The not-so-subtle

art of creating

wastelands

MADHU RAMNATH

Ask yourself, What is this thing in itself, by its own special constititution? What is it in substance, and in form, and in matter? What is its function in the world? For how long does it subsist?

– Marcus Aurelius

‘Meditations’, Book 8, 11

WHERE to begin on extractive industries, digging up the earth for whatever gives profit, from coal (leaving vast sterile pits) to its close relative diamonds (desired by everyone), with no awareness of what is destroyed in the process?

Do we talk about the law? About the regulations, set in place yet are constantly contravened, about where, how, and how much to dig, and what to do with the nationally sanctioned wastelands left behind?

How to speak about the environmental mess of uprooted forests, polluted rivers and streams, fields and villages drowning in flyash? Or the social mess of broken and scattered homes and communities, anchored until recently in their land and forests?

Who are we to listen to?

Who listens to the voices from the ground, of people who live in places where the digging and destruction takes place, when they say it is not good for them, that they are being left bereft of land and home? The landscapes and livelihoods they grew up in are gone and they were in no position to refuse the deals they were offered.

Who calculates their compensation when these deals have seldom, if ever, worked in their favour?

Let’s begin with the law. The Forest Rights Act (FRA), passed in 2006, promised to correct an historic injustice done to tribal people and traditional forest dwellers, whose lands and homes have been usurped or displaced whenever vested interests willed it, from colonial times to now. There are many small communities in India, in places most people have never heard of, uprooted from their homes not once, but twice or thrice. The hard-won FRA sought to restore forests and lands to their traditional inhabitants.

The act reads well and looks good on paper. But outside civil society groups few have taken the trouble to read it. There has been little enthusiasm about it from the state, especially the Forest Department. Most of the administration is not sympathetic or knowledgeable enough to grasp its gravity. So, the state agencies endowed with responsibility for smoothly implementing the act hinder its process. The meagre 10% of implementation that has happened in fifteen years has been through heroic efforts by civil society groups. Despite all odds, these efforts continue.

The FRA is one of the strongest instruments for resisting dispossession. Together with PESA (The Provisions of the Panchayats Extension to Scheduled Areas Act, 1996), village gram sabhas are supposed to have the power to refuse any project on land claimed and approved through the FRA. This should prevent the kinds of atrocilties that our most marginalized communities have faced over years.

But this is rarely what happens. To understand how ineffective the act is when the state aligns with a mining company, let’s zoom in on one resource rich region, such as Surajpur and Raigarh districts in central Chhattisgarh. Just for resisting the destruction of their environment, local people get viewed by company and state alike as ‘the enemy’, whose lands they want, and whose rivers they will poison.

In 2009, at the height of peoples’ opposition to the Premnagar coal block, Chief Minister Raman Singh visited Ambikapur. During the ‘Janadarshan’ programme at the guest house, he grandly announced that the gram panchayat of Premnagar will be changed to a nagar panchayat, as a ‘gift’ to its people!1

This declaration – totally unconstitutional – was published in local newspapers, a first intimation to the people concerned. They were no longer villagers: they were city-folk, and therefore without protection of their gram sabha.

In recent years, 67 gram panchayats have been converted into nagar panchayats in Chhattisgarh like this, and thereby deprived of the protection of a gram sabha. Some have been lumped together with neighbouring panchayats, to comply with the norms of a nagar panchayat, which needs a minimal population of 5500. This has affected about 150 gram panchayats in 300 villages – almost all in PESA areas.2

India’s National Tribal Policy states that ‘Alienation of tribal land is the single most important cause of pauperization of tribals, rendering their vulnerable economic situation even more precarious. Of even greater concern is the fact that the lands lost are usually the most productive...’

The Forest Appraisal Committee (FAC) appointed to scrutinize proposals to divert land in the Hasdeo-Arand region found that people to be affected were unaware of the R&R policy, while FRA procedures had not been completed!

In some instances, community forest rights granted to gram sabhas have even been retracted. One such case is Ghatbharra, in the zone where the Rajasthan Rajya Vidyut Utpadan Nigam Ltd seeks to expand its existing coal mines in the Parsa-Kete blocks, which will envelop Ghatbharra and Fatehpur villages. This attracted a massive protest in October 2021, led by the Chhattisgarh Bachao Andolan, when villagers made a padyatra to Raipur.3

Both Ghatbharra and Fatehpur have fields interspersed with mature sal forests and water bodies, a Gond cultural landscape. Villagers wanted to meet Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghael, and hand him a petition against the mining. Bhagael had opposed any retraction of the community forest rights granted to Ghatbharra in 2015. But then he was with the Congress party, in Opposition. Now his is the ruling party, and he has fallen silent. At the ground level it doesn’t matter which party is in power. Once in power, all covertly or overtly support the mining companies. An unspoken rule.

