Feb­ru­ary 23, 2010 — When 5,000 indige­nous Don­gria Kondhs trekked Sun­day to Niyam Don­gar hill, the abode of their pre­sid­ing deity Niyam Raja, and des­ig­nat­ed it as invi­o­late, it meant they were step­ping up their resis­tance to a con­tro­ver­sial alu­mi­na refin­ery and baux­ite mine project here.

They car­ried out reli­gious rit­u­als to Niyam Raja — the sacred dis­penser of law, and then put up a totem pole in the area locat­ed in Niyam­giri hills in their home­land Lan­ji­garh, a baux­ite-rich hilly area in Kala­han­di of Oris­sa state in east­ern India.

This was the lat­est act of defi­ance here against the back­drop of unrest since 1997 among com­mu­ni­ties, envi­ron­men­tal and rights activists over the 2.13 bil­lon U.S. dol­lar min­ing project by Vedan­ta Alu­mini­um Ltd, the Indi­an arm of Lon­don-based Vedan­ta Resources Plc.

The alu­mi­na refin­ery, capa­ble of pro­duc­ing one mil­lion tonnes of alu­mi­na from baux­ite per annum, has been oper­at­ing for over a year now at the foothills of Niyam­giri. Alu­mi­na is used in the pro­duc­tion of alu­mini­um met­al.

Since 2007, Vedan­ta has been seek­ing clear­ance for a six-fold expan­sion of its refin­ery and 721-hectare baux­ite min­ing project. The baux­ite project how­ev­er has been stalled by a for­est law.

The min­ing oper­a­tions would affect some 8,000 Don­gria, Kutia and Jha­ra­nia Kondh in 112 trib­al and dalit vil­lages in Kala­han­di and adja­cent Raya­ga­da dis­trict, two of the most under­de­vel­oped areas in Oris­sa.

For the for­est-dwelling locals, Vedanta’s min­ing project would result in the demo­li­tion of the Dongria’s cen­turies-old sacred grove on Niyam­giri, threat­en­ing their ancient way of life, right to water, food, liveli­hood and cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty.

“These vil­lages nev­er had basic ameni­ties like med­ical facil­i­ties, drink­ing water and prop­er­ly func­tion­ing schools. The min­ing project will now take away even the sources of liveli­hood from them,” explained Dad­hi Pusi­ka, leader of Niyam­giri Surakhya Sami­ty (Nayam­giri Pro­tec­tion Com­mit­tee) that was formed by mem­bers of affect­ed vil­lages.

“Life is so hard. Old women and chil­dren are dying. They are liv­ing like dogs,” said 45-year-old Lad­ha Sika­ka of Lak­pad­dar vil­lage, refer­ring to the impact of the alum­na refin­ery.

Six peo­ple from Ren­gopal­li and vil­lages near the refin­ery and its huge red mud pond – a recep­ta­cle of waste­water that is a mix of high­ly tox­ic alka­line chem­i­cals and heavy met­als — have died over the past year from undi­ag­nosed res­pi­ra­to­ry ail­ments.

The Oris­sa State Pol­lu­tion Con­trol Board has issued sev­er­al warn­ings to Vedan­ta since its refin­ery tri­al start­ed in 2006, call­ing its atten­tion to the shod­dy pro­tec­tive lin­ing of the red mud pond that leech­es waste­water into Vam­sad­hara riv­er flow­ing next to it. Vil­lagers use that water for drink­ing.

Skin rash­es and sores are com­mon among res­i­dents. Some 40,000 truck­loads of baux­ite are trans­port­ed to the refin­ery from out­side Oris­sa per year, cre­at­ing colos­sal air pol­lu­tion from dirt roads, says Bhubaneswar-based envi­ron­men­tal­ist Biswa­jit Mohan­ty.

“If the moun­tain remains, our chil­dren remain, rains come, win­ter comes, the wind blows – the moun­tain will bring all the water, crops will grow. If they take away the rocks, water will dry, we will die,” said Lad­ha. “The moun­tain is our soul, we will lose our soul.”

“We can­not allow min­ing even if we are behead­ed,” he added.

The Dongria’s Sun­day protest comes on the heels of Amnesty International’s recent report on the Vedan­ta project, called ‘Don’t Mine Us Out of Exis­tence’. The report alleges that 12 pol­lu­tion-affect­ed vil­lages have nev­er received direct infor­ma­tion on the refin­ery.

Green activists say the gravest con­cern per­tains to water. Hill­top min­ing will dry up peren­ni­al water sources, while pos­si­ble poor man­age­ment of refin­ery waste­water could degrade sur­face water and pol­lute ground­wa­ter too. There is also con­cern about the huge quan­ti­ties of water that the expand­ed refin­ery will con­sume dai­ly.

