Você está na página 1de 12

Mining and Movements - Causes of tribal militancy

13.4.2010

by Felix Padel, based on M.N. Roy Memorial Lecture, at the Society of Radical
Humanists, Kolkata 27.3.2010

Causes of War
Social Anthropology has great potential for giving a holistic understanding of the
momentous processes unfolding in tribal areas: a resource too little drawn on. M.N.
Roy was one of India's most influential socialists. Socialism is hardly fashionable at
present, but social anthropology offers a view of situations that is intrinsically social,
and as such can be seen as socialist in the true sense of the word, in contrast to the
determinist models that tend to dominate policy decisions, derived from economics,
engineering, or politcal and legal theory, that function without a proper understanding
of social systems. Anthropologists rarely have much impact on policy however, and
tend to accept a very marginal role. E.g. World Bank anthropologists are removed
from decision-making departments, and their words tend to function as a 'Christmas-
tree decoration' of politically correct phrases to embellish projects that often cause
social and and environmental catastrophe (Mosse 2009, Padel & Das 2010).
This paper emerges out of seven years' work with Samarendra Das about the
aluminium industry and its impacts in Orissa/East India, that has revealed an immense
amount about the mining industry and its centrality to events in India's 'tribal' or Fifth
Schedule states, as well as to issues about climate change, the military industrial
complex, and the world economy as a whole, and its links with war.
The Maoist insurgency in tribal areas, and the war against the Maoists, often
referred to as 'Operation Green Hunt', follows certain patterns of the worldwide 'War
on Terror', despite the obvious difference that the war against Maoists/Naxalites
targets a 'communist' enemy, reminiscent of the cold war era, while the wider 'War on
Terror' is mostly against Islamist militants. The Turkish situation, where the war
against the PKK (fighting for basic self-determination by the Kurdish population) is
often made to fit the mould of a war against terrorists, offers a closer parallel to the
situation in central India – a parallel far too little known in India.
Central India's Maoist/Naxalite insurgency adds complexity to a situation
where a large number of essentially non-violent local movements of resistance to
enforced displacement, to make way for new mining and metal-factory projects.
These movements are of global significance for people's basic rights to life and
livelihood, and for their resistance to capitalist growth-oriented 'development'
projects. Often these movements have been falsely branded as Maoist.
When certain movements have received public support from the Maoists, this
has often been a 'kiss of death' to genuine, indigenous movements, by making a
response of massive attack on communities by security forces appear legitimate.
So it is necessary to spell out that most local movements are not in any way
Maoist-instigated: for example, the movements in Orissa to save Niyamgiri and the
Puri area from Vedanta's aluminium and university plans, and the movement against
giant new steel plants by Posco, Tata and others all arise locally, in solidarity. The
Kalinganagar movement by the Bisthapan Birodhi Jan Manch (People's Platform
Against Displacement) against a new Tata steel plant, is currently (since 27.3.2010)
under attack by hundreds of police in collusion with 'goondas' determined to mow
down opposition to Tata.1
Similarly an Obey the Law movement in Birbhum district of West Bengal,
organised by local Santal Adivasis along with Hindu and Muslim non-tribals, is trying
to stop several hundred illegal stone quarries that are making their life hell. The mine
owners, along with a section of the local administration and media have branded the
movement 'Maoist', when there is no Maoist presence at all.2
By contrast, certain other movements are essentially local, and non-Maoist,
even though Maoists have expressed support, resulting in a spiralling escalation of
security force attacks on tribal villages. This applies to the Committee Against Police
Atrocities organised by Santals in West Midnapore & neighbouring districts of West
Bengal, and the Chasi Mulia Adivasi Sangho in the Narayanpatna area of Koraput
district Orissa, where tribal villages are under attack by security forces, especially
since the Narayanpatna police station firing on 20 November 2009 that killed two
Adivasi leaders (Iqbal 24.12.09).
The causes of tribal militancy – i.e. the reason that in certain areas, such as
South Chhattisgarh, many tribal people have joined the Maoists - can be given as
follows:
1. The vast extent of exploitation which tribal communities face: a system of
endemic exploitation that works at many levels and has been extensively
documented, e.g. in Orissa by Kishen Pattnayak during his 1960s and 1980s
documentation of 'starvation deaths' and by Gopinath Mohanty, P. Sainath,
and others.3 This exploitation is compounded by the invasion of mining
companies into tribal areas, and frequent suppression of local people's non-
violent movements, standing up for the most basic of rights.
2. The increasing scale of dispossession/displacement. A long-term process of
displacement of Adivasis through moneylending and extensive purchases of
tribal land that contravene the Fifth Schedule constitutional guarantees, is
accelerating through numerous industrial projects that raise exponentially the
number of tribal people being dispossessed. An estimated 60 million village
people have been displaced by industries and dams since 1950, about half of
these Adivasis and a quarter Dalits, 3 million in Orissa alone.4 This
displacement process has also been vastly accelerated through war and conflict
– especially the 'Salwa Judum' war against Naxalites/Maoists in Dantewara
district in south Chhattisgarh, where at least 200,000 tribal people have been
driven out of their homes since 2005; and the 'ethnic cleansing of Christians'
that has displaced an estimated 50,000 people from Kandhamahal district of
Orissa in 2007-8.
3. Atrocities committed with impunity by security forces/Salwa Judum,
hiding behind the AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Powers Act), the special
Chhattisgarh Security Act, etc. Javed Iqbal's and many other articles (e.g.
Iqbal 15.11.09, 5.3.10) and several human rights reports have made clear a
definite pattern of atrocities committed by SJ and security forces during
attacks on tribal villages in south Chhattisgarh, involving killings, rape, torture
and burning of houses on a horrific scale. It is clear (e.g. from Arundhati Roy
29.3.10 documenting numerous frank talks with Adivasi Maoists in south
Chhattisgarh) that these attacks are a motivating force for thousands of
Adivasis who join the Maoists. In other words, a main cause for militancy is
quite simply injustice – the impossibility of redress for these outrages
through the courts. Atrocities are fuelled by a widespread disrespect for
tribal culture and norms. E.g.Santal elders at the start of the West Midnapore
disturbances (end of 2008) demanded that senior policemen should make a
proper apology for widespread outrages, in the local tribal idiom. When such
an apology was not forthcoming, the militancy spread, and the police atrocities
increased.
4. Polarization into two sides who believe in war. Everywhere, attacks on
tribal communities are starting to resemble an attack on tribal society itself (as
B.D. Sharma warned in 1990, when he was Commissioner for Scheduled
Castes and Tribes) - in effect, 'Operation Tribal Hunt' (Iqbal 15.11.09). The
war against Maoists and/or tribal people has the character of a war between
rich and poor, and specifically a war of state-facilitated mining companies
against tribal people in order to get hold of their land and resources. But where
the Maoist leadership exactly mirrors the mainstream military is in its belief in
war, and in the necessity of mass-scale sacrifice of human life. Maoist attacks
that kill police tend to instigate a huge retaliation of security force attacks on
tribal villages. Behind these attacks is the military-industrial complex, and its
thirst for minerals, and a mentality in which displacement of tribal people to
make way for industry seems a matter of course, and the model for dealing
with a Maoist threat is offered by the Sri Lankan army's holocaust-massacres
against Tamil Tiger rebels, or the US/UK-led war against Taliban/Al Qaeda in
Afghanistan.
5. Taking these factors together, Operation Green Hunt – the war against the
Maoists – is itself the main cause of tribal militancy – a similar situation to
the worldwide war on terror, where attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan have
killed, maimed and humiliated so many thousands of people, that a 'terrorist'
cause with very limited appeal has grown exponentially, as in the Greek myth
of the Hydra – every 'arm' the hero cuts off the Hydra is replaced by 1,000
new arms. 'Terrorism' is essentially a creation of the 'War on Terror' – not least
because the use of terror by security forces far outweighs the use of terror by
'terrorists'. This applies very clearly to the situation in tribal areas, where both
sides use terror (Iqbal 5.3.2010), but the main terror unleashed in tribal
villages is by security forces, not by Maoists. In other words, Terror tactics
by the security forces are a main cause of the spread of tribal militancy,
alongside repression of genuine, non-violent movements against enforced
displacement.

