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Tribal people in eastern India protest investor summit

Legislative protections have been amended and big business is eyeing mineral-rich tribal lands
Tribal people in eastern India protest investor summit

People protest against Jharkhand state government's amendment to protective land laws. The laws were changed in November 2016 to help the government take over tribal lands. (ucanews.com photo)

Published: February 21, 2017 10:46 AM GMT
Updated: February 21, 2017 10:58 AM GMT

Tribal people and church groups in eastern India Jharkhand state have been denied the opportunity to peacefully protest near the venue of a business summit that they say encourages land grabs.

Numerous protests were held in the state before the government's Global Summit of Investors Feb. 16-17, which led authorities to ban gatherings of more than four people near the event's venue in state capital Ranchi.

Jesuit Father Stanislaus Tirkey, secretary of the Indian bishops' office for tribal people, told ucanews.com that the summit intended to attract investment and ignores tribal people's demand to revoke changes made in November to the land protection laws that allows the government to take over tribal lands for industrial and welfare projects.

"Bringing in investors is a sign that there will be a heavy influx from the corporate sector, both national and international, which could grab tribal land," said Father Tirkey.

Corporate investment will ultimately "violate legislation meant to protect tribal land and will dispossess tribal people of their resources in a massive way," he said.

Protests continued in several other cities especially in Gumla, a Christian-stronghold, where some 10,000 people gathered Feb. 19 protesting against the summit and the amended law, said tribal activist Gladson Dungdung. He told ucanews.com that tribal people would continue protesting until the government stopped its anti-tribal actions.

Anabel Benjamin Bara, who teaches at the Jesuit-run Xavier School of Management, said that tribal people are "generally unaware of their rights and constitutional safeguards and the government is taking advantage of this."

Gladson Dungdung, a tribal activist from Jharkhand, said that amending protective land laws "violated the Constitution" because the law was meant to protect the basic rights of tribal people.

"If the land is taken from the tribal people, they will be left with nothing and their identity will be lost," he said.

Dungdung accused the state government of being "anti-tribal." The government is giving away lands to "outsiders" in the name of tribal development, he said.

Jharkhand has some 9 million tribal people who form 26 percent of the state's 33 million population. About 1.5 million people in the state are Christians and at least half of them Catholics.

 

Mineral-rich

The summit gathered investment pledges worth US$45 billion from national and international investors in the first such meeting in the mineral-rich state, organized with the help of the federal government, said local media reports

Industries, especially mining, have been expanding in the region encroaching upon the hills and plains which tribal people consider their natural home. The government has been helping the miners set up their activities, tribal leaders said.

India's leading mining group Birla has 17 bauxite mines and two captive coal mines, its chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla told the summit. He also said that they pay about 5.5 billion rupees (US$82 million) royalty to the state  and plan to invest about 50 billion rupees soon.

The state created in 2000, purportedly for tribal advancement, has some 40 percent of India's total mineral deposits but its people are also considered some of the poorest and they lack clean drinking water, health care and educational facilities.

Jharkhand produces 48 percent of India's coal, 48 percent of its bauxite, 45 percent of its mica, 90 percent of its apatite and 100 percent of its kyanite.

Industrialization and urbanization in the state has displaced 2.5 million people, 40 percent of them tribal. Nearly 12.5 percent of state households are in the grip of severe food insufficiency and 44 percent live below the poverty line.

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