LANDLOCK Paralysing Dispute over Minerals on Adivasi Land in India LANDLOCK Paralysing Dispute over Minerals on Adivasi Land in India PATRIK OSKARSSON ASIA-PACIFIC ENVIRONMENT MONOGRAPH 14 Published by ANU Press The Australian National University Acton ACT 2601, Australia Email: [email protected] Available to download for free at press.anu.edu.au A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia ISBN (print): 9781760462505 ISBN (online): 9781760462512 WorldCat (print): 1052587980 WorldCat (online): 1052587899 DOI: 10.22459/10.22459/L.09.2018 This title is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). The full licence terms are available at creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode Cover design and layout by ANU Press Cover photograph: ‘Elected representatives taking part in a dharna conducted by CPI (M) in Visakhapatnam on June 25, 2007 by projecting bauxite mining in the scheduled areas as a demon which would eat tribals’, by K.R. Deepak. This edition © 2018 ANU Press Contents Tables ............................................................... vii Figures ............................................................. ix Abbreviations ........................................................ xi Acknowledgments .................................................. xiii 1. Mining Conflicts in Liberalising India ............................. 1 2. Adivasi Land Rights and Dispossession ......................... 29 3. The Formation of a Public–Private Alliance ...................... 51 4. Livelihoods at the Two Sites .................................... 73 5. Government Mediation or Facilitation? ......................... 109 6. Oppositional Noise from the Fringes ........................... 133 7. Habermas’s Nightmare? ...................................... 167 8. Conclusion ................................................... 187 References ........................................................ 201 Tables Table 3.1 Alumina refineries in central India ...................52 Table 4.1 Bauxite deposits of Andhra Pradesh ..................77 Table 4.2 Summary result of village survey in Ananthagiri Mandal ...88 Table 4.3 Summary of village survey results in S. Kota Mandal .....91 Table 4.4 Agricultural land in the villages of the proposed alumina refinery in S. Kota ...................................91 Table 4.5 Proposed land use for the alumina refinery .............97 Table 4.6 Projected land loss in a S. Kota village ................102 Table 6.1 Main organisations in opposition to bauxite mining .....138 Table 6.2 Court cases against bauxite projects in Andhra Pradesh ...158 vii Figures Figure 1.1 Map of northern Andhra Pradesh with proposed bauxite mining and refining locations .....................4 Figure 2.1 Adivasi village with bauxite hill in Araku Mandal .......38 Figure 3.1 Construction of AnRak Aluminium’s alumina refinery in Visakhapatnam District .............................56 Figure 3.2 APMDC’s office in a business centre in central Hyderabad. 61 Figure 4.1 The stages of the aluminium industry and potential pollution ..........................................77 Figure 4.2 Tribal village with coffee growing in the shade of trees on the Raktakonda hill slope ...........................85 Figure 4.3 Paddy fields irrigated by canals .....................86 Figure 4.4 Layered resources on and around a bauxite hill .........87 Figure 4.5 Pumps ensure that enough water is available to grow sugar cane in S. Kota .................................93 Figure 4.6 A deserted panchayat office close to the proposed refinery site .......................................101 Figure 4.7 Typology of land compensation for the JSW refinery in S. Kota. 103 Figure 5.1 The Tatipudi reservoir next to the proposed JSW alumina refinery. .125 Figure 6.1 Anti-bauxite mining poster produced by the CPM .....142 ix Landlock Figure 6.2 Anti-bauxite mining poster produced by the TDP ......143 Figure 6.3 Map of bauxite mining and rivers in coastal Andhra Pradesh ....................................145 Figure 6.4 Stream coming from Galikonda hill in Visakhapatnam District ..........................................146 Figure 6.5 Public meeting on the S. Kota refinery proposal held in Vizianagaram. .153 x Abbreviations APMDC Andhra Pradesh Mineral Development Corporation Balco Bharat Aluminium Corporation CPI Communist Party of India CPIND Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) New Democracy CPM Communist Party of India (Marxist) EIA environmental impact assessment GVMC Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation HRF Human Rights Forum IBM Indian Bureau of Mines IT information technology JSW Jindal South West JSWHL JSW Holding Ltd MLA member of (state) legislative assembly