Invasion of Mining Projects: Cost-Benefit Analysis


Underlying local causes is the invasion of mining companies, some Indian, some
foreign, but most driven by, or at least supported by, funding from foreign financial
institutions. London is a prime centre of the mining industry, with the London Metal
Exchange fixing the price of main non-ferrous metals through trading five days a
week, the city's 'Big Four' accountancy firms providing 'legitimacy' to mining
companies, and DFID-sponsored privatisation and deregulation schemes carried out in
key mineral-rich states – a reform programme attuned to WB/IMF-imposed neoliberal
policies. Vedanta's bid for Niyamgiri and other areas followed its registration on the
London Stock Exchange in December 2003. Essar is currently trying to register in
London. Sir Ratan Tata was clearly made a Knight Commander of the British Empire
(2009) for services to British business, and Tata's buy-up of Corus (British Steel, Jan
2007), Jaguar and Landrover (March 2008) established London as a key base for the
Tata group, and, presumably, its investors.
The complex of beliefs and values driving the present spree of new
mining/industrial projects in India's tribal areas needs elucidating, along with a proper
assessment of projects' social and environmental impacts.
In other words, every project should be based on a Cost Benefit Analysis
whose figures and terms of reference should be brought into the public domain, so
that people can understand clearly what is at stake on both sides. Where there is no
transparency, companies' enforced takeover of tribal property wears an illegitimate
character - e.g. regarding Tata and Essar MoUs (Memoranda of Understanding)
signed with the Chhattisgarh government in June 2005 – just when Salwa Judum was
formed. Public Hearings for both projects have been a shameful scam, in a pattern
repeated in hundreds of instances throughout the country.5
In brief, 'Benefits' of mining and metals projects pushed by Tata, Posco,
Vedanta, Essar, Hindalco, Mittal, Jindal and others include: huge sums of foreign
investment, the creation of numerous jobs, and the 'development' of new roads and
construction projects, including new ports, as well as local CSR projects (Corporate
Social Responsibility) of local/peripheral development, to be paid for out of company
profits. Against this is the mass-displacement of small-scale skilled cultivators who
are classed as 'unskilled labour' and invariably lose to incomers in the job market, as
shown by a long history of demonstrations by local people on the jobs issue, in the
Lanjigarh, Kashipur and perhaps every industrialising area. Foreign Direct Investment
essentially buys up rights to India's non-renewable resources (land, mountains,
minerals), while the primary intention of new ports appears to be the mass-scale
export of these minerals.
The real costs of these projects need assessing in terms of huge subsidies
offered to the industries for electricity, land, water, transport etc - costs, which are
essentially borne by the local people and state, through further loans aimed at
financing the infrastructure for the mining industry – in a situation where Orissa is
already India's most highly indebted state.
Also in terms of impacts on the environment in a situation where e.g.
producing one tonne of steel consumes an estimated 44 tonnes of water, and
producing one tonne of aluminium consumes an estimated 1,378 tonnes of water.6
These figures underlie recent mass demonstrations by west Orissa farmers against the
new steel plants and aluminium smelters taking water from Hirakud dam at farmers'
expense. Mines and metal factories damage the reserves and circulation of water at
many levels, in a context where ground water is going down almost everywhere, and
availability of fresh water is rapidly assuming crisis proportions.
The mining/metal's industry's 'externality costs' are prohibitive – e.g.
producing one tonne of aluminium emits between 6 and 20 tonnes of CO2, each tonne
of which is costed at about $85.7 Attempts have been made to calculate some of these
costs in monetary (chrematist) terms.
But overall costs in terms of damage to the environment are impossible to
quantify or put a price on. Economists and engineers are not taught to understand – let
alone take responsibility for – the impacts of their projects on the environment.
'Economics' and 'Ecology' have the same root – Greek 'oikos', meaning 'house',
indicating the laws (nomos) or logic (logos) of correct 'housekeeping'. Yet ecology is
not even part of economists' and engineers' training. In fact, science of nature is split
up between discrete branches - geology, soil science, botany, hydrology, meteorology
etc – so even here the holistic understanding of ecology necessary for an appraisal of
industrial impacts is lacking.
This lack is all too evident in assessments of the impacts of big dams: what
does it mean when rivers' flow over the land is drastically curtailed? Obviously, fish
populations and many other life forms die.... What are the effects when industrial
