In February this year the tribal villagers of Kinari, Kalahandi District, Orissa, India, left their homes for the last time. Their village has acquired by Indian mining company, Sterlite Industries as the surrounding hills are rich in Bauxite (raw aluminium). 13 other villages initially designated in the project zone are refusing to move. “We are determined to retain our land at any cost,” says Daisingh Majhi, president of the Niyam Giri Surakya Samiti, a committee organising the resistance.

However, they are facing tough pressure from the authorities in the State to capitulate to the mining project. Recently, 15 activists were released from jail after being arrested in connection with damaging Sterlite property. They had spent over a month and a half in prison but maintain their innocence. The arrest took place the day after a peaceful protest meeting in the proposed site of the mine in the area of Lanjigarh.

Rajkishor Mishra, director of Rupayaan, a local NGO, has been involved with the protest and helped organize a demonstration outside the police station against the arrests. He said, “this is part of a long list of activities by the local authorities and the police to try and silence our opposition to the Sterlite project.”

Since Independence the Indian Government has retained its right to requisition land for the “public purpose”. As such, the mining of minerals for export, and the construction of large dams for irrigation, flood control and hydro electricity are largely responsible for the displacement of 26 million people. However, there is a growing movement across the tribal states in Central and Eastern India against such projects.

One reason is that the overwhelming majority of the displaced have been the poor. For example, 70% of tribal people have less than one standard acre of land, and a large proportion is under the poverty line. But still they make up 40% of displaced persons despite the fact that they make up only 8% of the population. In addition, a great deal of documentation has been accumulated about the pitiful compensation the displaced have received. Only 25% of the displaced have been rehabilitated, leaving communities destitute, without access to basic amenities, welfare, or means to make a living. In many cases compensation has been decades late. Academics and activists alike are now asking why it is the poor who must bear the burden of development of the nation.

In fact, Sterlite has offered a comprehensive rehabilitation package, including housing, healthcare and jobs, but the villagers assert that does not compensate for all that they will lose.

“We worship these hills and this land, because they provide us with life,” says Daisingh. The culture of these people is inextricably linked to the land on which they work and they have built up years of knowledge about their environment, the value of which the villagers feel has been grossly underestimated by the compensation package.

As poor peasants, many of the resources they use are not in their legal possession. Their cattle graze on common land but this is not legible for compensation. The same applies for the dozens of necessary items the villagers gather from the surrounding forests. “Will they provide us with mangos, char seed, roots and tubors to eat when we are starving? Will they compensate our income from hill brooms, beedis, mahul flowers and leaf plates, the bamboo for housing, or our herbal medicine?” says one woman.

The NGSS also claims that more than the 302 proposed recipients of compensation will be adversely affected by the project. The extraction of bauxite will disrupt the natural perennial streams on which all of the villages in the area depend. But the concerned villagers will receive nothing in compensation because they do not lie in the project zone. Nor does the compensation consider their future generations in the way that their native land provides for the continuity of the community.

Premlal Padmabhusan, a tribal activist who has been assisting the movements asks, “why should we loose our land so that a private company can become rich and foreigners can enjoy our minerals? … Since independence the tribal people have gained nothing in the name of national development and we won’t gain anything from this project either.”

Sterlite controversially bought a 51 per cent share in the State aluminium company, BALCO, and has since sold 55 per cent equity to Twinstar Holdings of Mauritius, linked to Volcan Investment Ltd., UK. Certainly the increasing interest of the government in privatisation and attracting Foreign Direct Investment blurs the distinction between private profit and public development.

The villagers feel that their interests have been sidelined in the development debate. Government directives such as the Industrial Policy which states its intention to “hasten clearances and eliminate factors causing delays” to new projects certainly gives credence to their concerns. “We sent 170 complaints to the Revenue Collector before a meeting last June that was to ratify the hand over of our land, but none of them were registered,” says Daisingh. They were not consulted in drawing up the compensation package.

The villagers of Belemba have also found the government very heavy-handed in its approach to the issue. Many powerful politicians, including the District Collector, were present at a public hearing on the issue to influence the villagers in favour of displacement. Local NGOs say that otherwise such important functionaries take little interest in the area and its inhabitants.

The villagers even report serious irregularities. “When we arrived at the meeting we realised that people were being brought in from other villages in vehicles to attend and give their support,” said Daisingh, who led 100 villagers to march out in protest. They say they have not had a satisfactory response from the authorities.

More worrying is the violence that has been directed against the leading activists. Premlal was severely assaulted on the 1st of April 2003, along with another outspoken opponent of the project, Ling Ras. The next day a spontaneous march in protest of the assault was also met with violence in which women and children also suffered injuries. The villagers know their assailants, but say the Police have been very uncooperative. On the 2nd of April the Police arrived one and a half hours after the attack. The recently released activists claim that they suffered from physical abuse in the jail

The villagers of Kinari have conveyed to Premlal that the accumulation from such intimidation influenced their decision to move. But the remaining villagers remain steadfast in their opposition. “We are not funded and we are poor. Our movement’s strength lies in our own spirit,” says Daisingh.

Since the Constitution separate laws have been created to give tribal people special powers over the control of their land and its resources to help preserve their threatened culture and existence. The 1996 Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas (PESA) Act was hailed as a great step in this direction. However, these safeguards mean nothing if the State can overrule them, without debate.

The villagers are determined to continue stalling the mining project. Their main demand is that they play an active and central role in the development debate and the resulting projects that affect their lives.