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Ramifications of Industrialisation on the People of Western Orissa


Felix Padel

for the Western Orissa Forum 28.12.2010

Jairam Ramesh’s article in Economic and Political Weekly (16.10.2010) spells out a division of
the world into “two cultures” – meaning basically, ecology & economy – in attitudes towards
any new industrial project, when the two should be working in sync:

“who can argue against faster economic growth since that alone will generate more jobs and at
the same time who can argue against the preservation of our rivers, lakes, mountains and
biodiversity in its myriad forms, since that alone will make for sustainable development?”

Many economists actually question whether a high growth rate and GDP leads to high
employment, and whether they really play any role in reducing poverty at all (Alternate Survey
Group 2007: Pampering Corporates, Pauperizing masses). While it’s not just the beauties of the
environment we stand to lose: the environment is our life support system, where our food and
water comes from, and if rivers stop flowing or mountains stop storing water, or the groundwater
recedes much deeper, we’re in grave danger.

As Ramesh says, the problem is that economy and ecology have not been brought into proper
relationship with each other at all. “Sustainable development” is a concept that attempts to link
the two – but fails. The two concepts pull apart. Who really lives sustainably? Tribal culture is
much more highly developed in the principle of sustainability than the mainstream, with
relationship with nature at the centre of the value system, & money (till recently) not an
important value.

And what do we mean by development? How has it become defined so materialistically? No-one
will say they are against development, but what different people mean by development is very
different indeed. Increasing evidence suggests that the system promoted world-wide by the
World Bank, under guidance of the US Treasury Dept, is one that puts profit and material
development over and above the well-being of people or the planet as a whole.

When the British East India Company came to power in India in the 18th Century, and first
formed the Government of India, as a subsidiary geared towards collecting revenue, India was
actually more highly developed than Britain in many areas of life, including many sectors of
manufacture for example, in plant-based medical knowledge, and in “civility”: there was
generally more tolerance & multiculturalism, with far greater diversity of religions and cultures
living side by side without trying to convert each other. Customs surrounding cleanliness and
hygiene were much more developed – Britons didn’t even have a habit of daily baths!
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But mainstream European culture always gave prime value to military technology and strategy,
and in brute force the British were more developed, so they became the government, by
manipulating law and finance as well as fighting. Some British administrators were people of
high principles, who meant well, and brought benefits, or tried to; but the vast majority looked
down on Indian culture because they did not understand it at all.

As a result, many of the changes they brought in led to a degeneration of culture. A senior banker
who lived some years in Puri once showed me this in relation to his coin collection: the quality
of coins, like many other things, began a rapid decline and standardization from the time of
British rule.

Similarly with the relationship between tribal cultures and the mainstream. In many obvious
ways, the mainstream is far more developed. But in terms of living harmoniously with nature, in
a symbiosis that has survived for centuries, but is very fragile now, adivasis are much more
civilized than us. Also in terms of civility, sense of community, and the values of sharing and
equality between people, including men and women, children and adults. We speak of those who
cannot read and write as being “ignorant”, but adivasi society has its own system of knowledge
and education, that does not seek to impose knowledge on children, where children are drawn to
the adults they wish to learn from. Often, ignorance is more visible and shocking among the
highly educated, and one sees the seeds of this in how children are first taught to “construct
reality” in A B C rather than in nature, because A B C is what the teacher rewards.

In law, this superior level of civilization is especially evident. As many observors have
described, the purpose of tribal law is above all to reconcile contestants, so often both sides, after
everyone has been heard in full, are fined. These fines go to pay for a feast of reconciliation. If
only the mainstream could learn from this! Yet capitalism promotes competition as a prime
value. Until this changes, it’s unlikely we can even start to learn such things.

Stereotypes about tribals were created by anthropologists and their theory of social evolutionism.
In a sense this was a misapplication of Darwin’s theory of the evolution of species. He showed
how thousands of species developed, each along its unique line, in relation to others. But there
was no one path of development. Darwin did not consider humans superior to elephants or
whales or even monkeys – each species developed different qualities and strengths.