waste is released into rivers, as has been well documented from Nalco's Angul
smelter, and already, within months of their starting up, from Vedanta's Lanjigarh
refinery and Burkhamunda smelter? Obviously, more fish and other life forms die,
and human communities that have always depended on these rivers for bathing,
drinking and cultivation suffer immensly..... But are the rivers themselves dying? The
destructive effects of big dams, documented at length by the World Commission on
Dams, have not been officially recognised in India. The country is trying to maximize
its hydro-potental by building a huge number of new mega-dams, including 150 in
Arunachal Pradesh alone, despite massive evidence of big dams' destructive effects on
many levels.8
This lack is also evident in the inadequacy of studies of the impact of mining
on the water regime of mountains. The drying of thousands of streams in iron-ore
mined mountains in north Orissa is well known, and the drying of perennial streams
around Panchpat Mali, the mountain in Koraput that forms Orissa's major bauxite
mine, is attested by local Adivasis. But in its report on likely impacts of Vedanta's
OMC-Sterlite mine planned on Niyam Dongar, the Central Mining Planning and
Design Institute made the absurd argument that micro-cracks forming on the side of
the mountain during mining will ‘facilitate run-off’ and help ‘recharge ground
water’.9 When water runs straight off a mountain during the monsoon, this means that
streams will run dry in the hot season, and indicates that the mountain as a reservoir
and source of perennial streams is damaged beyond repair.
Bauxite deposits just below the summits of south Orissa's biggest mountains
hold monsoon water in suspension, releasing it slowly throughout the year in
perennial streams. When the bauxite is mined, this water runs straight off, and streams
dry up. But bauxite is studied almost entirely from the point of view of extracting and
processing it by the mining industry – not its links with hydrology etc.
Similarly with the loss of forest. A 'Green Accounting Project', for which
Deutsche Bank was a main funder (Gundimeda et al 2005) calculates the 'Net Present
Value' of forests, but this economic value placed on forests takes little or no account
of forests' biodiversity, cultural value and other features. The Judgement in the case
on Niyamgiri at the Supreme Court (8.8.2008) simply asked the Special Purpose
Vehicle (i.e Vedanta's subsidiary Sterlite with the Orissa Mining Corporation) to pay
'NPV' replacement costs. Interestingly, Deutsche Bank is a key investor in Vedanta.
So in effect the foreign banks indirectly buying up rights to key resources are also
funding 'green' studies that facilitate this corporate takeover.10
In all these ways, these mining projects have intensely destructive all-round
effects on the environment. What is happening should properly be termed Ecocide,
defined as
'the extensive destruction, damage to and loss of ecosystem(s) of a given
territory, whether by human agency or by other causes, to such an extent that
peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory has been severely
diminished.' (Higgins 2010)
This destruction needs to be seen as damaging the 'sacred trust' of Governments to
promote the well-being of inhabitants of non-self-governing territories, as defined by
the 1945 UN charter (Chapter XI Article 73). Most lawyers and legislators have little
knowledge of ecology:
'at the moment the governance systems of most countries and of the
international 'community' actually facilitate and legitimise the exploitation
and destruction of Earth by humans.' (Cullinan 2002: 30)
Ecocide being perpetrated by mining projects under a rationale of economic growth
means a destruction of the fabric of life, and is a prime cause of unrest throughout
Central India.
Impacts on human populations displaced or invaded by the industry are
frequently catastrophic, and should properly be termed as culturicide or cultural
genocide.11 Tribal communities in particular lose everything they traditionally value
when displaced: their social structure exists in relation to their land, environment, and
identity as skilled cultivators. From being in control of their own environment and
social relations, they find themselves swamped by outsiders, at the bottom of a cruel
and corrupt corporate hierarchy. From being largely self-sufficient in terms of
producing food on their own land by their own labour, they are reduced to an
unskilled industrial labour force. Women and children especially experience a drastic
drop in their standard of living, from a place of considerable independence in charge
of growing and selling. Material culture is changed beyond recognition – from houses
people make themselves in a tribal idiom out of natural materials, people are placed in
concrete shells. Traditional artefacts – often collected into a 'tribal museum' during the
displacement process – lose their meaning and become relics of the past. Tribal
people's traditional forms of knowledge are undermined and negated (Padel 1998).