Surveying the scenario of Public Consultations, we see similar disregard for due process. In September 2006 the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) enacted a law that any project must hold a Public Consultation (formerly Public Hearing) under the State Pollution Control Board. By law a Public Consultation (PC) must be ‘arranged in a systematic, time bound, and transparent manner, ensuring widest possible public participation at the project site(s) or in its close proximity district wise.’ If the state government fails to do this, the MoEF is to constitute a committee to conduct the PC.4

The Tamnar mining project has the world’s largest coal-based sponge iron plant, run by Jindal Tamnar Thermal Power Plant. When no PC had been held for over three years, a case was filed with the National Green Tribunal (NGT) – and a PC was called during the covid lockdown!

During the first week of covid-19 in March 2020, there were orders from the district administration (Raigarh) to impose Section 144, restricting gatherings of more than 50 persons, even for funerals. The Collector nevertheless held a PC with a gathering of 8000 people – no masks or prescribed social distancing were to be seen. To an inquiry about this from the NGT, the Collector claimed he pushed ahead with the PC as the project would help generating much needed revenue.

The Prime Minister’s logic in opening up 41 coal blocks during the pandemic, despite the Nationally Determined Commitment that India agreed to in Paris in 2015 (of 2.5-3 million tonnes of carbon sink), was exactly the same.

Fly ash is a toxic residue from burning coal that contains mercury, cadmium and arsenic, which can enter the ground and drinking water if not managed well. Apart from legal violations, what affects the people living near coal mining and thermal plants is the daily confrontation with trucks that dominate their roads, and the flyash generated from coal burning. Even a district like Korba, with four thermal plants, produces 24,000 tonnes of fly ash daily (8.7 million tonnes annually).5 With India dependent on coal for about 70% of its energy we can expect flyash generation to increase drastically.

Over the past 20 years the government has issued notices to thermal plant companies to utilize the fly ash they produce. Over 50% of them have not complied, and it seems unlikely they will bother. As of 2019, 1.6 billion tonnes of fly ash are estimated to be occupying 65,000 acres of land. Over the last decade, 76 major accidents have been reported, leading to loss of human lives, contamination of water bodies, and continuous threats to fragile habitats. Leaks from fly ash ponds are difficult to fix, and seldom monitored.6 Countless village ponds are polluted with fly ash. Much of it is dumped along the roads and used as a layer beneath the tarmac, and much gets washed into fields along roadsides, damaging crops.

In Tamnar, data on community health impacts reveals ailments including skin cancer and silicosis. Despite government compensation, people spend about 40% of their incomes on medicine.7

Only the four older thermal plants have permission to dump their fly ash in the existing dump, covering 125 hectares. Other power plants usually dump it in the forest, fields or rivers. When the community complains, there is no proof of where the ash came from. The ash is affecting the fish in the Kelo river. 8

A gazette notification (2008) has made it mandatory for all construction within a 100 kms radius of a thermal power plant to use fly ash. Deviations from this rule were permitted by showing a certificate saying ‘fly ash not available’ from a local plant.9

This law has apparently been enacted to conserve the topsoil normally used in brick kilns. The Chhattisgarh Environment Conservation Board website has a section stating ‘Fly Ash – No More a Waste’, expounding the numerous wonderful qualities of this toxic material. It makes us wonder how we missed this all these years, and why we require a gazette notification at all. We can now manufacture bricks with fly ash, use it in and to re-fill opencast mines. It is even recommended in agriculture, forestry and floriculture, and to reclaim wastelands, and is supposed to improve the permeability of soil and root proliferation, ‘100% wood-free’, yet stronger than wood, and resistant to fungus, termites and fire. Also friendly to flora and fauna!10

Clearly, we need more of this magic substance, and more thermal plants. It’s almost a miracle we have survived so long without flyash. We can forget about the Nationally Determined Commitment. The UNFCCC has got it all wrong.

The trucks of Mahanadi Coalfields Limited (MCL) ply between Tamnar and Talabira in Raigarh district. The village roads are wrecked. After many complaints, the people gathered and blocked the road, stopping traffic for about three months and appealing to the NGT. A school was located along the route and its children had to be protected from coal dust and fly ash. Funds for an alternative road have been granted.

The trucks of Adani Mining Limited passed through Kantaroli and Srinagar in Surajpur district – about 3000 trucks a day, on a narrow road with more potholes than road. All day, all night, the trucks drive. Rumble and screeching of tyres has replaced the sounds of the forest. Many young people riding motorbikes or bicycles to nearby villages have died or been injured. Nobody listened to the peoples’ complaints – not the administration, not the company, not the police. So, people blocked the road for several days and wouldn’t move until the trucks took another route. Finally, Adani constructed a railway, and the trucks don’t pass through Kantaroli any more. However, two contractors are fighting over the contract to repair the road. It has been more than two years, their fight is still in court. The road continues to be more pothole than road. What lies ahead?

