Children - Terre des Hommes

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UAIL earlier a joint venture of Norsk Hydro, ALCAN and
HINDALCO, is now completely owned by HINDALCO of
the Aditya Birla Group, and proposes to extract bauxite with
a capacity of 1–3 million tonnes per annum.
History of the People’s Struggle in
Kasipur
Pre-mining area, Kasipur
(Photo June 2009)
Kasipur area is mainly inhabited by adivasis living in the midst
of thick forests and hills. These areas are, in legal terminology,
called the Scheduled Areas as per the Fifth Schedule of the
Indian Constitution where majority adivasis live and have
exclusive ownership of land. Out of the total population
of the district nearly 72.03 per cent of the people are BPL
families 272 and more than 50 per cent of its total population
belong to adivasi communities. Kasipur consists of 20 gram
panchayats which is a conglomeration of around 270 villages.
According to Census 2001, the total population of the block
is 67,254. The Jhodia, Kandho, Paraja tribes and the Panos
(untouchables or dalits) constitute around 70–80 per cent of
the total population of the block and the rest are OBCs. The
adivasis here mainly subsist on agriculture and collection of
forest produce.
Proposed mining projects in the
region
The Baphlimali and the Niyamgiri hills of Kasipur account
for 67.7 per cent of bauxite reserves in India. This region of
Orissa, mostly from the western part, contributes around 13
per cent of the world’s bauxite reserves. The content of alumina
in the bauxite ore in this region is around 45–48 per cent. It is
proposed that UAIL will extract bauxite ore from Baphlimali.
Similarly Larsen and Tubro will have its mines at Sijumali,
Sterlite India Limited will have mines at Niyamgiri and Aditya
Birla’s Hindustan Aluminium Company (HINDALCO) will
have another independent unit by mining at Kodingamali
hills. All these units together are meant to affect about 2,700
families of nearly 200 villages.
In the year 1993 the local people first came to know that
UAIL, a multi national company, had decided to set up an
alumina extraction plant near Kucheipadar in Kasipur Block.
Prakrutiko Sampado Surakshya Parishad (PSSP) is a people’s
movement, which emerged as a resistance to the Utkal project.
The struggle is unique in its nature as it is the local adivasi
community that has led the movement.
(Photo: Samata)
The people of Kasipur have, right from the beginning, opposed
the alumina project tooth and nail, and refused to give their
lands to the company. Since 1993 the local community resisted
all activities initiated by the company like construction of roads,
bridges, resettlement colonies and put up strong resistance
whenever company staff or government officials tried to
engage them either through frivolous community development
projects like the Utkal Rural Development Society (URDS)
or through false promises of future employment or economic
gains. Unable to break through this resistance, the state along
with UAIL, filed false criminal cases on the leaders of PSSP
several times, took them into illegal custody and tried to
terrorise people into submission.
272. Orissa Human Development Report, 2005