Reality Gap between what is meant to happen and what really


happens
Even World Bank studies conclude that the vast majority of tribal communities
displaced by dams and industry in India, as worldwide, experience a drastic fall in
their standard of living. For almost every World-Bank funded project, “the first
rule...that all parties to the project should be better off” has been broken, and
“projects meant to reduce poverty are the ones adding to the numbers of the poor.”
(Mathur ed. 2006 pp.22 and 2) In 'packages' for the Resettlement and Rehabilitation
(R & R) of people displaced by dams and factories there is a reality gap (Padel and
Das December 2008): no correlation between theory and practice – between what is
supposed to happen and facts on the ground.
This reality gap is evident at many levels. Models of economic growth
reducing poverty in schemes funded by World Bank loans and 'foreign aid' from the
DFID (Department for International Development of the UK Government) are
basically a con (Mosse 2005, 2007), showing a fundamental disjunction between
theory and practice. Projects bringing in foreign investment distort the economy and
induce unrepayable debt – Enron was a noteworthy early example in India (S.Kumar
2001). This in a context where the 'black economy' of bribes and underhand payments
is little studied, and virtually absent from conventional economic models, yet has a
massive effect in motivating deals for projects (Arun Kumar 1999/2002).
. The split between economics and ecology is a sign of a fundamental
imbalance in the western-imported model of development being imposed, based on
models of growth and extraction of resources that are insanely short-term.
'Sustainable Development' is supposed to be based on practices that do not jeopardise
future generations, but there are supposed to be three criteria: ecology, society and
economics, and by putting economics instead of ecology first, the term has become
meaningless and is often used of projects that can make an economic profit for a few
years. What about the next thousand years? The very tribal societies threatened with
displacement by mining projects are based on long-term sustainability. How has an
insane system that sacrifices these people and this principle of long-term
sustainability managed to appear so normal?