A few months ago I spoke to a bunch of youths in Kantaroli. They were in their late-20s and mid-30s, the frontline of ongoing resistance to coal mining in the Premnagar belt. Neigbouring villages in the areas of Parsa-Kete and Tara finally succumbed and signed up for compensation. These youths would have been school-going children when the early protests began about 20 years ago. Their parents attended village meetings, discussed what was happening around them, faced threats, resolved to put up a fight, and succeeded in saving their forests and lands.

The entire landscape is moist sal forest country, with large trees. Sal, salai, dhaura, adan, bija, karla, and large climbers like siyadi, muthri and uidir. Narrow, swift running streams, caves, and rocky open spaces where the ad-birla predominates, the tree known for being resistant to termites.

I asked the youths a few questions: Did your parents talk about such things when you were young? And what exactly?

‘They would tell us that the FD people were felling the trees, about the mining that was planned in our area, we heard about IFFCO, that all the forests will be cleared and mining will happen...’

Did you understand all this, when you were so young?

‘Not much, we could not understand what will happen, what won’t happen.... slowly we began to understand. When the struggle began, we became more aware of what is going on...’

You all must have been about eight years old, some less or a little more. What went on in your minds? Was there fear?

‘There was definitely fear, but not much understanding of the issues at hand. Our elders had formed a sangathan, they would come home from the meetings and talk about what they discussed there. We would go about the village shouting slogans (nara lagana) about the power plants, but we did not know much about what was going on. It was also a time when nobody here had gone to school or got a sarkari job. Some people said that it might be better to take the compensation and allow the mining to happen.

But some also said that the village will fall apart, our people will be scattered, some here and some there. They thought, No, we want no money. We only want our land and forests, our earth which is our mother and father, that’s all we want. Our mothers and fathers said this. This went on, as so much money was on offer as compensation, more than we had ever seen, but we said No, we’d rather work the land. They taught us this and we stuck to this way and these forests and our land are with us. Other villages in this area also have fallen in line with us and all have their forest and land. Our parents and grandparents have worked hard, we have managed to buy some cycles and motorcycles to move around but are quite satisfied. [This is in reference to other villages in the neighbourhood that have taken the compensation from the mining companies, have bought SUVs and two-wheelers, suffered many accidents and deaths, and today are quite broken communities with rampant alcoholism and poverty]

We work hard today to earn a little money but we are perhaps more happy than those people who feasted everyday. At least we have our land and our forests. They have become people without mothers, having sold their lands, and have become orphans, those people from the neighbouring villages. They don’t realise that the company owns them, and can chase them away whenever it pleases. But the company can’t touch us, it dare not. We don’t move, we don’t fear, as we did not accept their money.’

Who taught you this?

‘Our mothers and fathers. If we had taken the money and squandered it on food and drink we would have been in the same situation. Only the forest and the land will stick with you until the end. We want no compensation, no felling in our forests, we just want what we have, our mahua, our tendu leaves, our char... that’s enough. The forest guards would stop us from even collecting firewood from the forest. Now they know that we protect the forest, those guards, and don’t bother. And now we stop them from taking even one tree from this forest.’

Do you think this fight will continue? Do you also tell these stories to your children?

‘We do and we should.’

Do you think your parents are happy that they stopped the mining from happening?

‘Yes they are, and so are we.’

Do you have conversations with people in the villages that have accepted the compensation?

‘Yes, we talk with them.’

What do they say about the decision they took (about accepting the compensation)?

‘They regret the decision they made. They have finished the money, 60-70 lakhs, 1 crore, and one home even got 3 crores.’

So how are they now? How is the family that got 3 crores?

‘It’s back to the same situation as before, like the others.’

What do they say when they see you, when you talk to them?

‘They say that their land is no more. They have not managed to buy any new land. They feasted on the money they got, drove around, and as they kept driving their money disappeared.’

Not even a few families managed to do something with all that money?

‘Few did, maybe 25% of the people, no, maybe only 10%. They invested the money in some business, a small shop, or in a bank. But these people were Adivasis. They were educated people, non-tribal, Yadavs, Sahu, Bania, very few Gonds, but not the other Adivasi people.’

Why could the Adivasi people not save their money?

‘Because we like to feast and drink, we aren’t like that. Some still do some farming. Some work in the company itself as labourers but found it difficult to stick to the schedules and the times and were laid off. Some were sent off for training in other towns but most couldn’t complete the term. Slowly most of them were out, replaced by newcomers from other places. The Parsa-Kete people now just wander about, lost, with neither money nor land. Some stay in the houses built for them in Bhasan, about 3 kms from the Kete, small 2 room structures. Families with many members can’t stay there. They fetch firewood for other people, do odd jobs…’

What about the women?

