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Notice (8): Undefined variable: urlPrefix [APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp, line 8]latest-news-updates/mining-bill-must-do-more-for-tribals-10389.html"/> LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Mining bill must do more for tribals | Im4change.org
Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

Mining bill must do more for tribals
-The Deccan Chronicle
 
The approval by the Cabinet of the Mines and Minerals Development Regulation Bill is clearly meant to facilitate the acquisition of land in the mineral-rich districts of the country. Several large projects, including those of the richest non-resident Indian, Mr Lakshmi Mittal (Arcelor), and the South Korean giant Posco have been held up because of serious objections and protests from the affected tribal populations. The bill stresses on the compensation angle to assuage the anger and distrust of the people, primarily tribals, whose lands will be acquired and who will be displaced from hearth, home and livelihood. The operative part of the bill envisages that coal-mining companies will have to part with 26 per cent of their profits, ostensibly for the benefit of the displaced people, while for other minerals, like iron ore and bauxite, mining companies will have to pay a sum equal to the royalty they pay the government to be spent on the welfare of the people affected by the project. The figure that miners will have to part with collectively is estimated at Rs 15,000 crore annually. Industry gave the thumbs down to the bill with the shares of the country’s biggest coal miner, Coal India Ltd, sinking 5.15 per cent and Sterlite losing four per cent. While public sector miners like Coal India feel they are already doing their bit through corporate social responsibility programmes, the private sector feels these provisions sound the death knell for the sector. An industry body felt 26 per cent profit-sharing was too high and that setting up a fund to provide assistance to project-affected people may be difficult to implement. The bill is hardly likely to meet the demands of the tribals as the stress is on the commodity, and not on the tribals/affected people who will be left to the mercy of state governments that will presumably control the multi-crore development fund to be set up using the money from the mining companies. It is a huge amount and, in many cases, the experience of dealing in compensation matters with government departments at the block level has been harrowing. Even in Vidarbha the families of farmers who committed suicide have to run from pillar to post for compensation, and, after that, they have to pay kickbacks to get the money. All this has been documented in the media. It is not a mere coincidence that the mineral-rich districts are also Naxal-affected districts over which the government has little or no control. Despite the government’s Operation Green Hunt, the Naxalite problem refuses to go away; it is constantly nurtured by the long-standing grievances of the tribals. The construct of the mining bill shows that the government has not talked to the tribals, who have been treated as a commodity. They have to be partners in finding a solution to the land acquisition problem; maybe then they will come up with better solutions.