Yet when social theorists applied the theory to society, from Comte and Herbert Spencer to Marx
and Engels, they all came up with a rigid scheme of “stages of development” from “primitive” to
feudal, to capitalist to “advanced socialism” (if you are a communist). It takes a wrench in one’s
mind to undo this way of looking at the world, but in many ways, it has to be said, modern
capitalism is an extremely degenerate society – in moral values, sense of community, and in
power structure. Neoliberal Economics, embedded in the financial polices spread by the World
Bank and IMF, promotes a backward slide to what is most “bestial” in human nature, in terms of
working with two basic emotions, greed and fear.
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The theory, developed in 18th century Britain, that if everyone follows their self-interest this
leads to the greatest common good, is demonstrably false. The corporation has one single value,
the profit motive, and short-term gain is proving exceedingly dangerous for life on earth. This is
especially visible in mining.

The question is posed in a comprehensive volume produced by the Centre for Science and
Environment in Delhi: Rich Lands, Poor People: Is Sustainable Mining Possible? (2008) This
shows in one case study after another, how the areas of India where mining and metal factories
have taken off are the most impoverished in the country. It also shows that on balance, the areas
rich in minerals are the same as the areas of remaining forests. These are also essentially the
tribal areas, and they are also the areas most affected by the Maoist insurgency. In many ways,
this is really a resource war, over who the land belongs to – is it the adivasis’ land, or should it
be handed over to the mining and biotech companies to make more profit from?

One thing is for sure – we shouldn’t expect a critique of the mining industry from the Maoists.
When they do overrun a mine or a factory, they don’t sabotage it – it’s the explosives they are
after, and the proliferation of illegal as well as legal mines form a prime source of Maoist arms,
as recent reports make clear (http://www.achrweb.org/ihrrq/issue1/editorial.html).

No-one imposed industrialization more ruthlessly than Mao in China’s “Great leap forward”
(1959-62), when people were forced off the land to meet insane increases in steel quotas, and an
estimated 30 million people died of famine and related causes, while anyone who tried to explain
the situation to higher authorities was liquidated. Like mining companies, Mao was an excellent
PR propagandist, which is why such different views of him co-exist. Probably India’s Maoists
have little idea about the real Mao, and are less ruthless. Stalin paved the way - his enforced
collectivization and rapidly imposed industrialization in Ukraine during the 1930s, killed at least
6 million, while grain was collected from starving villages for export by force.

What is little known is that to pay for his first five year plan of rapid industrialization, Stalin, in a
secret deal, sold off some of Russia’s best paintings to Andrew Mellon, the banker for Gulf Oil
and Alcoa, the world’s first aluminium company. Mellon was US treasury secretary for eleven
years under three Presidents, and while US engineers helped build Soviet smelters and steel
plants, Mellon was rightly blamed for the policies that led to the great crash of 1929. His
successor, Roosevelt, while making the “New Deal” that placed some temporary restraints on
companies and banks, brought a major case against Mellon for this. Following a secret meeting,
this was settled out of court after Mellon bequeathed his art collection to form the basis of the
national art gallery in Washington!

India’s Laws are as highly developed as any country’s, but implementation has often been poor.
Regarding adivasis, the 5th Schedule that is supposed to protect them, and OSATIP, Odisha’s law
against the alienation of adivasi land to non-tribals, have rarely been enforced, and often
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flagrantly violated. Among other mechanisms is one introduced by the British: the tax on (and at
times illegalizing of) home-distilling of mahua. As a result, a class of professional distillers,
especially sundis, gained power and wealth. Tens of thousands of adivasis have lost their lands
by getting into debt to the liquor sellers. The debt is compound, and leads inexorably, as
Gopinath Mohanty’s stories show and many have recorded, to losing their lands to pay this debt.

This pattern persists. The liquor mafia carries huge power, and adivasis who try to enlist the help
of authorities in closing down illegal modo dukaans are often charged with false cases. This
happened recently to Sumuni Jhodia, the woman leader in Kashipur; and it is a prime issue
behind the terrible disturbance in the Narayanpatna area, where the CMAS, before being branded
as Maoist due to open support from Maoists, campaigned particularly over trying to reclaim
lands alienated in this way, and to close down unwanted liquor shops.

