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Read COLLECTIVE’s fact-finding report on the ongoing people’s struggle to protect the forest and livelihoods in Chhattisgarh’s Hasdeo Aranya region. Hard copies available in in English and Hindi.
Download in: English (click here) | हिंदी (यहाँ क्लिक करें) Please contribute so that publications reach the widest audience at subsidized rates: 9936835242 (UPI). Contact us for hard copies and do share your feedback/criticism with us.
कोयला लोहा बॉक्साइट के साथ
कई गांवों को लादकर वह ट्रक
जो रोज़ शहर की और जाता है
अब सिर्फ वहीं मेरे गांव का
असली पता बताता है।
— जसिंता केरकेट्टा, ईश्वर और बाज़ार (कवितांश)
Around 4 am on the morning of December 21, 2023, Jainandan Singh Porte was picked up by Chhattisgarh Police from his home in Ghatbarra in Surguja district. Porte is the sarpanch of this village situated on the edges of the country’s largest contiguous dense forest, Hasdeo Arand. Spanning 1.5 lakh hectares of central India, this pristine natural forest is roughly three times the size of Mumbai. Within 72 hours of his arrest, over 15,000 of India’s oldest trees were cut down, with another 2.3 lakh to follow. 91 hectares, roughly the size of 58 football fields, in Ghatbarra, Fatehpur, and Salhee are in line for deforestation.
Ghatbarra had been the first village to reject the advances of Adani Enterprises Limited (AEL) when it was green-lit for mining coal in 2012. At the time, Gautam Adani was the 16th richest individual in India by net worth. Today, he is the richest person in Asia. Porte, along with other members of the Hasdeo Aranya Bachao Sangharsh Samiti (HABSS), won gram panchayat elections in 2021 with the promise to defeat the Adani project.
Nandkumar, a B.Tech. graduate from neighbouring Fatehpur, recounts how the area was turned into a chhavni, or cantonment, exactly a week after Chhatisgarh was bestowed its first Adivasi chief minister, Vishu Deo Sai of the Bharatiya Janata Party. The same day, Ramlal Kariyam from Salhee village was charged with a FIR, the third that members of HABSS are contesting.
These events form the latest addition to the long and disturbing history of the struggle to save the Hasdeo Arand forests. The story begins in 2007, when the Parsa East and Kante Basan (PEKB) coal block, located in the Hasdeo Arand region of Chhattisgarh, were allocated by the central government to the Rajasthan Rajya Vidyut Utpadan Nigam Limited (RRVUNL). The same year, RRVUNL formed a joint venture – the Parsa Kente Collieries Limited (PKCL) – with Adani Mining Private Limited, in which the latter owns 74% and the former 26%. At this juncture in history, a large part of the region was set to be converted into the Lemru Elephant Reserve, being an important elephant corridor of the country.
Fig. 1.1. 23 coal blocks have been identified in the Katghora, Korba, Surajpur and Surguja divisions of Hasdeo Aranya forest region
In Surguja and Surajpur districts, the Scheduled Tribes constitute about 55% of the total population, chief among them being the Agaria, Gond, Binjwar, Manjwar, Pahadi Korwa, Pando, Rajwar, Nai, Teli, Nagesiya, Oraon, Baiga, Kanwar, Panika and Dand Korwa. Their livelihoods depend on a variety of non-timber forest products including food plants, fodder, medicinal plants, honey, and others. Marketable sale of forest products contributed to roughly 46% of average monthly income, excluding self-use by the forest dwellers, as per a survey conducted in 2014 by the Wildlife Institute of India (WII). Their primary occupation is agriculture, with around 97% of the surveyed population engaged in two-crop paddy cultivation and other allied activities. Monsoon water collected in pits and ponds are used by them for irrigation. 87% of the surveyed population owned livestock in the form of cattle, goats, sheep, pig and foul. Most of this livestock depends on the forests for grazing.
The Hasdeo Arand region, known as the lungs of Chhattisgarh, were opened up for the profits of one entity: the Adani Group, which currently holds two more coal blocks in the region (the Parsa coal block and the Kete Extension coal block) while having received clearance to expand mining under the PEKB project.
In the process of acquiring these coal blocks, the State-Adani nexus brought in the Coal Mines (Special Provisions) Act, 2015 explicitly to favour a single corporate entity, weakened the provisions of the Forest Rights Act, 2006 (FRA), diluted scientific categories used by ecologists and conservation experts, violated their own terms and endangered the rights and livelihoods of lakhs of Adivasis living in the Hasdeo Arand region. The situation is only bound to get worse given that the proposal to expand the Parsa coal block is already underway. The recent letter by the Association of Power Productions, of which Adani Enterprises Limited is a constituent member, requesting for further coal blocks to be opened up in the region, only goes further to show that the mining conglomerate’s ambitions will not end at the expansion into the coal blocks under contention at present.
Keeping in view the immense ecological importance of the Hasdeo Arand region as well as the severe violations of environmental rules, be it in explicit or underhanded ways, the report aims to provide a complete picture to understand the significance of the HABSS-led struggle as a key ecological people’s struggle challenging the State-corporate nexus today. In the course of undertaking this study, we collected in-depth oral testimonies of villagers from Ghatburra, Fatehpur and Salhee villages as well as conducted group discussions with villagers present at the HABSS protest site in Hariharpur, particularly focussing on Adivasi women’s experiences in the struggle. We also spoke to a range of lawyers, civil society activists and a varied spectrum of political forces engaged in the movement to contextualise these narratives. We are grateful to the cooperation extended by all those who participated in this exercise.
Chapter 2 of the report (‘Environmental Impacts of Mining’) draws from two publications by court-appointed bodies to highlight the severe impact of mining activities on the region’s ecological wellbeing. Chapter 3 (‘Subverting the Law’) draws attention to various means used by the State-corporate nexus to undermine environmental studies, laws, and Constitutional mechanisms put in place to safeguard Adivasi rights over forests. In examining and exposing these facts, we aim to underscore how administrators, bureaucrats and even judges have repeatedly bowed down before unbridled corporate power in the performance of their Constitutional duties. Chapter 4 (‘Adani’s Path to Profits’) goes into the various ways in which a particular corporate conglomerate has been favoured in the push towards opening up Hasdeo forests to coal mining. This chapter also shows that several alternatives were available in the bid for ensuring energy security of the country which were wilfully ignored in order to benefit a particular corporate house, namely, Adani Enterprises Limited. Appendix A provides an easily-accessible summary of the timeline of events as well as important milestones in the people’s struggle to save Hasdeo forests. Appendix B contains the list of references consulted while preparing this report.
Download in: English (click here) | हिंदी (यहाँ क्लिक करें)
Please contribute financially as per your capacity so that such publications reach the widest audience at subsidised rates: 9936835242 (UPI: Swapnil). Contact us for physical copies and do share your feedback/criticism with us.
