India's Tribals Defend Hill Goddess from Foreign Miner

[Guest guest]

LANJIGARH, India (Reuters, March 29, 2007) - Their thick, ancient

forests shelter leopards, elephants and even the odd tiger, their

slopes are home to an isolated tribe, but the " curse " of eastern

India's Niyamgiri hills lies beneath the soil.

 

Massive deposits of bauxite have brought Britain's Vedanta Resources

to this remote corner of the state of Orissa, where they have already

built a $900 million alumina refinery.

 

Just a stone's throw from its gleaming new facility, a few hundred

people gathered in the shade of mango trees in Lanjigarh in mid-March

for the latest protest against the company.

 

Among them, Dickcha Majhi, who walked for five hours from her remote

village to the small town, a member of the 8,000-strong Dongria Kondh

tribe, who worship an Earth Goddess and revere the hills as their

protector Niyam Raja.

 

" She is our mother and he is our beloved lord, " said the small

30-year-old woman, rows of colourful beads around her neck, golden

rings through her nose and through her ears, her frizzy hair held down

firmly with a dozen metal hair clips.

 

" If you hand the hill over, the hill god will eat us. "

 

As eastern India engages in a headlong but increasingly controversial

rush to industrialize and exploit its vast mineral resources,

Vedanta's plans to turn the top of the Niyamgiri range into open-cast

mines has emerged as a key battleground.

 

It is a battle not about whether to industrialize, but how to do it,

and how to compensate the losers. And it is being waged in the courts

and in the streets at the same time.

 

Conservationists say the miners could and should have chosen other

hills, instead of risking the rich biodiversity of Niyamgiri, and have

taken the issue to the Supreme Court.

 

On the ground, tribal farmers worry their traditional lands and

livelihoods will disappear once mining begins. They are being coralled

by local Congress party politician Bhakta Charan Das, who promises to

stage a mass march on the site in mid-April.

 

" By the time they reach here, the site will be gheraoed (encircled) by

50,000 people and the administration will be paralysed, " he threatened.

 

" BLATANT VIOLATION "

 

An elephant corridor, and the only known home of the rare golden gecko

in Orissa, the hills were proposed as a wildlife sanctuary in the 1990s.

 

The Wildlife Society of Orissa dismisses Vedanta's pledge to spend

millions of dollars protecting wildlife.

 

" How will they manage the wildlife? Take them out and keep them in

five-star hotels? " asked Biswajit Mohanty.

 

" Seventy-three million tonnes of bauxite will be taken out. You can't

mitigate the effects of that. "

 

The Vamsadhara river rises from the range and more than 30 streams

from the mining site, providing water which sustains hundreds of

thousands of people, conservationists say. Mining will destroy those

sources, they argue.

 

In September 2005, a Supreme Court committee recommended that " the use

of forest land in an ecologically sensitive area like the Niyamgiri

Hills should not be permitted. "

 

It also condemned the Ministry of Environment and Forests for a

" blatant violation " of its own guidelines for the refinery to be built

without getting clearance to mine in the hills, much of which is

protected forest under Indian law.

 

But Vedanta, along with the state and central governments, have fought

back hard. The company says the bauxite lies in the top 25-30 metres

of the 1,000 metre-high hills, and promises to protect water sources

lower down from contamination.

 

It will fill up pits with residues as it goes along, and plant new

trees, said refinery head Sanjeev Zutshi.

 

The Supreme Court will now refer the case to the Forest Advisory

Committee, an expert panel. But that will only happen when the court

and the government resolve a separate row about who should sit on that

committee.

 

FORGING AHEAD

 

In the meantime, Vedanta is forging ahead. The refinery carried out a

test run in March. Some of the pillars to carry a conveyor belt from

the mine to the plant have already been built.

 

Zutshi says 17 locals are working in the refinery and 50 more are

being trained. Hundreds might get jobs from local contractors as

shovel men, to sweep out spillage and drain slurry. But employment for

all is simply not possible in an industry which requires small numbers

of skilled workers.

 

" There is one big issue which is difficult to address, and that is the

issue of employment, " he said. " These people unfortunately are not

educated at all, most of them are illiterate. "

 

Instead Vedanta says it has sponsored health and education in local

villages as well as alternative income-generating projects.

 

But the company's claim to popular support was belied by February's

local elections, where Congress-backed candidates running on

anti-Vedanta tickets dominated, Das said.

 

Two hours drive away on a rocky, dirt road, a few Dongria Kondh

tribesmen and women sat outside their thatched roof huts, their filthy

and malnourished children dressed in rags beside them, berries

fermenting in the sun to make homemade liquor.