Nalco is often said to have brought a proper model of development to Koraput, and as a public
sector company, it has probably done better than most. But in villages around its bauxite mine
Panchpat Mali, and in Damanjodi also, we have seen some of the worst alcoholism ever, due to
such liquor shops, which are said to plague every industrialized area in Odisha. A recent article
published in the UK newspaper The Guardian mentions that there are at least 500 sex-workers in
Damanjodi (7.12.2010, at http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2010/dec/07/india-
prostitution-hiv). In any industrial area or resettlement colony in Odisha (and neighbouring states
also), these two issues of alcoholism and prostitution have a major impact, that is too little talked
about. This includes resettlement colonies as well as newly industrializing areas. New liquor
shops are reported as a source of corruption in both Kalinganagar and on the road to Dhinkia in
the Posco area.

So when Ramesh brings down the law on mining companies, this can only have a salutary effect,
and could even be the beginning of a major U-turn, where India leads the world. In many ways,
as we all know, mining companies have been some of the worst violators of the law. Among the
main laws he has begun to uphold is the Environment Protection Act (1980), whose additions in
1994 and 1997 introduced requirements for projects to produce EIAs (Environment Impact
Assessments, which are supposed to be publicly available but often are not) and hold Public
Hearings under the State Pollution Control Board. In the Posco, Niyamgiri and other cases, his
officials have shown that EIAs were flagrantly manipulated or wrong, as campaigners have
highlighted for years. One example where I witnessed this was in Sterlite’s EIA for mining
Niyamgirri, which stated that there was no forest on the mountain top, only a few “stunted trees”.
Having been there a few times (since I love mountain walking, and was living close by), I can
attest that about 90% of the mountain summit lease area is covered by dense woodland,
predominantly saal. The trees are not as dense or tall as trees on the sides and valleys, but their
place in the mountain’s ecosystem is profound. What makes this mountain (Niyam Dongar)
special, is that it is by far the best-forested mountain in the Niyamgiri range, and the forest on top
has never been cut, unlike most mountains. As one of the most traditionally minded tribes in
Odisha, the Dongria uphold a taboo on cutting trees on the mountain summits.
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What has been less stressed by Ramesh’s officials is the manipulation surrounding Public
Hearings, which in dozens of cases (spelt out e.g. in Rich Lands, Poor People) have been scenes
of gross intimidation as well as misreporting by the authorities in charge.

When Samarendra and I attended a session of the Maikanch Enquiry into the police firing of 16th
December 2000, two of the witnesses we saw were women, one adivasi, one dalit, who both kept
their hands together in Johaar the whole time they were in the witness box. When Justice P.K.
Mishra asked one her profession, she said “chaso”, and the lawyers there, mostly representing
the Utkal consortium, led a round of titters, implying an attitude of “she’s just a peasant”. This
continued with further questioning, until Mishra asked the whole court to stand, and said, in
essence, that “Lawyers can be more violent than guns”, and that if they don’t change their
behaviour, village people can have no faith in the courts bringing impartial justice.

The arrogance and prejudice towards villagers of “highly educated” elites, and the ways that
courts often function as centres of corruption, are prime causes of the profound alienation of
adivasis and dalits towards the mainstream which has led to numbers being drawn to the Maoist
path. When adivasis and dalits can lodge an FIR even against a powerful company or liquor
baron, or against a police officer who mistreated them, and when they can go to the courts and
expect impartial justice, then the appeal of Maoism will die away, and the courts themselves and
the integrity of India’s laws will ensure real development.

The main cause of Odisha’s poverty, in our analysis, is exploitation & dispossession. Rule of
Law would mean that antics of exploiters and dispossessors would be stalled. Then we can start
speaking about real development, in the hands of the people. Adivasi society is traditionally
highly democratic. Issues tend to be brought into the open and discussed thoroughly. Often,
when they oppose an industrial project, the media or government sources suggests that they are
“ignorant of its benefits” and “misled by NGOs and others”. The truth is, in a state where at least
3 million villagers have been displaced since Independence, they have a much clearer knowledge
about the real effects of industrialization and displacement than most “educated” people.