The Roots and Funding of Industrialisation


Belief in 'development', defined around material constructs and economic growth, is
basically a missionary concept. The East India Company had a complex relationship
with Christian missionaries, basically forbidding and then encouraging them to
'civilise the natives' through schools and hospitals, but the administrative role – as in
other colonial systems – basically internalised the missionary impulse, transforming
the missionary idea that there is only one 'God' or 'truth' or path to salvation, into the
idea that social evolution follows a single line of development. This 'social
evolutionism' dates back to Herbert Spencer's application of Darwin's theory of
evolution of species to society: a theory that society evolves in set stages. This theory
has been extremely influential, not least on Marxist theory. But the idea that societies
evolve from 'primitive communism' through feudalism to capitalism (and on to
'advanced communism' or not, as the case may be) ignores many levels. If the
multitude of natural species have all evolved on thousands of individual paths, in
relation to each other, why should human societies evolve along a single path? If this
is not true, then how has the World Bank (not to mention Marxist and many other
regimes) assumed a kind of 'divine right' to impose their version of this theory onto
'developing countries'? Even the classification of countries into 'developed' and
'developing' begs this question.
To put this another way, the system of beliefs and values driving the
industrialisation being imposed in India's tribal areas has foreign roots – basically, the
history of industrialisation from Europe and the Robber Barons in the USA, through
Stalin's USSR and Mao's China, to World Bank/IMF 'moneylender colonialism',
enmeshing the world's 'developing countries' in unrepayable debt to pay for a process
of industrialisation that has caused one environmental and social catastrophe after
another.12
In the primitive early days of social anthropology, anthropologists invariably
saw tribal societies as 'primitive', and colonial anthropology defined tribal peoples as
'primitive' in every domain – a perception that persists in India, on the Left as well as
Right.13 This idea is at the root of imposing 'development' on Adivasis and
displacing them from their land.
Modern anthropologists recognise that tribal societies are as highly developed
as mainstream societies – but in different ways. In terms of their knowledge of the
environment, skills of living off it without damaging it, sophistication of social
relations around a principle of sharing, subtlety of rearing children and so on, they are
often far in advance of mainstream society.14 Hence the enormity of what is
destroyed when a tribal community's land is invaded or taken away away by a mining
company: cultural genocide.
But mining/metals projects are mostly funded from abroad, and foreign cities
play an important role in their highly dispersed social structure. Several studies have
been made of the foreign and Indian banks that have invested in Vedanta and financed
their projects in Orissa and Chhattisgarh, and each of the world's 'Big Four'
accountancy firms has given 'Assurance Statements' validating the annual reports of
Vedanta Resources plc.15 Traders at the London Metals Exchange, whose deals in
futures contracts fix the price of aluminium five days a week, gain huge salaries.
Prime investors in mining projects and Indian port construction projects include
secretive hedge funds and private equity funds, while overall finance to mining
projects has increased enormously since 2000, along with risk insurance and export
credit guarantees.16
Orissa is one of India's most highly indebted state precisely because it is one
of the richest in minerals. The loans paid for a long line of dam, coal and other
infrastrusture-for-mining projects, and built up unrepayable debts, making the state
dependent on further loans from the World Bank and other entities, and giving
leverage that allowed the WB and DFID to force through India's first electricity
privatisation programme and other neoliberal reforms. This brings in the history of
'disaster capitalism' and World Bank complicity in aluminium projects around the
world.17 When one comprehends the extent and complexity of exploitation in the
mining-metals industry and trade, it is clear why the world's, or India's, mineral-
richest areas are the poorest. Far from the promised prosperity, wealth in minerals
almost invariably guarantees a region's remorseless impoverishment: the resource
curse.18

