Vedanta chased away by threatened Villagers in Orissa

14th Novem­ber 2008

Last week, a group of more than 500 vil­lagers set up road­blocks in Orissa’s Puri dis­trict to protest the con­struc­tion of “Dev San­skrati Vish­wavidyalaya” (Divine Cul­ture Uni­ver­si­ty) a project fund­ed by the rather-unen­light­ened com­pa­ny we know as Vedan­ta Resources.

The vil­lagers are angry that the insti­tu­tion, which will apparently”>http://intercontinentalcry.org/vedanta-chased-away-by-threatened-villagers/’);”>apparently estab­lish “a Cul­tur­al Renais­sance” in India, is sit­u­at­ed on agri­cul­tur­al land that the Oris­sa gov­ern­ment ‘acquired’ with­out the peo­ples con­sent. The gov­ern­ment then donat­ed the land to Vedan­ta for free (Wikipedia).

The com­pa­ny defends the gov­ern­ments actions by claim­ing the land isn’t fer­tile and of no real use to the vil­lagers. It’s a thor­ough­ly absurd claim, see­ing as how the vil­lagers are active in grow­ing rice, man­go, cashew, papaya, betel, pump­kin, and coconut, etc. through­out the region.

Sim­i­lar­ly, Vedan­ta claims that the land is only sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed and that only a hun­dred or so peo­ple will be dis­placed for the project. Activists say it’s more like 1,000 — on top of anoth­er 20,000 to 50,000 who will be indi­rect­ly effect­ed.

What­ev­er the actu­al num­ber is, no vil­lager has giv­en their con­sent to be dis­placed. That was made clear dur­ing last week’s protest, which took place at the ground-break­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the insti­tu­tion. The pro­test­ers rushed it, some of them car­ry­ing lath­is, and forced the offi­cials to with­draw by police escort. There were no injuries report­ed.

Fol­low­ing the protest a com­pa­ny offi­cial stat­ed that, “in view of the vio­lent sit­u­a­tion… we have stopped the work of the uni­ver­si­ty and intend to resume the con­struc­tion work soon.”

It would seem the offi­cial also tried to demean the vil­lagers’ strug­gle, by claim­ing it’s lit­tle more than a few peo­ple “cre­at­ing dis­tur­bances.”

An insult to say the least, the official’s state­ment is also a far stretch from what the pro­test­ers were told. Accord­ing to Uma­ballav Rath, leader of the Vedan­ta Vish­wavidyalaya Virod­hi Sami­ti, the orga­ni­za­tion head­ing the move­ment against the project, “offi­cials of the Vedan­ta Group have assured us in the pres­ence of the dis­trict admin­is­tra­tion that they are not going to start work on the project with­out our con­sent.”

In light of recent his­to­ry — name­ly, the strug­gle of the Don­gria Kondh, who are fac­ing sim­i­lar dis­place­ment (as well as the destruc­tion of their cul­ture) at the hands of Vedan­ta — the for­mer state­ment is prob­a­bly the most accu­rate.

The com­pa­ny doesn’t seem to care one way anoth­er how must destruc­tion it caus­es. Just as long as it main­tains the good face of enlight­en­ment for its share­hold­ers.

For­tu­nate­ly, the villagers—and of course the Don­gria Kondh—are not so will­ing to play make believe.

pho­to: http://nazaronline.net