Among many acute problems facing Odisha are the results of Climate Change. But again, local
effects on climate by new factories and power stations are often understood better by villagers
than by scientists – whose knowledge is too often determined by funding. New factories in
Odisha are among the world’s highest emitters of GreenHouse Gases (GHGs). Attempts to raise
steel production in the state from 1 million tonnes per year to 60mtpy are already causing
profound climate changes even within the state, as well as world-wide.

It is interesting that while Odisha is the scene of several major new steel plants and aluminium
factories, with several more that are being staunchly resisted, Britain has seen several major steel
plants and aluminium factories closed down during the years we were writing Out of this Earth
(2002-9), with a similar pattern in other “developed countries”.
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Among the most recent is the Redlands steel plant near Newcastle, whose Corus management
was over-ruled in this decision by Tata – at the same time as it presses hard on resisting
communities to build its plant at Kalinganagar! This is not because Odisha is overtaking Britain
in prosperity, or likely to do so in the near future. The decision was taken by Mrs Thatcher back
in the 1980s to start a rapid close-down of coal mining and manufacture generally, keeping
aerospace – the arms industry – at the centre of Britain’s economy. The reason is, it is a lot
cheaper to get most of Britain’s coal and metals from other countries, since the costs of metal
manufacture in terms of subsidies and negative effects on the environment are so exorbitant.

The dangers of global heating are a lot more serious than most people realize, and industrial
causes are no longer in question for the overwhelming majority of climate scientists – even
though industry has paid huge sums to fund “climate scepticism” and create an impression
otherwise. The world’s best scientists agree that a 90% cut in GHGs is needed at once if we are
to have any hope of mitigating rapidly accelerating global heating, since “the earth does not do
gradual climate change”, and the last periods of rapid global heating, the Permian and Cretaceous
mass extinctions which occurred c.250 and 65 million years ago (probably caused by
asteroid/volcanos) destroyed an estimated 90% and 75% of life on earth respectively (the latter
exterminated the dinosaurs). Already, the rate of emissions exceeds the danger level of a 2% rise
in global warming. If present emission levels continue, or continue to rise, we face a 4%, 6%, or
even 8% rise – the latter likely to extinguish all life on earth – very likely during the present
century.

But political will to make these cuts is nowhere on the horizon. It is true that the “developed
countries” are responsible not only for the majority of GHGs and over-consumption of resources,
but also for proliferating this pattern to “developing countries”, and it is interesting that China’s
Industries Minister was given a platform in UK’s Houses of Parliament to tell MPs that “very
sorry, as a developing country, we cannot cap our emissions at present”. In other words,
opposition to capping or taxing emissions does not necessarily stem from developing countries,
but has roots in business lobbies in “developed countries”.

Andrew Simms’ book Ecological Debt (2009) looks more fully at these issues, arguing that
“developed countries” owe a massive debt to “developing countries”, in terms of historical
patterns of exploitation, and that, among other things, debts orchestrated by the World Bank
should be cancelled. There has been a strong move for this among protestors against the G-8
policy meetings and similar events. Where is this debate in Odisha, or even India as a whole?
Considering the major role played by the WB in dictating economic policy at the state as well as
all-India level, we need to understand why awareness and debates on these issues are still very
weak. [see Appendix for a brief bibliography on climate change]

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This brings us to the question: why is Odisha India’s most indebted state? The cause is loans,
orchestrated by the World Bank and IMF, that have essentially gone to pay for laying an
infrastructure for the mining industry, of dams, coal, railways and roads. Current WB loans
prioritize road-widening schemes, to facilitate rapid industrialization and export from new ports,
which these roads aim for. These schemes are causing thousands of ancient trees lining Odisha
and Jharkhand’s highways to be felled remorselessly – trees that define the landscape, give
welcome shade to adivasis and others who walk these roads, shelter myriad insects and birds,
and – in the case of many boro gochho (banyan trees) – have been the focus of generations of
marriage pujas and osto-pohoro bhajans, sacred to the trinity Brahma-Vishnu-Mahadev.

In other words, these policy decisions promoting tree-felling programmes to widen Odisha’s
roads do not even stem from within the country – certainly not from rural areas, where no form
of protest seems to feed back to the powers that be. This programme is what the WB formula
dictates as the next step of required industrial development, and the roads serve the mining
companies and, in terms of fast-tracking a movement of goods to the ports, a rapid increase in
export of the country’s resources.