An expan­sion of the cur­rent Vedan­ta project would mean its baux­ite require­ment would jump from three to 18 mil­lion tonnes per annum, result­ing in not just one but pos­si­bly sev­er­al open-cast mines on Niyam­giri.

But Vedan­ta clar­i­fies that its min­er­al­i­sa­tion area of three mil­lion tonne per annum is mere 3.5 per­cent of 250 square-kilo­me­tre hill range, and that its 30-metre deep exca­va­tions would not dis­turb the water table 78 metres below ground lev­el.

Three rivers, Vam­sad­hara, Sako­ta and Nagaval­li, flow four, 7.5 and 13 km respec­tive­ly from the mine’s buffer zone, as do peren­ni­al streams. The larg­er rivers pro­vide drink­ing water and irri­ga­tion to hun­dreds of thou­sands in Kala­han­di, Raya­ga­da and the neigh­bour­ing state of Andhra Pradesh. Watch­dog groups point out that exca­va­tion will destroy the hills’ water recharg­ing capac­i­ty because the porous­ness of the baux­ite lay­er increas­es water reten­tion. This will even­tu­al­ly kill the rivers, make the habi­tat dri­er and affect agri­cul­ture, wild veg­e­ta­tion and pas­ture, they add.

Pavan Kaushik, head of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions for Vedan­ta group, coun­tered this in ear­li­er let­ter to jour­nal­ists. “Baux­ite extrac­tion… removes a hard rocky lay­er called lat­erite which will allow rain water to per­co­late deep… increas­ing afforesta­tion post-min­ing.”

Flash floods, which are com­mon here, will be aggra­vat­ed by hill­top defor­esta­tion. A flash flood in Vam­sad­hara can breach the red mud pond, caus­ing dis­as­trous waste­water spills into the riv­er.

Three-quar­ters of the tar­get­ed hill have thick forests. The 300 species of plants in them include 50 species of med­i­c­i­nal plants and trees, six of which are in the Inter­na­tion­al Union for Con­ser­va­tion of Nature Red List of threat­ened species. An ele­phant reserve, the forests are home to tigers, leop­ards, bark­ing deer.

A trib­al woman from Sind­haba­hal said, “The for­est gives leaves, bam­boo, roots, med­i­c­i­nal herbs, fruits, juice from the giant palm trees (to make liquor). These we sell or use for food. Hill slopes, known as ‘don­gar’, are our cul­ti­va­tion fields.”

Local will have noth­ing less than the can­cel­la­tion of Vedanta’s Niyam­giri min­ing lease.

They want the India For­est Rights Act of 2006, which gives for­est-dwelling com­mu­ni­ties rights to land and oth­er resources, imple­ment­ed. They have demand­ed an irri­ga­tion dam from peren­ni­al hill streams, schools in each and one hos­pi­tal for every 10 large vil­lages, assured dai­ly wage work under gov­ern­ment schemes and sup­port prices for for­est prod­ucts.

“The gov­ern­ment is large­ly sat­is­fied with its (Vedan­ta) pol­lu­tion con­trol mea­sures at this time,” said a senior offi­cial of the Oris­sa gov­ern­ment, Vedanta’s stake-hold­ing part­ner, who spoke to IPS on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty because “Vedan­ta has become a polit­i­cal issue”.

But “Vedanta’s cor­po­rate social respon­si­bil­i­ty how­ev­er needs to shape up,” he under­scored.

In an email reply to IPS, Mukesh Kumar, Vedanta’s chief oper­at­ing offi­cer at Lan­ji­garh, says that his com­pa­ny believes in sus­tain­able devel­op­ment. “It is pro­vid­ing liveli­hood to trib­al peo­ple through veg­etable cul­ti­va­tion, pis­ci­cul­ture, poul­try and goatery. Nutri­tion to chil­dren, health check-ups and malar­ia con­trol are oth­er pro­grammes. Direct and indi­rect employ­ment has been giv­en to 20,000 peo­ple while 13 vil­lages now have elec­tric­i­ty,” he added.

Mean­time, the Lon­don-list­ed min­ing major Vedan­ta Resources Plc has been see­ing inter­na­tion­al investors sell their stakes in it due to eth­i­cal con­cerns over the Oris­sa project. Britain’s Joseph Rown­tree Char­i­ta­ble Trust is the lat­est to leave, after the Church of Eng­land, the Nor­we­gian gov­ern­ment and Mar­tin Cur­rie Invest­ment Man­age­ment.

Said woman trib­al leader Kulun­ji Sikho­la: “It is our land; we will sit — the Don­gria peo­ple — and decide direct­ly”.