mm&P mines, minerals & People MoEF Ministry of Environment and Forests MoU memorandum of understanding MP Member of (national) Parliament Nalco National Aluminium Corporation NEAA National Environmental Appellate Authority NGO non-governmental organisation PCB Pollution Control Board xi Landlock PESA Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas Act 1996 RTI Right to Information TDP Telugu Desam Party xii Acknowledgments This book was made possible through institutional support from the Azim Premji University, Bangalore, which allowed the author to spend three months on a book-writing sabbatical in 2012 at The Australian National University. In the latter stages of book production, support from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences contributed to the cost of copyediting. Thanks also to Patrick Wennström of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences for making the map reproduced as Figure 1.1. Parts of the argument presented in Chapters 4, 5 and 6 have previously been published as articles in South Asia (Oskarsson 2013a), Development Studies Research (Oskarsson and Nielsen 2014), and Extractive Industries and Society (Oskarsson 2015), but have been revised and updated for the purpose of the present volume. The author would also like to acknowledge the valuable comments of two anonymous peer reviewers, and the editorial work of Colin Filer and Philippa Mulberry, which has greatly improved the quality of the text. All remaining errors rest with the author. xiii 1. Mining Conflicts in Liberalising India In the late 1980s, the small social advocacy organisation Samatha (‘Equality’) started working with impoverished Adivasi communities1 facing land alienation in the Eastern Ghats hill range of northeastern Andhra Pradesh. Members of the organisation had earlier experienced first-hand how outsiders, whether for private gain or through government projects, were acquiring land that was intended to be reserved for Adivasis, thus pushing people into deep poverty. Realising the lack of understanding of the formal procedures of the government on the part of the Adivasis, Samatha started helping people to secure the land documents they needed in order to make use of existing legal protection. In the early 1990s, villagers approached Samatha when a subsidiary of the Birla Group, one of India’s biggest industrial conglomerates, wanted to mine calcite in their village. As the mining plans were believed to violate the Andhra Pradesh Scheduled Areas Land Transfer Regulation 1959, which bans the sale or transfer of land from a tribal to a non-tribal person, what came to be known as ‘the Samatha case’ was taken to court in 1993 and later appealed to the Supreme Court in Delhi (Vagholikar and Moghe 2003; Krishnakumar 2004). 1 The term ‘Adivasi’ is widely used as an alternative to the official designation of ‘Scheduled Tribes’ (or ‘tribals’) as groups of people with special constitutional benefits who mainly live in central India’s forested hill region. 1 Landlock A final verdict in the Samatha case was reached by the Supreme Court in 1997. Relying on a combination of the Indian Constitution’s Fifth Schedule, set up to protect and support Adivasis across the country, and Andhra Pradesh state land transfer legislation,2 the court reached the conclusion that no land, including government (or ‘revenue’) land, private land or forest land, could be leased out to non-tribals or to private companies for mining or industrial operations. The judgment stated that ‘[i]f the government was allowed to transfer or dispose of its own land in favour of non-tribals, it would completely destroy the legal and constitutional fabric made to protect the Scheduled Tribes’ (India 1997). The court ordered an immediate closure of all existing private mines in Andhra Pradesh, and suggested a process for other states with Scheduled Areas3 to review their laws in accordance with the judgment. The Samatha judgment has been widely acclaimed for reaffirming the constitutional right to land for Adivasis. But where the similar Mabo judgment in Australia in 1993 successfully opened up a space for Aborigines to become participants in all discussions over what should happen on their traditional land, and resulted in strengthened overall environmental protection (O’Faircheallaigh 2006), the efforts of the Indian authorities have mainly been directed to limiting the impact of the Samatha judgment by confining its application to Andhra Pradesh. As the Fifth Schedule of the Indian Constitution applies to some of the country’s main (existing and potential) mining areas across nine states in central eastern India, the judgment at the time created a lot of unease among policymakers across the country. If it was implemented