Motives for War and Peace


Too often, the resource curse spirals into the horror of resource wars, and in many
ways, the war against the Maoists is a classic resource war: the invasion and takeover
of tribal lands by mining companies, compounding already excessive exploitation.
Non-violent protest is suppressed, and Maoists organize the dispossessed into a
desperate, yet highly organised and motivated resistance.
The war in South Dantewara shows a definite pattern of 'structural violence'.
On one side, Maoist attacks. The one on 6th April 2010, in which Maoists killed 76
CRPF jawans, is the culmination of a long line of well-planned ambushes.
On the other side, no-one disputes the figures of 644 tribal villages burnt by
the Salwa Judum militia in Dantewara district, and at least 200,000 tribal refugees. All
agree that MoUs were signed with Essar and Tata for a steel plants at Dhurli and
Lohandiguda in mid-2005, just when Salwa Judum was formed and started its attacks
on tribal villages, herding villagers into refugee camps, where youths were made to
join Salwa Judum. The terms of these deals have not been made public however.19
Human rights reports and courageous journalism have highlighted a definite
pattern of attacks on tribal villages, in which most of the village flees, and women, old
and young who don't get away are often raped, killed, tortured or taken away (Iqbal
5.3.2010). The voices of young Maoists brought out in Roy's article (March 2010)
need to be heard, and show tribal Maoists as highly likeable human beings, in contrast
to the 'mindless terrorist' image propagated in most of the media, that makes it easy
for the armed forces to dehumainize Maoists and kill them indiscriminately. These
young women and men joined up after witnessing close friends and family raped and
killed. After such loss and horror, if there is no chance of bringing the perpetrators to
account, Maoists' offer of comradeship and guns is bound to be very tempting.
Yet Maoist ideology and leadership promotes war. War has an attraction, as
peace does not. Though this is basically a war over resources between rich and poor,
the ideology of both sides is similar in terms of a belief in war that leaves no space for
neutrality, truth and peace. The police, like Maoist fighters, are pawns in a fight over
ideology and land.
The difference is, armed policemen have signed up for a job that involves a
high risk of killing and/or being killed. This is not true of the tribal villages they
terrorize. Even if villagers often support the Maoists, this follows from their
experience of invasion and atrocity, in which they lose everything - land, food
security, families, culture.... Only a tiny number of the atrocities against Adivasis are
reported in the press, while most killings by Maoists get high publicity.
So to bring peace, one essential step is repeal of the Armed Forces Special
Powers Act (AFSPA) - often called for, especially from the Northeast and Kashmir.
The impunity to prosecution of security men who commit atrocities swells support for
the Maoists.
The underlying reason that anyone inflicts pain and terror is that they are
terrorised: a terrorist is someone who has been terrorised, and rather than deal with
that, he or she turns the feeling outward and inflicts it on other people – the basic
rationale of the projections and counter-projections that cause and fuel war.
Police also live in terror. Seeing bodies of comrades, knowing an IED can
explode under their vehicle any time, what is easier than to demonize the Maoists?
And in a situation where women are also Maoists, every tribal woman becomes a
potential Maoist and a 'justified' victim for rape and worse. For traumatized tribal
survivors of attacks, the solidarity and comradeship offered by Maoists fulfils a desire
for revenge for a long history of atrocities carried out with impunity..
The history of police intimidation includes behaviour at a succession of 'Public
Hearings' for mining/factory projects that has been well documented – a farce of
'manufacturing consent' repeated in numerous other areas. Roy's article shows that
many tribal children are motivated to carry guns long before the Maoists allow them
to. In this context, a note of reassurance is India's Air Chief Marshal P.V.Naik's
statement that he is not in favour of using the air force to attack Naxalites, and that
this strategy carries a high risk of extensive collateral damage.20
Human rights work is a prerequisite for peace. Tribal culture places a high
value on Justice and Truth. Some kind of Truth and Reconciliation process will have
to take place if the escalation towards war is to be halted. Responsibility lies on both
sides. Where it does not lie is with the tribal communities, and when they know they
can get Justice, Peace will prevail.

Notes
1. E.g. The Hindu, 3 April 2010. 'Tension continues in Kalinganagar,' at
http://www.hindu.com/2010/04/03/stories/2010040351970300.htm, and see
Prasanta Pattanaik's article of 11th April (below).
2. This is spelt out in an unpublished letter to the Times of India, March 2010.
3. Dash 1998, Pattnayak 2004, Mohanty 1945/1987, Sainath 1996.
4. Fernandes 2006, Padel & Das 2008.
5. CSE 2008, Kalshian 2007, Padel & Das 2010 chapter 7.
6. Ritthoff et al 2002, Padel & Das 2010.
7. Padel and Das 2010: 384-5.
8. Fernandes 2006: 109, Padel & Das 2010: 72-77.
9. CMPDI 2006: 18-20, Padel & Das 2010: 165.
10. Padel & Das 2010: 189-90.
11. Fenelon 1998, Padel & Das 2008, 2010.
12. Caufield 1998, Padel & Das 2010, chapters 15, 17.
13. Padel 1995/Jan. 2010, Prasad 2003.
14. Liedloff 1986, Padel 1998, Padel & Das 2010 chapters 3, 21.
15. Gelder 2004, Padel & Das 2010: 222-225 and 453, quoting Sampson 2004 on
the 'Big Four'.
16. Padel & Das 2010: 306-9, Hildyard 2008, Moody 2005, Morrison 2007.
17. Padel & Das 2010 chapter 17 on the WB, Gray 1998, Harvey 2005 and Klein
2007 on the worldwide imposition of neoliberal reforms, and Prayas et al 2003
on the woes of Orissa's electricity privatisation.
18. Ross 1999, CSE 2008.
19. On the Salwa Judum war, see PUDR 2006, CPJC 2007, Padel 2007 & 2008,
Iqbal articles 2009-10 and Postscript to Sundar 2007.
20. http://www.ptinews.com/news/605887_-IAF-use-to-fight-Naxals-must-avoid-
collateral-damage-