If one surveys the rapid construction of new ports, not just in Odisha but all around India’s
coastline, one understands that what is at stake is nothing else than a wholesale plunder of the
country’s resources – especially but not only minerals – on a scale that the East India Company
could not dream of. The EIC started the pattern, but advances in mining technology mean that
what is happening today is a loot of unrenewable resources, at a speed that is threatening the
well-being of rural areas everywhere – on which the health of urban areas depends.

John Perkins’ book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (2005) shows the pattern in starkest
form: the aim of heavy loans is not just to build an infrastructure that foreign companies can
come and make use of, but to get states into unrepayable debt, so as to apply leverage to force
them to open up their resources to foreign exploitation. Among other means is usually a series of
superbly produced but highly secretive brochures showing basically erroneous forecasts of
promised prosperity. For example, Brazil’s rapid industrialization around iron, steel, aluminium
and coal – in many ways a blueprint for what is happening in Odisha – shows how a Japanese
consortium of banks and aluminium companies seduced policy-makers to choose a path of rapid
aluminium-based industrialization that got the state’s electricity companies into serious debt, and
therefore produced little of the promised benefits, while causing a wholesale destruction of
Amazon rainforest – especially because Japan was instigating similar industries in Venezuala
and Indonesia at the same time, that competed against Brazil and kept prices low (Out of this
Earth p.253).

Our conclusions are not that all industrialization is bad, but to highlight a need for proper,
holistic assessment of the balance of costs and benefits of any project. For example, in the Posco
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case, a number of Indian research scholars based in the US have produced an independent study
that shows that promised benefits are far less than what is officially forecast (October 2010, at
http://miningzone.org/), especially in terms of revenue to the state and job offers. Every industry
offers employment, but once construction has finished, due to increasing mechanization, jobs are
invariably far fewer than forecast. There is no independent verification of how these quotas are
filled, stories of jobs depending on disproportionate bribes are rife, and safety standards on roads
and in factories are very low. Moreover jobs lost when cultivators are displaced are almost never
taken properly into account in mainstream (often industry/bank-funded) assessments. From being
highly skilled cultivators, who have developed their land over generations, in charge of their own
labour, these people have to struggle to get even the lowest level of coolie job, classed as
unskilled. “Industrial training” schemes, offered by the incoming companies, can upgrade them
only slightly, and Lanjigarh and other industrializing areas have witnessed repeated protests even
by people who have been “trained” like this but still see most jobs going to outsiders.

The Energy Audit of the Aluminium Industry produced by the Bureau of Industrial Costs and
Prices in 1988 (while it still operated relatively independently) recommended little increase in
production due to exorbitant subsidies necessary on the price of electricity etc, to keep the
industry going. Similarly, R.C. Das’ Recommendations for environmentally sound growth of
aluminium industry in Orissa (1996), from the head of the OSPCB, pointed out the huge cost of
existing factories in terms of fluoride and carbon emissions and pollution of rivers. The essence
was to clean up existing factories, and not to allow new ones.

This is also the tenor of probably the only relatively frank writing in the public domain by a key
policy specialist – Dewey Anderson’s pamphlet published by the US administration’s Public
Affairs Institute in 1951, now hard to obtain (summarized in Out of this Earth pp.274-8). The
main argument is that the US needs huge amounts of aluminium to maintain its military
superiority (the role of the arms industry in promoting aluminium as well as making war into the
world’s most profitable business cannot be over-emphasized!); and that the US should get other
countries to make most of its aluminium, so that the heavy cost of making it doesn’t fall within
the United States:

“Aluminum-making is dependent on vast continuing grants of low-cost electricity…[It] is no


great maker of employment, uses little skilled labor, and adds little to the independent
development of an area….the US cannot any longer afford to make aluminum if it can be
obtained in large enough quantities and on favourable price terms from other sources.”

