[Reader-list] Paper Walls in Chattisgarh

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Dear all,

Since there has been some discussion already about the situation in  
Chattisgarh, particularly in the Bastar / Dandakaranya region. I  
thought that it might be interesting to share with you a perspective  
from Chattisgarh, that is, incidentally, not Maoist, but associated  
with other currents linked to the industrial working class movements  
in the region. This essay is taken from www.sanhati.com. I would like  
all those who are worried about 'walls' and the restoration of the  
'law of the land' in the area to read this essay with care. I hope  
that they will find in it reason to think a little more carefully.

best

Shuddha

--------------------

Gravest Displacement, Bravest Resistance

http://sanhati.com/excerpted/1545/


June 1, 2009

By Sudha Bharadwaj. Columnist, Sanhati

The rule of law does not do away with the unequal distribution of  
wealth and power but reinforces that inequality with the authority of  
law. It allocates wealth and poverty in such complicated and indirect  
ways as to leave the victim bewildered.

- Howard Zinn

Dedicated to the memory of Tapasi Malik,, Dula Mandal, Lakhiram  
Tuddu, Satyabhama
Whose names we know,
And the hundreds of adivasis of Bastar
Whose names will remain unknown till we claim them.

Why this essay?

I don’t live in Bastar, and I am not an adivasi.

But I have been active in the working class movement of Chhattisgarh  
for the past 22 years, a movement which became legendary under the  
charismatic leadership of Comrade Shankar Guha Niyogi. And I strongly  
feel that understanding what is happening in Bastar today is of the  
greatest significance not only to us in Chhattisgarh, but to all  
those who want to understand imperialist onslaught and corporate land  
grab, particularly in the resource-rich adivasi areas; for all of us  
involved nationwide in the anti-displacement movement which is day on  
day becoming a fierce life-and-death struggle against all odds; and  
in fact for all of us in the peoples’ movements who are faced with  
the abysmally criminal failure of democratic institutions and  
shrinking democratic spaces on the one hand, and growing repression  
on the other.

Justice Krishna Iyer, in a speech delivered in the memory of Com.  
Niyogi said that “he tried boldly and bravely to bring the  
Constitution to life for lakhs of miners and contract labourers”. Com  
Niyogi was murdered on 28th September 1991 within a fortnight of his  
petitioning the highest authority of this land – the President of  
India. The industrialists convicted for his murder by the Sessions  
Court of Durg were acquitted by the High Court and Supreme Court. The  
thousands of workers of Bhilai, for whose cause he laid down his  
life, are still out of work, their cases pending in the High Court.  
The last essay he wrote, with an uncharacteristic urgency, was  
“Rajeev Gandhi Ki Hatya Kyon?” (”Why was Rajiv Gandhi murdered?”) in  
which he forcefully argued that Rajiv Gandhi, though himself of the  
“liberalization” paradigm, was considered to be moving too slowly and  
was eliminated to allow “those who wanted the dollar to move in fast”  
to have their way. Com. Niyogi predicted that unless there was a  
widespread debate and churning among the patriotic and democratic  
sections of the people, our country would become the “grazing ground  
of the multinationals”, for now “only those persons will occupy the  
seats of power, whom the multinationals favour”. At that time, in May  
1991, his article seemed to many, to be exaggerated or the usual  
leftist conspiracy theory. Now we know, it was prophetic.

This essay is part of that debate.

In the numerous industrial areas across Chhattisgarh today, the very  
blood of young contract labourers is being sucked as they labour for  
12-14 hours, for far less than minimum wages, without weekly  
holidays, and without safety or medical facility to generate the  
enormous wealth of “Chhattisgarh Shining!” Unionizing them today  
doesn’t only mean facing the goondas of the industrialists, risking  
the loss of precarious jobs, sustaining an uncompromising struggle  
against great odds, and developing a mature and bold leadership that  
can withstand both carrot and stick - though this is a tall enough  
order. It also means struggling against the serious imperialist  
onslaught against the people of Chhattisgarh.