 

Vedanta says the mines will not affect the slopes on which these

people live, only the summits and ridges which they worship. But

already people here fear the worst.

 

" The earth is our mother, " said 26-year-old Verang Majhi, rejecting

any talk of compensation to leave ancestral lands. " Would you leave

your mother for money?. "

 

Later, as dusk drew in and the lights of the refinery dominated the

night sky, Reuters visited the village of Bandhaguda, right up against

the wall of the plant.

 

Daka Majhi said all 32 men of his village were arrested by police and

jailed for seven days last year, with scarcely any food and water, for

staging a peaceful protest outside the refinery.

 

Their women were threatened by police while Vedanta completed the wall

around the plant, cutting the people off from their pond, cremation

grounds and much of their fields, he said.

 

Zutshi contested that version of events, and said repeated efforts had

been made to reach out to the villagers, even offering them

resettlement at one point, only to be obstructed by a handful of

people who wanted " heaps of money. "

 

Vedanta, he insisted, was not the bully that politician Das made it

out to be. Nor could it afford to be.

 

" The days are gone when you can impose yourself, surround yourself

with goons and policemen, and browbeat every Tom, Dick and Harry, " he

said. " It's not going to work, it's not a long-term solution at all. "

 

SOURCE: The Washington Post. Indian tribe defends " hill god " from

foreign miner. By Simon Denyer. © 2007 Reuters, Thursday, March 29,

2007; 9:01 PM.

URL: http://tinyurl.com/2jg6n2

[Guest guest]

Processing of bauxite (from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bauxite)

 

Approx. 95% of the world bauxite production is processed into

aluminium. Bauxites are typically classified according to their

intended commercial application: metallurgical, abrasive, cement,

chemical and refractory.

 

Bauxites are heated in pressure vessels with sodium hydroxide

solution at 150-200 °C through which aluminium is dissolved as

aluminate (Bayer process). After separation of ferruginous residue

(red mud) by filtering, pure gibbsite is precipitated when the liquor

is cooled and seeded with fine grained aluminium hydroxide. Gibbsite

is converted into aluminium oxide by heating. This is molten at

approx. 1000 °C by addition of cryolite as a flux and reduced to

metallic aluminium by a very energy-consumptive electrolytic process

(Hall-Héroult process).

_____________________

 

I wonder what they will do with the highly alkaline " red mud? "

 

, " Devi Bhakta "

<devi_bhakta wrote:

>

> LANJIGARH, India (Reuters, March 29, 2007) - Their thick, ancient

> forests shelter leopards, elephants and even the odd tiger, their

> slopes are home to an isolated tribe, but the " curse " of eastern

> India's Niyamgiri hills lies beneath the soil.

>

> Massive deposits of bauxite have brought Britain's Vedanta Resources

> to this remote corner of the state of Orissa, where they have

already

> built a $900 million alumina refinery.

>

[Guest guest]

They will do what they have always done, deny it until it is

undeniable, refuse responsibility for as long as possible, drag it

through the courts until most people have forgotten and their

opposition runs out of money, energy or life itself, pay as little as

possible, cover it up and move on.

 

When will it end?

 

pr

 

, " ganpra " <ganpra wrote:

>

> Processing of bauxite (from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bauxite)

>

> Approx. 95% of the world bauxite production is processed into

> aluminium. Bauxites are typically classified according to their

> intended commercial application: metallurgical, abrasive, cement,

> chemical and refractory.

>

> Bauxites are heated in pressure vessels with sodium hydroxide

> solution at 150-200 °C through which aluminium is dissolved as

> aluminate (Bayer process). After separation of ferruginous residue

> (red mud) by filtering, pure gibbsite is precipitated when the

liquor

> is cooled and seeded with fine grained aluminium hydroxide.

Gibbsite

> is converted into aluminium oxide by heating. This is molten at

> approx. 1000 °C by addition of cryolite as a flux and reduced to

> metallic aluminium by a very energy-consumptive electrolytic

process

> (Hall-Héroult process).

> _____________________

>

> I wonder what they will do with the highly alkaline " red mud? "

>

> , " Devi Bhakta "

> <devi_bhakta@> wrote:

> >

> > LANJIGARH, India (Reuters, March 29, 2007) - Their thick, ancient

> > forests shelter leopards, elephants and even the odd tiger, their

> > slopes are home to an isolated tribe, but the " curse " of eastern

> > India's Niyamgiri hills lies beneath the soil.

> >

> > Massive deposits of bauxite have brought Britain's Vedanta

Resources

> > to this remote corner of the state of Orissa, where they have

> already

> > built a $900 million alumina refinery.

> >

>