References
Caufield, Catherine 1998 [1996]. The World Bank and the Poverty of Nations.
London: Pan.
Central Mine Planning & Design Institute August 2006. Interim Report on the
Hydrogeological Investigations, Lanjigarh Bauxite Mines, submitted to M/s
OMC Ltd, Bhubaneswar. Ranchi: CMDPI (a subsidiary of Coal India Ltd).
Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) 2008. Rich lands, poor people: Is
‘Sustainable’ Mining Possible? Delhi: CSE.
Cernea, Michael 2006. 'Resettlement Management: Denying or confronting risks,' in
Mathur ed. 2006.
Campaign for Peace and Justice in Chhattisgarh (CPJC) August 2007. Salwa Judum:
Civil War in Chhattisgarh. Delhi: www.cpjc.wordpress.com
Cullinan, Cormac 2002. Wild Law: A Manifesto for Earth Justice. Totnes: Green
Books, with the Gaia Foundation, www.thegaiafoundation.org
Dash, Rabi 1998. Judgements on the Poverty and Starvation Deaths in Kalahandi.
Cuttack: M/6 Gramasevak Samabya Prakashan.
Fenelon, James 1998. Culturicide, Resistance and Survival of the Lakota (Sioux
Nation). NY: Garland.
Fernandes, Walter 2006. 'Liberalization and Development-induced Displacement,' in
Social Change vol.36 no.1, pp.109-123.
Fox, C.S. 1932: Bauxite and aluminous laterite. London: Technical Press.
Gelder, Jan Willem van Dec. 2004. The financing of Vedanta Resources: a research
paper prepared for Landelijke India Werkgroep. Castricum, Netherlands:
Profundo.
Ghosh, Soumitra and Subrat Kumar Sahu eds. July-September 2008. Mausam:
Talking Climate In Public Space. Issue vol.1 no.1 (mausam.in@gmail.com).
Gray, John 1998. False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism. London: Granta.
Gundimeda, H.S. Sanyal, R. Sinha & P. Sukhdev 2005. Green Accounting for Indian
States Projects, Monograph 1. The Value of Timber, Carbon, Fuelwood, and
Non-Timber Forest Products in India’s Forests. Delhi: TERI Press for Green
Indian States Trust (GIST). Sponsored by Centurion Bank of Punjab, GIST,
and Deutsche Bank.
Harvey, David 2005. A brief history of Neoliberalism USA: OUP.
Higgins, Polly October 2010. 'Towards a Garden of Eden: Ecocide, Eco-Colonialism
and the Sacredness of All Life,' in P. Burdon ed. Wild Law: A Reader in Earth
Jurisprudence. Adelaide: Wakefield Press.
Hildyard, Nick [2008]. ‘A (Crumbling) Wall of Money: Financial Bricolage,
Derivatives and Power’. UK: The Corner House (available at
http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/pdf/briefing/39wallmoney.pdf).
Iqbal, Javed 15th Nov 2009. 'Operation tribal hunt?' The New Indian Express.
_____ 24th Dec 2009. 'Sate-sponsored lawlessness in Narayanpatna,' TNIE.
_____ 14th Feb .2.2010. 'Between an Expensive rock and the barrel of a gun,' TNIE.
_____ 5th March 2010. 'Waging War (is peace) against the state,' TNIE (articles
available at http//:moonchasing.files.wordpress.com
_____ 12th April 2010. ' “Police killed my brother”, alleges Mukram adivasi,' TNIE.
(all these articles available at http://moonchasing.wordpress.com)
Kalshian, Rakesh ed. 2007. Caterpillar and the Mahua Flower: Tremors in India’s
Mining Fields. Delhi: Panos.
Klein, Naomi 2007. The Shock Doctrine: the Rise of Disaster Capitalism. NY:
Metropolitan.
Kumar, Arun 2002 [1999]. The Black Economy in India. Delhi, London: Penguin.
Kumar, Surinder 2001. ‘The Enron Trap,’ in Alternative Economic Survey 2000-
2001. 2nd Generation Reforms: Delusions of Development. By Alternative
Survey Group. Delhi: Rainbow Publishers, Azadi Bachao Andolan &
Lokayan.
Liedloff, Jean 1986 [1975]. The Continuum Concept. London: Penguin.
Mathur, H.M. ed. ed. 2006. Managing Resettlement in India: Approaches, Issues,
Experiences. Delhi: OUP.
Mohanty, Gopinath 1987 [1945]. Paraja. London: Faber & Faber. Translated from
Oriya by Bikram K. Das.
MMSD (Mining, Minerals and Sustainable Development) 2002. Breaking New