The mineral wealth of Odisha and neighbouring states is vast, as we all know. Almost like a
mantra, Odias grow up knowing that “Odisha is one of India’s poorest states, but one of the
richest in minerals” – a mantra which has promised a return to glory and prosperity through
exploiting this mineral wealth.
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The trouble is, as the CSE volume shows in dozens of examples, all the areas of India where
mining has taken off witness atrocious levels of impoverishment. This is a symptom of the
resource curse - normally a term applied to countries, which shows in Africa particularly, where
resource-richest countries are on the whole the poorest. The resource curse applies more
precisely if one looks at regions - especially regions within a country, such as India. The CSE
volume gives a wealth of data, that shows how India’s mineral rich areas, forest areas, and tribal
areas coincide. The Maoist insurgency, beyond ideology, is basically a resource war – a conflict
over land and other resources.
Top economists such as Jeff Sachs all accept the validity of the resource curse hypothesis. But
the basic explanation of the paradox Rich Lands, Poor People we see as very simple. The areas
richest in resources tend to be the worst exploited. We certainly know this of Odisha, which is
one of India’s richest states not just in minerals, but also in biodiversity and green cover as well
as water, but suffers from a high level of systematic exploitation, imposed over the people with
roots in the land and villages.
Analyzing the mining industry involves uncovering an extremely dispersed social structure. For
companies involved in every stage from mining to marketing, one finds that mining itself never
makes a profit. This is because cartel-style pressures of price fixing, worldwide, enforce
extremely low prices for the basic resource – the ore - even though this basic resource is what
companies seek above all else. Thus we usually forget now that 6 years ago, when Posco was
first negotiating with the Odisha Government, it wanted to export the ore. Prices for iron ore are
kept very low. This is also visible the other side of India, in Goa and Karnataka, where ore is
exported in raw form, especially to China and Japan.
This is why the offer in the present draft of the MMSD Act of giving 26% of profits to local
communities (even if this would be accepted by companies) is not as generous as it seems, since
mining itself almost never makes a profit. In the case of Vedanta, it claims with some
justification to have spent huge sums on CSR and “peripheral development”. The trouble is, how
this money is spent is not under democratic control. It is a totally top-down model, closed to
independent verification. Most local people in the Lanjigarh area say that their quality of life has
decreased markedly, due to huge levels of pollution by dust, air and water, as well as a massive
shift in the structure of power and control. From being cultivators broadly in control of the
environment around their villages, skilled in channeling water and cultivating a wide variety of
crops, their land is drying out, and those displaced have lost their food security along with their
land, and live in fear of rampant goondaism.
The refining and smelting process of aluminium depends on massive subsidies on the prices of
electricity, water, transport and infrastructure. Without these, aluminium and steel manufacturing
cannot make a profit. Where profits are made above all is much further down the line and away
from affected areas, in metal trading and the speculation and deals that go with this. The London
Metals Exchange fixes prices of aluminium and other non-ferrous metals five days a week,
Monday-Friday. Nick Robins, an ex-metals trader who has written about this process, put on
record that in a good day’s trading back in the 1960s he could make 100,000 pounds sterling a
day. A lot of the trading is done through “futures options”, i.e. derivatives trading, e.g. 27
months in advance – so metal still in the mountains is being traded in London even before it is
mined and the ore refined and smelted!
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To get an overview of the subsidies and “externality costs” involved, the prices that aluminium
factories pay for electricity is usually between a quarter and a tenth of the price other customers
pay. Aluminium smelters use such huge quantities of electricity that all Odisha’s factories were
built close to dams, and from the start, these dams were intended for aluminium (this applies to
Hirakud, Rengali, Upper Kolab and Upper Indravati), yet each factory also has its own captive
coal-fired power station to ensure supply. Odisha was almost certainly the first state to privatize
its electricity to facilitate this – thanks to leverage from being so heavily in debt - and the
privatized entities have often been in serious financial difficulty for this reason.
In terms of carbon emissions, producing a tonne of aluminium emits between 6 and 20 tonnes of
CO2 (depending on the proportion of hydro-power to coal-fired, which in Odisha is not easy to
analyze), and one tonne of CO2 is costed by the UK Treasury’s Stern report at $85. This means
the externality cost of aluminum’s carbon emissions is at least $1,275 per tonne – a cost, in other
words, that the companies do not pay, that falls in the areas where aluminium is produced.
Similarly with water: producing one tonne of aluminium consumes and pollutes over 1,000
tonnes of water – in a context where water-supply is already dwindling. This has been a major
cause of conflicts over water between farmers and industry, e.g. at Hirakud. These exorbitant
costs are externalised from mainstream CBAs.
Ramesh’s article in EPW promotes NPV calculations on forest lost in any project. “Net Present