An onslaught where gigantic corporations like Holcim and Lafarge are  
gobbling up the cement sector, they have already acquired ACC,  
Ambuja, and Raymond Cements. Taking advantage of rich limestone  
deposits, they are manufacturing the cheapest cement in the world,  
earning superprofits and planning to set up new capacities. Between  
them and the big cement manufacturers like Aditya Birla they have  
formed the “Chhattisgarh Cement Manufacturers Association” a cartel  
that has its office at a stones throw from Chief Minister Raman  
Singh’s residence – a proximity symbolic of their stranglehold  
influence over the state administration.

These companies are blatantly violating well established Indian  
labour standards which prohibit the use of contract labour in cement  
manufacture, and mandate that contract labour be paid at par with  
regular workers, i.e at the rate of the Cement Wage Board. (Holcim,  
for instance, has appealed against an Award obtained by our union to  
regularize 573 contract workers whose contracts have been held to be  
sham and bogus.)They are refusing to abide by the State  
Rehabilitation Policy which prescribes permanent jobs for those  
displaced by their plants, and they are in fact creating an explosive  
situation in the rural areas by employing outsiders in preference to  
the affected peasants.

Under the leadership of the Pragatisheel Cement Shramik Sangh and the  
Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha (Mazdoor Karyakarta Committee) – workers,  
peasants and particularly women – have been militantly struggling and  
have had some success in enforcing minimum wages and getting some  
affected peasants employed in these factories. But we still need to  
forge a unity of all cement workers in Chhattisgarh, across union  
lines, to wage a serious struggle demanding that multinationals  
implement the law of the land.

On the other hand, the local small and medium steel industry of  
Chhattisgarh is facing a severe crisis and hundreds of units – mini  
steel plants, sponge iron units, rolling mills - are closing down,  
thousands of workers are facing the threat of retrenchment. This  
crisis is another facet of the imperialist onslaught. The best  
quality iron ore of Chhattisgarh is literally flowing out as slurry,  
day after day, to be shipped out to Japan at a mere Rs. 400 a tonne.  
The State government is only too keen to sign MOUs with the big  
corporate houses – Tata, Essar, Mittal, Jindal…. and to practically  
gift away the best deposits of iron ore as captive mines at a measly  
royalty of less than Rs. 50 a tonne. But the local industry is having  
to purchase iron ore at open market rates, which had touched upto Rs.  
5800 per tonne recently. Along with our union the Jan Adharit  
Engineering Mazdoor Union, the CMM has been continuously protesting  
against these pro-imperialist policies in order to save local  
industry and jobs, and exhorting the local industrialists not to be  
“penny wise and pound foolish” in trying to make up the lakhs of  
losses on raw material costs by squeezing a few thousands out of the  
workers legal wages.

Increasingly it is becoming more clear to us that the factories are  
not the only battleground against imperialist and monopoly capital,  
the hardest struggles are in the countryside where these companies  
are zeroing in on mineral resources, and are engaged in a land grab  
on an unbelievable scale. Whether for coal blocks in Raigarh, or a  
power plant in Premnagar, cement plants in Tilda, or a large  
industrial area in Rajnandgaon, bauxite mining in Sarguja and  
Jashpur, sponge iron plants in Raipur or diamond mining in Devbhog,  
peasants everywhere – particularly adivasis and dalits - are facing  
and resisting displacement – weakly compromising at some places,  
facing repression determinedly at others. 41 and now 65 more villages  
near Raipur are to be displaced for a glittering new capital region  
of Corporate Chhattisgarh; 9 villages for an army camp for a revamped  
High Court premises close to Bilaspur; 7 villages for an air force  
base in Rajnandgaon. Not to mention the displacement for the Tiger  
Reserve, Elephant Reserve, Wild life Sanctuaries etc. in Bilaspur,  
Jashpur and Dhamtari districts… The list is endless.

