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Anti-displacement struggles were major exemplary struggles against neoliberal plunder of natural resources and livelihood a decade back. We had witnessed the struggles of Singur-Nandigram-Lalgarh in West Bengal, Kalinganagar in Odisha, Raigarh in Maharashtra etc. Anti-displacement struggles raised questions of land and livelihood, resistance against the corporate takeover of ‘Jal Jangal Zameen’, formation of people’s organisations against neoliberal plunder and more important questions of ecology and environment.
Recently, anti-displacement struggles have come to the fore once again with struggles in two places, one is Deucha-Panchami in Birbhum district of West Bengal, where an open cast mine is proposed to be constructed, another one is Dhinkia in Jagatsinghapur district of Odisha where the land which was previously acquired for POSCO has been again proposed to be transferred to the steel giant Jindal. In both places, local Adivasis have been up in arms against the state.
The West Bengal state government plans to extract a large quantity of coal through open cast mining at Deocha-Panchami in Birbhum district by acquiring the lands of local people, including the Adivasis, selling dreams of setting up heavy industry, and the chief minister is promising to provide millions of jobs. This coal block, which contains roughly 2.2 billion tonnes of coal, is spread over 3400 acres of land in the Mohammad Bazar block of West Bengal’s Birbhum district. The Eastern Coalfield Association was initially designated to mine the block, but they declined to do so. This region of Birbhum is already heavily polluted as a result of an existing stone quarry, which has done little to improve the lives of the locals. Furthermore, it has harmed their farm-based economy, culture, and society. Mineral Concession Rules, 1960, and Mineral Conservation and Development Rules, 1988, which govern mine replenishment, are seldom observed in this region. There have been no recommendations for post-mining land, water and air quality, waste management, or surface soil treatment. A deep mine lies on one side of the region, while mountains of dust and deposited garbage
exist on the other. For decades, residents and the environment have been subjected to a toxic layer of over 5 inches of dust on the roadways. The entire region has become a dusty, gloomy wasteland, and this pollution has been pushed onto environmentally conscious residents, particularly Adivasi people, negatively impacting their social and cultural lives. The strong rhetoric about commencing construction on the “Asia’s second-largest coal mine” project will exacerbate the problems faced by both people and the environment.
Residents of Dhinkia village, Erasama tehsil, Jagatsinghpur district, Odisha, have been fighting to save around 1,173.58 hectares of land from being transferred. The land is being purchased for Rs 65,000 crore for Jindal Steel Works to build a 13.2 million tonnes per year (MTPA) integrated steel factory, as well as a 900 MW captive power plant and a 10 MTPA cement grinding and mixing unit. Residents claim that the projects, as well as the corporate takeover of the land, would destroy the lives of nearly 40,000 inhabitants in the district’s three villages of Dhinkia, Nuagaon, and Gadakujang. In 2011, the gram panchayats of Gobindapur, Dhinkia and Nuagaon had made unanimous regulations against the transfer of land to POSCO, as mandated by the Forest Rights Act. Activists in the state hold that the entry of development projects in the region is unprecedented and alarming, and comes with increasing ecological risks for the coastal areas. The total area of land is over 4,000 acres out of which over 3,000 acres are forest-controlled land. The people who went against the transfer of land to the Jindal group has faced brutal repression from the state. On January 14, the protesting villagers were attacked by the police and more than 100 people including villagers and activists were injured. The villagers have formed Jindal Pratirodh Bhitamati Suraksha Samiti to resist the state’s forced land acquisition.
The capitalist economy is flanked on the one hand by the unending exploitation of labour and on the other hand by the unending extraction of natural resources for increasing capitalist accumulation.
From the beginning of the industrial revolution in Europe, ecological and environmental damages has been effected to such an effect that we are experiencing today dangers of global warming, extinction of a variety of species of animals and plants, drastic reduction in nutrients of soil due to high usage of chemical pesticides, extreme health hazards due to air and water pollution etc. Displacement of indigenous people from their livelihood for fresh natural resources is part of the primary accumulation process. Needless to say, the ill-effects of these damages are mostly being experienced by the most marginalized section of society who are made to deal with the huge amount of heat and garbage that our economy produces. Examples apart from direct displacements of people for the appropriation of natural resources are rife, where the marginalized people are dealing directly with the effects of global warming are migrants from Sunderbans. These migrants are creating a reserve army of surplus labour most of whom are bound to work at wages much lower than their value of labour-power in the cities. Increasing cyclones in the Bay of Bengal have destroyed agrarian lands in Sunderbans and cyclones have destroyed their living spaces. At the same time, in Punjab, Haryana, and Western UP, we are witnessing depletion of nutrition in soil due to chemical pesticides and artificial seed and fertilizer induced high productivity due to policies of the so-called Green Revolution.
Issues of the environment have been raised in the language of ‘sustainable living’, reducing carbon footprints and slogans such as ‘Go Green’, ‘Go Circular’ etc. However, these slogans do not aim at the core of capitalist economic organization which is built upon the logic of the unending accumulation of capital, which is primarily responsible for environmental and ecological damage worldwide over the last 200 years. Without hitting at the capitalist logic of the economy, slogans of ‘sustainable living’ or ‘Go Green’ remain futile and impotent. In the past decade, we have seen the appearance of the slogan, “System Change Not Climate Change” in movements like Fridays For Future or Extinction Rebellion, which have been trying to expose the systemic nature of capitalist degradation of ecology and environment. There is an acknowledgement of the systemic question on the front of ecology and environment. However, the poignant question of organizing this movement on a real basis remains unresolved. The real struggle for ecological and environmental justice is possible when we link the struggles of the working class, struggles of Adivasis against displacement, Dalits and peasants against neoliberal attack on their lives, against the state power which protects interests of the global imperialist powers. A future with sustainable ecological development and a pollution-free environment is possible only through a planned economic re-organization, cutting off from global imperialist powers founded upon environmental justice, redistributive economic justice, removing social malaise and creation of an alternative polity for executing these programs. The task upon us is to build movements and organizational forms for fulfilment of these longuee duree aims.
