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Duplicity

  • 14/09/2006

Duplicity Orissa and Jharkhand are not far behind in the sponge-iron industry race. As of December 2005, there were at least 61 sponge iron units operating in Orissa. Another 44 had been granted consent to establish and are awaiting no-objection certificates. But the truth is many of these are already operating without certificates or environmental clearance. Most of these plants are concentrated in Sundergarh, Keonjhar and Jharsuguda districts, areas that are rich in coal, dolomite and iron ore deposits. These areas also have rich forest cover and are home to tribal and forest dwelling communities that depend on subsistence agriculture.

Jharkhand has about 42 functioning sponge iron plants. Most of them are concentrated in the Giridh, Saraikela-Kharsawan, West Singhbum, and Hazaribagh areas.The Jharkhand Industrial Policy 2001 talks of special incentives like "exemption from environmental clearance,' for industries but there is no policy for how these industries should contribute to the local economy or control pollution.
In the past two years, the state government has signed 44 memorandums of understanding (mous) for industrial projects. Of these, 42 are for sponge iron plants. Aware of the stiff opposition they faces in acquiring land for these projects, state officials have resorted to spreading disinformation among villagers to make them sell their land. In some places, they tell villagers that they have no choice but to sell their land because the government has approved the project and if they don't sell, the state will deposit money for their land in court and that will be more complicated for them to retrieve. Sometimes, they insert false reports in media that land has been acquired in the hope that it will prompt villagers to cut prospective losses and sell their land.

Subterfuge and pressure tactics
Acquiring land for setting up a plant is always the beginning of the conflict. Industry often acquires land through subterfuge. Land in villages near Raipur, originally meant for herbal plantations, is being used by the sponge-iron industry today to set up plants. And villagers are being misled into selling their lands. There have been instances when villagers have realised that they were duped after construction started. Bholaram, an activist with the Ekta Parishad, says, "Many villagers do not know that their land is being acquired for a factory. This is a common trick employed to keep prices low.' In Bemeta in Chhattisgarh, villagers claim that land bought at the rate of approximately Rs 20,000 per hectare (ha) by the state government was sold to industrialists at roughly Rs 1.25 lakh per ha.

Industries are required to get a no-objection certificate from gram panchayats, but even that procedure is reduced to a mere formality, or at times, not adhered to at all. Mostly, sarpanchs are bought and documents manufactured. In Chourenga near Raipur, though the gram sabha did not pass a resolution allowing the plant to come up, blank spaces left in the gram sabha's register were used to manufacture the noc.

And when subterfuge doesn't work, plain pressure does

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