CMM has also been active in the anti-displacement movement – in  
opposing the demolition of urban bastis, particularly in the  
industrial areas where the lowly paid contract workers live; in  
organising the already displaced peasants around industrial  
establishments to demand jobs and compensation; and in playing a  
prominent role along with the Sanyukta Kisan Morcha in stalling the  
acquisition of 7 villages at Rajnandgaon for a Special Industrial  
Zone. It has expressed solidarity with the Raigarh Bachao Sangharsh  
Samiti which has been fighting the total domination of the Jindal  
group and its `private army’ notorious for its land grabbing,  
brokering of material inputs for local small industry, rampant  
exploitation of workers and the pollution of the air, soil and water  
of Raigarh district. A peasant woman Satyabhama lost her life,  
ironically on the 26th of January, when being force-fed to break the  
indefinite fast she had undertaken to save the waters of the Kelo  
river from pollution by Jindal (In yet another example of the obscene  
hypocrisies that we now take for granted, the Jindal Steel and Power  
Limited recently received the “Srishti Green Cube Award 2007 for Good  
Green Governance” from Sheela Dikshit, the Chief Minister of Delhi!)  
The CMM has been an active participant in the anti-displacement front  
Visthapan Virodhi Jan Vikas Andolan, which was launched at Ranchi on  
23rd March 2007, and which has been attempting to unite the people’s  
resistance to displacement countrywide.

The struggle to bring into the public domain the MOUs of Tata and  
Essar in Bastar and Dantewada; the fake gramsabhas in Lohandiguda and  
Dhurli blocks conducted at gunpoint to obtain consent for land  
acquisition, and presided over by the Salwa Judum supremo and  
District Investment Promotion Board Chairman Mahendra Karma; the  
arrests of vocal villagers including when they were on their way to  
keep a scheduled appointment with the Governor; the slapping of cases  
under the National Security Act on activists of the Adivasi  
Mahasabha; the FIRs that were finally lodged, after repeated  
complaints, against sundry dalals of Tata for the “fake  
compensations” given to the wrong persons and even in the name of the  
dead; these are events about which I and the CMM have had personal  
knowledge, and about which we have continuously raised our voice. CMM  
had organized torchlight processions in several industrial centres  
protesting against the arrest of Manish Kunjam and other leaders of  
the Adivasi Mahasabha on the eve of the alternative gram sabhas  
organized in Lohandiguda and Bhansi to protest land acquisition.

But I could only grasp the enormity of the information blackout – the  
silence, half truths and sheer lies – call it the “wall of silence”,  
that exists between Bastar and the rest of Chhattisgarh, when as an  
active member of the Chhattisgarh PUCL, I joined several fact finding  
teams to investigate into fake encounters. When we found out that the  
shiksha karmis and student killed in Gollapalli allegedly in  
“Naxalite cross fire” had actually been murdered by the police and  
SAF even after they had repeatedly asserted their identity; when the  
“dreaded Naxalites encountered” in Nayapara turned out to be adivasis  
who had returned to their ancestoral village in search of work; when  
the theory of “accidental firing because of hidden Naxalites” in the  
Cherpal Salwa Judum camp was boldly rubbished by the villagers in the  
camp who were furious at the killing of a woman and a small baby by a  
trigger happy CRPF jawan. In the media we repeatedly saw a total  
silence about ordinary people on the one hand, and cymbal-clashing  
war-cries against Maoists, always pictured as AK-47 toting with  
sinisterly covered faces, on the other. Each time we uncovered the  
truth, which, mind you, was absolutely self-evident to the local  
people, and tried to cross the “wall”, it was buried again under a  
heap of papers – false statements, enquiries, and the inevitable  
conclusions justifying the atrocities. In short, back to square one.  
This is another attempt to scale that wall.