Value” is a concept promoted by environmental economists such as P. Sukhdev and others in a
“Green Accounting” project funded by TERI and Deutsche Bank. It was referred to in the
Supreme Court Judgement on Niyamgiri, which recommended computing the NPV of forest lost
on Niyamgiri according to its NPV. One wonders if it is just a coincidence that Deutsche Bank is
a major investor in Vedanta Resources? The concept does not take proper account of biodiversity
losses and other factors; and is far harder to apply to water, especially threats against water
sources for future generations; and impossible to work out in relation to communities, on whom
some of the heaviest costs invariably fall when they are broken up or displaced.
Adivasis have lived in most of Odisha’s industrializing areas for centuries - since historical
records began. It is interesting that Gopinath Mohanty records a conversation with a Census
official back in the 1940s, who was asking Konds their religion, which he was supposed to
record as “Hindu”, “Christian”, “Muslim”, “Animist” etc. A number of times he received the
answer “Dongar” – mountains. The official found this answer hilarious – a proof of
primitiveness no doubt. But going back another 40 years, geologists researching the laterite-
bauxite cappings of south Orissa mountains named their base rock Khondalite, after the Konds,
recognizing the same connection the other way around. And if one thinks about this,
“Mountains” as one’s religion is a profound answer. Adivasi religion recognizes that life as
fertility comes from the mountains – a blend of spiritual and material.
*
Aluminium forms an estimated 8% of the earth’s crust, nearly double that of iron. Science shows
that aluminium plays the vital role in soil of water-retension. “Without aluminum there would be
no fertile earth” (Pelikan: Secrets of Metals, 1973 p.151). This is why, wherever bauxite deposits
are found, these are in some of the earth’s areas of greatest greenery and biodiversity. When the
deposits are at the top of mountains, as in Odisha, what happens is that these deposits act as
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sponges, soaking up monsoon rain and releasing it slowly throughout the year. This is why the
geologists around 1900 noted that all around Odisha’s bauxite-capped mountains, fields were
exceptionally fertile and gave double-crops.
When the deposit is mined, as at Panchpat Mali and other places, this water-holding capacity of a
mountain is severely damaged: the water runs off during the rainy season and perennial streams
dry up, as is attested by adivasi farmers living around Panchpat Mali and other affected areas.
Pro-mining sources sometimes assert the opposite, even saying that bauxite mining will improve
water supply. How they make this out is revealed in the report by the CMPDI (Central Mining
Planning & Design Institute, Ranchi), called for by the Supreme Court and released in 2006,
which says that during mining, micro-cracks develop in the side of the mountain, which will
“facilitate run-off” and “help recharge ground water” – a monstrous distortion of science:
obviously cracks in the mountain will help water run off the mountain during the rainy season,
but this is exactly what dries the streams up during the dry season, so mountains as sources for
streams and river get damaged beyond repair.
This is the biggest paradox of Odisha’s mineral wealth: investors say it is lying in the mountains
“unutilized”, but actually, the mountains are storehouses of water, giving exceptional fertility to
the state through a mass of perennial streams rich in mineral trace elements. Mine the mountains,
dam the rivers, and we see the result: this water-wealth is already diminishing fast.
*
The WB-IMF have presided over a multitude of environmental & social catastrophes in the name
of “development” and ”industrialization” and even “reducing poverty”. If we are talking about
bringing criminals to justice, what about the bankers and economists responsible for these loans?
The movement in Europe for terminating third world debts needs to become a major issue. When
the British were here, they were a visible presence. The form of external control is different now.
“Moneylender Colonialism” sums it up. Elections in a sense make little difference, since the
ruling party controls not just the deals, but new loans, needed to repay the past debt as well as a
major source of income. Loan repayment carries on invisibly, as far as media-orchestrated news
is concerned. Politicians rarely say “we have to open up our resources because we’re facing a
debt crisis”. It could bring a breath of fresh air if they would, but this tends to bring immediate
threats of dire financial consequences from the IMF.
This may be a caricature, but it seems that a veil opens on the real power structure when World
Bank-IMF-DFID teams come to Bhubaneswar on an annual visit, and point out corruption in one
sector – e.g. the health ministry – which happens to be their next target for privatization, without,
of course, drawing attention to the corruption surrounding mining companies.
Debates about industrialization go back to the exchange of letters between Gandhi and Nehru
shortly before the former’s death. Gandhi foresaw a threat that the Western model of
industrialization was leading the world towards collective suicide, and held up a return to small-
scale village industries as the hope for India’s future. Nehru agreed this collective suicide was a
distinct possibility, but disagreed about villages, which he saw as backward. Today, the focus is
on the question of how to properly implement PESA, the Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled
Areas) Act of 1996, as a means to ensure democratic decision-making at the village level.
12

