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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | In Odisha's Chromite Valley, Adivasis Are Paid in Poisoned Water -Sweta Dash and Abinash Dash Choudhury

In Odisha's Chromite Valley, Adivasis Are Paid in Poisoned Water -Sweta Dash and Abinash Dash Choudhury

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published Published on Sep 8, 2018   modified Modified on Sep 8, 2018
-TheWire.in

Sukinda, the world’s largest open-cast mining area, is also the world’s fourth-most polluted place – and the cost is carried by its original inhabitants.

Sukinda (Jajpur district, Odisha):
Outside her mud-walled house, Pitayi Mankidia, 30, is holding her two-year-old daughter Huli, who is crying. Huli’s face is smeared with neem leaves to soothe the pain and itching that is aggravated by the dust in the area. Both mother and daughter have specks of blood dotting the rashes on their bodies.

“Trucks keep passing every second without a break, the roads are broken exposing the bare earth. The dust never settles,” Pitayi said, gesturing at the queue of loaded lorries outside her house. “It is difficult to breastfeed my children. I barely lactate these days.” Pointing at one of her sons, Bablu, who is also affected with rashes – small beads of them all over his back – she adds, “This makes him too unwell most of the time to even attempt going to school.”

This 20-km stretch is the country’s largest deposit of chromite, an ingredient of metallic chromium, used to make stainless and tool steels. It is also the world’s biggest open-cast mining area.

Across the road from Pitayi’s home, the world looks very different. The Tata residential colony, built for employees, has parks, water-treatment plants, club-houses, supermarkets, schools and the only post office in the area. The Tatas also control the most essential facility for survival here: the hospital. The colony’s world-class living conditions are indicative of the class-apartheid that mining and capital have produced here.

A 2007 report by the Blacksmith Institute ranked Sukinda as the world’s fourth-most polluted place. The report states that “approximately 70 per cent of the surface water and 60 per cent of the drinking water contains hexavalent chromium at more than double national and international standards and levels of over 20 times the standard have been recorded.” High levels of the compound are extremely carcinogenic, and put people at risk of permanent damage to eyes, skin and the gastrointestinal system.

The reply by the Orissa State Pollution Control Board, quoted in the Blacksmith report: “It is unique, it is gigantic and it is beyond the means and purview of the Board to solve the problem”.

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TheWire.in, 8 September, 2018, https://thewire.in/rights/odisha-chromite-valley-adivasi-tata-mine


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