“Rich Lands of Poor People”: Scenario of Chhattisgarh

Chandra Bhushan, a researcher on mineral policy writes:

“India announced a new National Mineral Policy (for non-coal and non- 
fuel minerals) in early April, after two-and-a-half years of  
wrangling between mineral-rich states and the central government,  
between steel-makers, iron ore miners and exporters. The objective of  
this policy, NMP-2008, is clear: it will promote privately-owned,  
large-scale, mechanized mines—if they happen to be controlled by  
multinationals, still better…. NMP-2008 ignores the fact that mining  
in India is not only about minerals and a simple ‘dig and sell’  
proposition, it is about tribals and backward castes and their land  
and livelihood alienation. It is about poverty, backwardness and  
Naxalism. It is also about deforestation and biodiversity impact,  
water security and pollution.”

Ravi Tiwari, General Secretary of the Chhattisgarh Cement  
Manufacturers’ Association accidently blurts out the truth when he  
states in an article dated 25/9/2007 in the “Jansatta”. “This State  
is as rich under its soil, as those who dwell on it are economically  
impoverished.” He tells us that Chhattisgarh has more than 28  
precious mineral resources including limestone, dolomite, coal, iron  
ore, diamond, gold, quartzite, tin ore, tin metal, granite,  
corrundum, marble, beryl, bauxite, uranium, alexandrite, copper,  
silica, fluorite and garnet. In September 2008, a road blockade by  
hundreds of villagers of the “Jameen Bachao Sangharsh Samiti” stalled  
a proposal for handing over an area of 105 square kilometers situated  
in 30 villages of Kunkuri Tehsil of district Jashpur to the Jindal  
Power and Steel Limited “to prospect for gold, diamond, platinum  
group of minerals, precious and semiprecious gemstones”.

The way companies are zeroing on mineral resources can be seen in the  
cement sector. There are about 8225 million tones of limestone in  
Chhattisgarh, predominantly in the Raipur, Durg, Janjgir, Bilaspur,  
Rajnandgaon, Kawardha and Bastar districts, a large proportion of  
which is cement grade. Today more than 6% of the country’s cement is  
produced here by 7 large and 4 small cement plants with a total  
capacity of nearly 10.5 million tones. In the past decade the plant  
of the public sector Cement Corporation of India at Mandhar has  
closed down. While the well known brands of ACC and Ambuja have been  
taken over by the Swiss multinational Holcim, indeed 12.5% of  
Holcim’s sales are now from its 24 Indian plants. Lafarge has also  
taken over two cement plants. The Raman Singh government in its last  
term has signed MOUs with 11 companies, for setting up new plants as  
well as expanding old ones. If these new capacities are achieved, it  
would more than triple the cement production to about 36 million tones.

Seven percent of the country’s bauxite, about 198 million tones, is  
available in the Sarguja, Jashpur, Kawardha, Kanker and Bastar  
districts. It is being mined at present in Sarguja by the now  
privatized Balco (Sterlite) company in Chhattisgarh and the Hindalco  
company of Uttar Pradesh. More than 200 adivasi families have lost  
their lands to Hindalco so far and the process is still continuing.  
Although there is theoretically a lease agreement, which states that  
the company would restore the land to its original condition as far  
as is practicable, but in reality no rent whatsoever is paid, and in  
the name of employment one person from the affected family works as  
lowly paid contract labour. Discontent is rife among these landless  
adivasi miners. It is pertinent that Dheeraj Jaiswal, a notorious SPO  
in erstwhile SP Kalluri’s retinue charged of many fake encounters and  
rapes in the name of fighting Naxals, doubles up as a goonda for  
Hindalco to keep its labour in order. Bauxite is processed into  
aluminium, an important input in the aviation and defence industry.  
There is a global bottleneck in this mineral, hence the corporate  
hawks are very much on the lookout for potential deposits.