Though the terms of this debate have changed slightly, the views and interests of the “two
cultures” - top-down economics and ecologically-minded communities – are hard to reconcile.
On one side, massive vested interests and political pressure for short-term gains, on the other, the
long-term well-being of communities and environment. How to assess the balance of costs and
benefits in a way that is transparent and leads to the long-term well-being of all concerned?

Appendix: a brief bibliography on climate change


Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed 2010. A user’s guide to the crisis of civilization, and how to save it.
London: Pluto.
Praful Bidwai 9.5.2008. ‘Falling back on pseudo-science: Indian policy makers are clutching at
straws to duck their responsibility to reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions,’ in
Frontline, www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl2509/.../20080509250909600.htm
Lester Brown 2009. Plan B4.0: Mobilizing to save civilization. USA: Earth Policy Institute
Steve Connor, 14.3.2007. ‘The real global warming swindle,’ in The Independent, UK,
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/the-real-global-warming-swindle-
440116.html
Brian Fagan 2009. The great warming: Climate Change and the rise and fall of civilizations.
Timm Flannery 2005. The weather makers: the history & future impacts of climate change.
_____ 2009. Now or never….
_____ 2010. Here on Earth.
Senator Al Gore 1992. Earth in the Balance: Ecology & the human spirit.
James Hansen 2010. Storms of my grandchildren.
Robert Henson 2006. The rough guide to climate change.
Bulu Imam, Jharkhand 2009. The end of the world. [unpublished]
Larry Lohmann 2006. Carbon Trading: a critical conversation on climate change,
privatization and power. Sweden (www.thecornerhouse.co.uk).
James Lovelock 2006. The revenge of Gaia.
Mark Lynas 2007. Six degrees: Our future on a hotter planet.
_____ “Six steps to hell”, in The Guardian, UK, 23.4.2007, at
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/books/2007/apr/23/scienceandnature.climatechan
ge>
Alastair McIntosh 2009. Hell & High Water: Climate Change, Hope, & the Human Condition.
Edinburgh: Birlinn
13

Bill McKibben 1989 The end of nature.


George Monbiot 2006. Heat: How to stop the planet burning. London: Allen Lane.
Naomi Oreskes & Erik Conway 2010. Merchants of Doubt.
Fred Pearce 1989. Turning up the heat: our perilous future in the global greenhouse.
_____ 2006. The last generation: How Nature will take her revenge….
_____ 2008. With speed and violence: why scientists fear tipping points…
_____ 2010. The Climate Files: the battle for the truth about global warming.
Joseph Romm Dec 2006. Hell and High Water: Global Warming – the solution and the politics
_____ 2009. Eaarth: making a life on a tough new planet.
http://www.billmckibben.com/eaarth/eaarthbook.html
Andrew Simms 2009. Ecological Debt: Climate Change and the Wealth of Nations.
J.E.N. Veron 7 Dec 2010. “The end is in sight for the world’s coral reefs”, at
http://climateprogress.org/2010/12/07/j-e-n-veron-coral-reefs-bleaching/

Against the consensus:


Bjørn Lomborg 2001. The skeptical environmentalist.
Fred Singer 2007. Unstoppable global warming.

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