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Time a resource curse got lifted

Article on Equity Watch on Environmental Justice

15.12.2009 |Sunita Narain, Equity Watch

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Take a map of India. Now mark the districts with forest wealth, where the  rich and dense tree cover is found. Then overlay on it the sources of
streams and rivers that feed us, our water wealth. Upon this, further locate  mineral deposits - iron ore, coal, bauxite, all things nice that make economies rich. Don´t stop here. Mark on all this wealth another indicator: districts where the poorest people of our country live. These are also tribal districts. So you will find a complete match.

The richest lands are where the poorest people live. Now complete this cartography of the country with the colour red. These are the very districts Naxalites roam, where the government admits it is battling its own people, who use the gun to terrorize and kill. Here is a lesson of bad development we clearly need to learn from.

Let´s configure this map with events of the last few weeks. Madhu Koda was
chief minister of Jharkhand, a mineral-and-forest-rich but poor-people state,
for about a year. Today, enforcement agencies are unearthing a mother of
all scams - Rs 4,000 crore, and counting, of illegal assets he and his
associates looted from the state. This is roughly a fifth of the state´s annual
budget. More importantly, this enormous wealth came from the same
minerals that never made his people rich.

It does not end here. This past month, when the BJP government in
Karnataka was brought to its knees by defiant legislators who wanted the
head of the chief minister, we did not connect this episode with the
cartography of India. The Reddy brothers - Gali Janardhana Reddy, the
tourism minister of Karnataka and his brother, Gali Karunakara Reddy, the
revenue minister of the B S Yeddyurappa government, are mining barons.
Their wealth and power comes from rapacious mining in the similar rich-
poor districts of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.

The Reddy brothers´ fiefdom, Bellary district, produces some 20 per cent of
the country´s iron ore. The ore is mined with little or no consideration to
environmental safeguards. Water in the region runs red because of mine
discharge, the land has been mauled, forests have vanished and people´s
livelihood devastated. Bellary has the largest number of registered private
aircraft, but ranks third from the bottom in the human development index of
Karnataka, with 50 per cent literacy level - a shame for an otherwise
progressive state. The Reddy brothers (like Madhu Koda) are products of
the extraordinary wealth of regions we still call poor. Why, then, are we
surprised when Naxalites profit from the anger of local people, witnesses to
the loot of their land?

The problem is we have never taken seriously the issue of sharing wealth
with the people, whose land it is. This is not part of the development
mandate. Take forests. Some 60 per cent of the country´s dense and most
bio-diverse and economically rich forests are found in these tribal districts.
This is where the magnificent tigers are found. Ask again: If there is
extraordinary wealth, why are the people who live here so poor?

The fact is we have never built a development model for natural resources,
which is sustainable and also can benefit local economies and people. The
first phase of development was when the state extracted and exploited the
forests. Large areas were handed over to the paper and pulp industry, much
like what´s happening with minerals today; swathes of dense forests were
cut, land was denuded to build the economic wealth of the country. But
nothing was shared with local people. This was the forest wealth that built
fortunes of governments and private companies. But not its people.

Then came the phase of conservation. The nation decided forests had to be
protected; tigers and other wild animals had to be safeguarded. But instead
of building an economic model which shared the benefits of conservation
with people, the State once again marginalized them. Forests, went the
belief, had to be protected from the people who lived on these lands. Today
the callous implementation of the Forest Conservation Act, 1980, which
does not allow (rightly in many cases) diversion of forestland for non-forest
purposes, has become the single biggest reason for anger and violence in
the region.

See, while forests are cleared for mines, or power or industrial projects,
what is delayed and discounted is the little forestland local people need to
build a school, a water tank or an access road. Worse, the wealth of the
forests is never used to build their economies. Conservation of the tiger
happens on their lands, on their backs, with little benefit to them. Are we still
surprised at their anger?

This needs to change, and there are avenues. Some years ago, the
Supreme Court passed an important order regarding the sharing of the
mineral wealth with people. Today, there are new imperatives, national and
global, such as protecting forests for water, or climate, security. Can these
enable renewed futures? Can we change the rich land-poor people
cartography of India? Let´s discuss this the next time.

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