Sixteen percent of the country’s coal, a whopping 39,545 million  
tones is to be found in the Raigarh, Sarguja, Koriya and Korba  
districts of northern Chhattisgarh. On 5th January 2007, the adivasis  
of Village Khamariya, Tehsil Tamnar were subjected to vicious and  
brutal lathicharge when in a public hearing ostensibly arranged by  
the district administration, but clearly dominated by the Jindal  
company, they raised objections to giving up their lands to the  
Jindal Coal Mines.

The public hearings for environmental clearances for three more power  
projects including AES Chhattisgarh Power (a joint venture with the  
American energy giant) were recently stalled by villagers protesting  
that they had not been notified and they apprehended widespread  
pollution.

The Indian Farmers Fertilizer Cooperative Ltd (IFFCO) had to withdraw  
its proposal of setting up a 1000 mw coal-based thermal power plant  
in Premnagar in Sarguja district in March after strong protests. The  
villagers organized in the “Gram Sabha Parishad” had attacked IFFCO  
officials conducting “secret surveys” and had protested the diversion  
of the Atem river for the plant. When the company persisted and got  
their leader arrested, over 1,000 people marched to the police  
station to get him released. The new site subsequently chosen by  
IFFCO, 10km away, also came into serious controversy recently, when  
villagers who had passed a resolution against the project, found that  
their Sarpanch was being whisked away secretly to a meeting in a  
police jeep, disguised as a policeman! All this would have been  
amusing, had it not been so dead serious.

The very first notification issued by the BJP govt. of Chhattisgarh  
after its recent electoral victory was of the splitting up of the  
Chhattisgarh State Electricity Board into 5 separate companies, a  
move which had been consistently resisted by the workers’ and  
engineers’ associations. This move is being seen clearly as a hidden  
privatization, for which foreign, particularly American, companies  
are also reported to be in the running. Chhattisgarh produces the  
cheapest electricity in the country and private players after taking  
over the CSEB would use cut-throat competition to push other State  
Electricity Boards out of the running. It would also mean neglect of  
rural electrification which entails greater distribution costs. The  
workers of CSEB, particularly the independent “Vidyut Karmachari  
Janta Union” are on strike, and ESMA has been invoked against them.  
Even for the proposed power plant of the CSEB at Bhaiyathan in  
Sarguja, a private developer Indiabulls Power Generation Ltd would be  
the main player, the CSEB basically providing the fig-leaf with a 26%  
stake, since the coal blocks have been allotted in its name.

Even otherwise, in the coal sector, the presence of the coal mafia is  
so overpowering that an MLA of Dhanbad has alleged that “SECL could  
earn only Rs 800 crore profit in the fiscal year 2006-07, whereas it  
(the earning) could have been more than Rs 30,000 crore if the  
government could have reduced the pilferage.” In particular it is an  
open secret that in Chhattisgarh the Aryan Coal Beneficiaries (also  
associated with the daily newspaper Haribhoomi) has a monopoly over  
the washery business and therefore makes a lot of money at SECL’s  
expense.

With the changes in mining policy permitting foreign companies, the  
Arrow company has started drilling the first of thirteen wells at the  
Tatapani-Ramkola blocks approximately 90 km south of Ambikapur in  
district Sarguja. The well is being drilled by the Australian  
drilling company South West Pinnacle Drilling and coal is expected to  
be touched at a depth of 500-900m.

Remember Dilip Singh Judeo, “Raja” of Jashpur and BJP leader of the  
aggressive re-conversion movement against the Christian community,  
being caught taking bribes on camera from a company representative  
before the last assembly elections? What is rarely revealed is that  
the company was the Australian mining giant – Broken Hill Properties.

