their god, their homeland and its unique biodiversity, to save age-old ways of life from being crushed under the juggernaut of predatory 'development'.

Frontier
Vol. 45, No. 45, May 19-25, 2013

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