Vedanta Vicissitude

Nehru on the eve of laying the foundation-stone for India’s first major river valley project, the Hirakud Dam in 1948, told ten thousand tribal residents of Orissa who were facing the grim prospect of displacement "If you are to suffer, you should suffer in the interest of the country”. Justification provided for the state action was agrarian reform policies. The implications of the proposed mining activity by Vedanta in the State, brought to light by the recent four members Dr. N.C. Saxena committee report, has resurrected the long forgotten wounds of tribal residents of Orissa. Historically, the relationship between tribal communities in India and forests was characterized by co-existence. These communities are also considered integral to the mutual survival and sustainability. This symbiotic relationship has corroborated into customary rights over forest produce. But these rights were not recognized and recorded by the government while consolidating state forests during the colonial period as well as in independent India. This injustice was further perpetuated by non-recognition of such rights of the tribals in the Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972 (the ‘WPA’) and the Forest Conservation Act 1980 (the ‘FCA’). Both the pieces of legislation found the environmental protection regimes and rights of tribal communities as incompatible. However, the recent 2006 legislation i.e. Recognition of Forest Right Act, 2006 (FRA) is some light at the end of the tunnel. This piece of legislation has identified and recognized the forest rights of tribal’s. The recommendations in Dr. Saxena Committee report seeking rejection of clearance to Vedanta Company has been backboned by the FRA. The finding of the committee reveals that the entire proposed mining lease area (PML) of Niyamgiri hills area allocated to Vedanta for mining falls within the category of Community Forest Resource (CFR), as defined in the Forest Rights Act (FRA), allocated to the tribal habitants in the villages inside or surrounding the four forest blocks. These villages have been vested with recognizable community and habitat rights by GoI under section 4(1) of the FRA. The mining activity of Vedanta if allowed would be clearly contrary to the aforesaid mentioned provision of FRA. As was suggested by the committee, the environmental ministry has rightly denied giving of clearance certificate to Vedanta for its proposed mining project on the same grounds. Human costs of this project is also very high, Dr. N.C. Saxena committee report also states that displacement would be one of the inevitable consequences of this project. Amidst all these legal connotations, the politicization of this issue, with the state government supporting Vedanta and a recent visit by a leader of the ruling party at power in the center, Rahul Gandhi, to the proposed site at Niyamgiri Hills to oppose the project, I can only hope that the rights of the tribal’s are not put to sacrilege.

References For Further Reading
1. Lovleen Bhullar, ‘The Indian Forest Rights Act 2006: A Critical Appraisal’, 4/1 Law, Environment and Development Journal (2008), p. 20, available at http://www.lead-journal.org/content/08020.pdf

2. Dr. N.C. Saxena, D.r. S. Parasuraman, Dr. Promode Kant, Dr. Amita Baviskar, Report of The Four Member Committee for Investigation Into The Proposal Submitted by The Orissa Mining Company for Bauxite mining in Niyamgiri, August 16 2010, at 8-9.

3. section 2(a), FRA, 2006.

4. Soumyajyoti Biswal, Cost of Development: Displacement, Orissa Economic Association Journal (2009).