One-fifth of the country’s iron ore – about 2336 million tones  
averaging 68% purity is found in the Dantewada, Kanker, Rajnandgaon,  
Bastar and Durg districts. The Bhilai Steel Plant is one of the  
world’s most efficient steel plants, yet it is being deliberately  
tripped up by private players particularly Jindal Steel & Power. The  
scramble for the best deposits have started between the public sector  
NMDC and the Tata and Essar groups, with litigation pending in the  
Delhi High Court. But this is not all. It is claimed that Tata has  
acquired Corus. And that Essar Steel is to buy the American steel  
firm Esmark. Last year, Essar bought Minnesota Steel for an  
undisclosed sum, only days after it also agreed to acquire Canadian  
firm Algoma Steel for $1.6bn. The elite of India choose to regard  
these events as a coming of age of India Inc. and a mark of our  
becoming a global superpower. The Esmark chief executive James  
Bouchard, is more forthright and says “Esmark needed a strategic  
partner as raw material and transport costs rose”. In other words,  
Essar and Tata are going to be the Indian face of the big foreign  
mining companies who are facing a raw material crunch today. All  
these acquisitions have been financed by hefty loans from FFIs, which  
are going to be a stone around the necks of these companies in the  
present financial crisis.

On 17th May 2008, about 5,000 tribals from 25 villages took out a two- 
day ‘padyatra’ under the banner of ‘Adivasi Mahasabha’ from Bhansi,  
where the proposed steel plant of Essar is to come up, to Faraspal of  
district Dantewada, to protest mining of iron ore from the Bailadila  
mountains. They claimed that the government has granted mining leases  
to 96 industrial houses besides Tata and Essar in the Bailadila area  
and demanded that the mountains, 40 km long and 10km wide, which  
contained iron ore deposits to the tune of 300 crore tonnes should  
not be given on lease to private companies for mining as it could  
pose a threat to the existence of the mountains as also the culture  
of local tribals.

As regards the earnings of the state, Praveen Patel of the Tribal  
Welfare Society reveals some startling details:

“There is nothing to take pride in the news that Chhattisgarh has  
earned Rs.7 billion in mineral royalty on coal, bauxite and iron ores  
during the first nine months of the current fiscal 2007-08.

The government states that over 2 lakh tonnes of iron ore has been  
excavated in first nine months but what about the rate of Royalty  
earned in iron ore only? Why that figures are not shared with the  
public. Let me throw some idea to lift the veil. As per my  
information, the average royalty of iron ore which the state has  
collected is about Rs. 27/- per metric tonne only where as the  
current international rates of iron ore are in the range of above US  
$ 210. It would have been better, if the government would have stated  
bluntly that they are allowing the daylight robbery of the iron ore,  
parallel of which is not seen anywhere else in the world.”

The Bastar region is one of the richest in mineral resources – not  
only in iron ore, but also perhaps a host of other unexplored  
minerals including limestone, bauxite, and even diamond and uranium.  
In 2005 it was not only with Tata and Essar and Texas Power  
Generation that confidential MOUs were signed allotting iron ore  
deposits, coal blocks, water reservoirs and hectares and hectares of  
land, but scores of companies were given prospecting and mining  
licenses. Unfortunately for the powers that be, however, there  
happened to be lakhs of adivasis – neglected, exploited and oppressed  
by the “mainstream” - literally sitting on top of these most precious  
assets, and even more unfortunately for them, since the early 80’s  
the Naxal movement had dug deep roots there. The estimate of the then  
Director General of Police DGP Rathore was that there were about  
50,000 “Sangham” or members of the peasant committees and frontal  
organizations (women and youth organizations) of the Maoists in the  
year 2005. And so started the “Salwa Judum” a massive and brutal  
ground clearing operation which was to affect about 3.5 lakhs of  
adivasis in 644 villages, the most widespread displacement anywhere  
in the country. “Draining out the water and killing the fish” was the  
expression used by Mahendra Karma.



Shuddhabrata Sengupta
The Sarai Programme at CSDS
shuddha at sarai.net
www.sarai.net
www.raqsmediacollective.net