The Hindu : Anti-mining groups stage protest

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Nov 03, 2003

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Anti-mining groups stage protest

By Our Staff Correspondent

NEW DELHI NOV. 2. A large number of people representing anti-mining groups, unions and people's organisations from various States today held a protest dharna outside the Pragati Maidan, venue of the 19th World Mining Expo, being attended by over 60 countries.

The protest was organised to oppose the entry of mining companies in their areas or highlighting the consequences of existing mining operations on grounds of displacement and the consequent destruction of life and livelihood.

The protestors said that for the past seven years, the tribal people of Orissa had been vehemently opposing the takeover of lands by the multinationals — Alcan and Hindalco.

Speakers raised issues facing mining workers, hazardous work conditions, the use of mafia to browbeat workers and the proposed change in labour laws making mobilisation of workers more difficult.

They questioned the pattern of development that India has witnessed over the past few decades. Large companies and elite people profited from people's resources, but those living there were considered only the vehicle of this larger process of development of capitalists, the speakers said.

Their opposition has met only with repression by the big companies, they alleged, fearing that the exploitation of people's resources will intensify with the entry of large multinational companies.

As part of this `Campaign Against Plunder of Resources', a public meeting was organised on Saturday, where Prabhat Patnail, economist, linked the organised extraction of minerals and resources with the asymmetrical and exploitative history of capitalist development. He said the tapping of a country's natural resources by a multinational leads to no long-lasting development and pushed the country into a state of underdevelopment.

The Supreme Court lawyer, Prashant Bhushan, spoke of how public companies such as BALCO, Modern Foods and IPCL were being sold to private hands at under-valued rates and how laws such as the Land Acquisition Act were being altered to facilitate their easy takeover.

The Prakrutik Sampad Surakshya Parishad, (Kashipur), the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha, the Jharkhand Organisation Against Radiation, the Adivasi Aikya Vedika (A.P.), the Jansnagharsha Morcha (M.P.), the Samajwadi Jan Parishad, the All-India People's Resistance Forum and the People's Democratic Forum (Bangalore), participated.

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