Ground. London: Earthscan. (www.iisd.org/mmsd)
Moody, Roger 2005. The Risks we Run: Mining, Communities and Political Risk
Insurance. Utrecht: International Books.
_____ 2007. Rocks and Hard Places: The Globalization of Mining. London:
Zed.
Morrison, Rod ed. 2007. Financing Global Mining: The Complete Picture. London:
Thomson Financial Group (published by Project Finance International in
association with International Financing Review and Acquisitions Monthly).
Mosse, David 2005. Cultivating Development: An Ethnography of Aid Policy and
Practice. London: Pluto.
_____ 2007. Power and the Durability of Poverty: A critical examination of the links
between Culture, Marginality and Chronic Poverty. CPRC Working Paper
no.7, Dec 2007, pp.1-57 (ISBN 978-1-906433-06-2, available at
www.chronicpoverty.org).
_____ 2009. ‘Social Analysis as Corporate Product: NonEconomists/Anthropologists
at the World Bank in Washington DC,’ in D.Mosse ed. Travelling
Rationalities: The Anthropology of Expert Knowledge and Professionals in
International Development. Oxford: Berghahn.
Padel, Felix 1998. 'Forest Knowledge: Tribal people, their Environment and the
Structure of Power,' in Nature and the Orient: The environmental history of
South and Southeast Asia, ed. Richard H. Grove, Vinita Damodaran & Satpal
Sangwan. Delhi: OUP.
_____ Sept 2007. 'A Cry Against the Hidden War: Bastar’s Civil War,' Tehelka
(http://www.tehelka.com/story_main34.asp?filename=cr220907A_CRY.asp)
_____ Feb 2008. 'Mining as a Fuel for War,' in The Broken Rifle issue no.77
(www.wri-irg.org/node/3576)
_____Jan 2010 Sacrificing People: Invasions of a Tribal Landscape. Delhi: Orient
BlackSwan (expanded and updated edition of The sacrifice of human being:
British rule & the Konds of Orissa, 1995)
_____ & Samarendra Das 2008. 'Cultural Genocide: the Real Impact of
Development- Induced Displacement,' in H.M.Mathur ed. India: Social
Development Report 2008. Development and Displacement, pp.103-115.
Delhi: OUP for Council for Social Development.
________ Dec. 2008. 'Orissa’s highland clearances: The reality gap in R & R,' in
Social Change vol.38 no.4, pp.576-608.
________ 2010. Out of This Earth: East India Adivasis and the Aluminium Cartel.
Delhi: Orient Blackswan.
Pattanaik, Prasanta 11th April 2010. 'Corporate-Sate Foul-play in Kalinga Nagar,' at
http://orissamatters.com/2010/04/11/foul-play-exposed/
Pattnayak, Kishen 2004. ‘Visions of development: the inevitable need for
alternatives,’ in Futures 36 pp.671-8 (www.elsevier.com/locate/futures).
People’s Union of Democratic Rights (PUDR) April 2006. Where the State makes
War on its Own People. www.pudr.org/pages/salwa.judum.pdf
Prasad, Archana 2003. Against Ecological Romanticism: Verrier Elwin and the
Making of Anti-Modern Tribal Identity. Delhi: Three Essays Collective.
Prayas & C.S.Venkata Ratnam 2003. Indian Power Sector Reforms: Issues and
Challenges for Electricity Employees. Delhi: Public Service International.
Ritthoff, Michael, Holger Rohn & Christa Liedtke 2002. Calculating MIPS:
Resource Productivity of Products and Services. Wuppertal spezial 27e.
Germany: Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy.
Ross, Michael Jan.1999. ‘The political Economy of the Resource Curse,’ in World
Politics no.51.
Roy, Arundhati 29.3.2010 'Walking with the Comrades', Outlook.
Sainath, P. 1996. Everybody Likes a Good Drought: Stories from India’s Poorest
Districts. Delhi, London: Penguin.
Sampsom, Anthony 2004. Who runs this place? The Anatomy of Britain in the 21st
Century. London: John Murray.
Sharma, B.D. 1990. 29th Report of the Commissioner for Scheduled Castes and
Scheduled Tribes for 1987-89. Delhi: GOI.
Sundar, Nandini 2007. Subalterns and Sovereigns: An Anthropological History of
Bastar 1854-2006. Delhi: OUP. (2nd edition)

Você também pode gostar