The Supreme Court’s decision to defer Vedanta’s mining licence for consultations with the local Gram Sabha and the Dongria Kond people is a blessing in disguise. The Kond tribe worships the surrounding mountain range, rich in bauxite, as Niyam Raja or Neba Raja, the God of Universal Law. In that belief lies a humbling lesson for all of us.

In recent years, over 6,00,000 hectares of forest land have been transferred to mining, industries, SEZs and other purposes broadly defined as development. A Planning Commission report says that development projects have displaced more than 25 million people since 1950, with over 40 per cent being tribals says Jaideep Hardikar’s book A Village Awaits a Doomsday , which poignantly illustrates the shoddy rehabilitation efforts.

‘Our religion? The mountains’

Anthropologist Helena Norberg-Hodge, who stayed for two decades with the Ladakhis, argues ‘development creates an artificial scarcity’ in a community that is already self-sufficient. Such communities find it difficult to establish a sense of belongingness in a world where ‘development’ takes a singular form and precedence.

If a community’s totemic belief includes worshipping an entire mountain then it has to be considered as part of their belongingness and as part of their life itself. Why should their religious sentiments and socio-cultural norms be treated in a marginal manner? Felix Padel and Samaratna Das in their exhaustive tome Óut of this Earth on the East India Adivasis and the Aluminium Cartel shed light on how the Dongria Konds stumped census officials even in 1941. Questioned, ‘what’s your religion?’, the Konds responded, the mountains.

The Konds have specific rules and taboos which are observed in the Niyamgiri range. These rules, for example, includes taboos on cutting trees on Niyamgiri, not eating mangoes before the first fruits festival, allowing fruits to seed and cutting bamboo at certain times of the year to give it an opportunity to regenerate. Vedanta’s annual report, ironically, states that it distributed saplings and trees as a part of its corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives to a community that has historically sustained the fragile eco-system. A 2009 TERI and LSE study found that these trees and saplings distributed by Vedanta depleted soil quality.

Vedanta seen as encroacher

The Dongria Konds perceive Vedanta as an encroacher, destroying their biodiversity and way of life. They are often coerced into selling their lands and Vedanta even went to the extent of falsely claiming the bauxite deposit sites were not covered by forests, which the Wildlife Institute of India contradicted in no uncertain terms. The Central Empowered Committee, an advisory body to the Supreme Court, has admitted that the area’s wildlife, water systems and ecology will be dramatically altered due to mining.

So what should we tell the Dongria Kond tribe? That they should not live in equanimity with the natural world, and their mountain is nothing more than a huge blob of bauxite? Is it really development if age-old and sustainable ways of life, proven over centuries, are replaced with CSR activities of tree planting? If Niyam Raja was to speak for Konds, he would echo British geologist T.L. Walker, who praised them for their truthfulness, light-heartedness, for being great hill-men, torch bearers of culture and living amidst abundant fresh spring water and picturesque hills. We, the so-called civilised world, can take a leaf from Amartya Sen who, in his book Development as Freedom , contends that if a traditional way of life has to be sacrificed, then the people directly involved must be the deciding factor. Can we, for once, ask the Konds?

The author is with the National CSR hub at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences.

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