‘Many became widows, even about 60-70% of them, especially in Parsa-Kete, as their men died in accidents with their newly acquired vehicles. Matters are like this in Tara too, even though the mines have not begun, but they have accepted the compensation, also in Ghatbharra. Matters are moving ahead in these places.’

What’s the rate?

‘Between 8-12 lakhs an acre.’

How come you couldn’t convince these people not to accept the compensation and fall in this trap. Why could they not resist as you did in Kantaroli?

‘We tried, many times, we went there several times. They accused us of being politicians, said that this is a government plan and that the state can throw us away from our lands and then we would be left with nothing.

‘Tara is a mixed community village. Pandits, Sahu, Muslims, Seths, some adivasi, perhaps half of them are outsiders, who control the decisions and live near the road, about 1000 population. Adivasi people are not listened to over there. Tara has been like this for a long time, it was a depot that stored timber. There were many outsiders there dealing with timber, people came from all over the place. The Adivasi people’s decisions were not taken seriously, others took over the decision-making roles there.’

Do people still come here for mining? The companies?

‘Yes some people came for some survey, checking for minerals. They were using many machines, all in our forest.

Every year someone or other comes and does something. This time the cowherd saw this and called others in the village, and we brought them to the panchayat house and told them off, and asked them to leave. The gram sabha decided this was not allowed.

‘Small things keep happening. And we have to keep alert to guard our wealth. From other people, from the FD. We protect the forest from fire, every year, lit by the tendu-patta traders, by all sorts of people. But now the forest is good, we look after it, it is dense.’

The Mines Development Operator (MDO), in charge of mining in an area, is usually the same company for many leasing groups, such as the Rajasthan Rajya Vidyut Utpadan Nigam Limited. Due to this arrangement, the affected community finds it impossible to pin them down when there is a violation such as a land grab, or when a field is dug up overnight, or when blasting cracks the walls of houses. The company will send the person who complains to the one who leased out the land; the leasee will claim that it is not the one doing the mining. The trick is non-accountability, the ability to confound all responsibility. And the state shows the way.

In 2013, I was one of the team invited by the Governor of Chhattisgarh to come and meet the FD staff to discuss various ideas about how the state’s non-timber forest products (NTFPs) could be better managed, better value-added, and how the adivasi people’s knowledge and needs could be incorporated into the plans. It was a full three days spent with some of the senior FD staff, much of it in the field, visiting their NTFP centres and nurseries. One afternoon, over lunch, I inquired why the FD does not protest at all about the vast amount of forests destroyed by mining. ‘Off the record sir,’ I was told, ‘mining is a political matter. We can’t do anything about it. Forest officers feel sad about losing so much good forest, but there is nothing we can do.’ I have heard similar stories in Telengana, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Tamil Nadu.

Apart from the royalty that the Chhattisgarh government must get for the coal from Rajasthan, the state takes no interest in monitoring how its forest-mineral wealth is being extracted. Nor does it bother about its people who are affected by the mining. It does not enforce any code of conduct with the RRVUNL that has the lease, nor with the Adani mining company that acts locally, nor with the Rajasthan Vidyut board that has the contract. The state simply forsakes its people.

But I think we may be on safe ground now. From being a toxic substance fly ash has become a coveted material, with a price according to its grade. Indiamart advertises some attractive price.11 There are serious suggestions that the government is considering plans to export it to some European countries that have stopped burning coal. They can save their topsoil and continue with construction. There is a good potential for fly ash markets, a possible win-win situation.

There is an old Banjarin temple in Tamnar, within the range of the proposed expansion of a coal mine. Will Banjarin be allowed to stay?

Footnotes:

1. https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/mining/mining-diaries-40556

2. Ibid.

3.https://article-14.com/post/chhattisgarh-s-adivasis-are-on-300-km-march-to-save-the-hasdeo-forests-latest-in-a-decade-long-
protest-against-coal-mining—615e7394bbf8b

4.https://www.downtoearth.org.in/blog/governance/environment-impact-assessment-india-needs-to-revamp-its-public-consultation-framework-75630

5. https://enviscecb.org/fly_ash.htm#fly

6.https://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/without-stricter-checks-directive-to-utilise-fly-ash-may-prove-futile-121082000138_1.html

7. Personal field notes/interviews

8. ibid

9. http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/files/draft%20notification%20on%20fly%20ash.pdf

10. https://enviscecb.org/fly_ash.htm#fly

11. https://www.indiamart.com/proddetail/fly-ash-powder-14280787212.html