If the villages around Orissa?s Niyamgiri hill range are bustling with activity these days, because of the special gram sabhas being held here to get public consensus on mining in the region, Lanjigarh town in Kalahandi district, where Vedanta Aluminium has set up its refinery, is a picture in contrast.
Unable to get permission for bauxite mining in the nearby Niyamgiri hills, the company has abandoned its expansion plans for the time being and the refinery is currently being run at 60% capacity. In August 2010, when the refinery was running full steam, it employed more than 16,000 workers. People from nearby villages and towns came here searching for work and the plant and new township, built on around 2,000 acres, were busy places. Now, the number of workers, both contractual and on payroll, has dropped to around 1,800 in Lanjigarh. While 823 people were on the payrolls of the Lanjigarh plant in August 2010, the number has dropped to 455 now.
Many people who were laid off moved to Aditya Birla Group-promoted Utkal Alumina Project, a 1.5-million-tonne alumina refinery at Kansariguda in Rayagada district. Some others migrated to nearby Vizag in Andhra Pradesh and Raipur in Chhattisgarh. Others have resigned to their fates.
But economic hardships are not restricted to the plant workers alone. Right outside the refinery gates sits Nanda Kishore Sahoo, a farmer-turned-fast food shack owner. Sahoo gave up farming to sell Chinese food to workers at the refinery a few years back, but now with most of the workers gone, his business has also dwindled.
?These days I barely earn R6,000-R7,000 per month. When the company was expanding capacity, my monthly income was about R16,000,? Sahoo tells this correspondent.
He is not the only person to feel the pinch because of a sudden drop in economic activity at Lanjigarh. Sridhar Pesnia, president of Anchalika Vikas Parishad, a body that supports Vedanta in Lanjigarh, says 300-odd trucks used to ferry materials and machinery daily a few years back. The trucks, mostly owned by locals, had been bought with banks loans and were a source of steady income to the local population. ?About 100 trucks have been taken back by finance companies due to the owners’ inability to pay back loans because of a slump in business,? Pesnia says.
There are several people who migrated from neighbouring districts of Rayagada, Koraput and Bolangir and started small businesses in Lanjigarh, mostly catering to the needs of the people working in the plant and those living in the sprawling township.
Paresh Kumar Nayak, who runs a travel agency, used to book more than 40 airline or railway tickets daily when the company had started to expand capacities three years back in anticipation of getting bauxite from the Niyamgiri hills. ?These days business has been sluggish and we do only two-three bookings daily as the number of people living in the Lanjigarh township has reduced significantly,? says Nayak.
Madhusudan Behera, owner of a HP petrol pump in Lanjigarh, has seen his sales dropping down to a tickle in recent months after the company decided to shut down the Lanjigarh refinery temporarily.
A direct fallout of reduction in the number of people engaged in the Vedanta factory has also been felt in the weekly haat (market), which Dongaria Kondhs frequent for selling forest produce like pineapple and jackfruit. In return, they buy edible oil, salt and essential items from the local traders. When the company started to expand its operations, the Raghunathpur panchayat, under which Lanjigarh falls, decided to make the weekly haat into a biweekly affair for the workers? convenience. But local traders are now complaining of a drastic fall in sales.
In Muniguda Block in neighbouring Rayagada district about 20 km away, many small hotels came up to cater to people travelling from Lanjigarh to Muniguda, which is a railway junction. Local dhaba owner Radheshyam Sahoo complains of customers reducing by half from the 150 clients he used to get daily when the refinery was fully operational.
?If we consider that every earning member supports a family of five, then there is an adverse economic impact on about 75,000 plus people,? a Vedanta official tells FE.
Although Vedanta declined to comment on the ongoing gram sabhas, company officials privately admit that the mood is grim and the future looks uncertain for the refinery.
Other side of the coin
The Niyamgiri Vedanta Nagar includes nearly 123 families who gave up their land for the refinery and have been rehabilitated here. One member of each family was given a job at the refinery. One of them is Dasrath Maji, who works with the corporate social responsibility (CSR) unit of Vedanta Aluminum. He has been given a 550-square feet house in the township, besides free electricity, as per the Orissa government?s rehabilitation and resettlement plan in 2004. ?One member from each displaced family was given a job after technical training in an ITI and personality development inputs,? says Maji.
But even for a district that is infamous for its chronic poverty, with reportedly some instances of families even selling their babies to buy food, the government and corporate efforts have failed to impress the locals who are against the refinery.
Kumuti Majhi, a key member of Niyamgiri Surakha Samitie (NSS), says tribals have not benefited from the ?so-called development works? of the government as well as corporate sector. He has been spearheading the movement to oppose the Orissa government and the Vedanta group?s attempt to mine bauxite from Niyamgiri hills. Tribals constitute more than 30% of Kalahandi?s estimated 15 lakh population.
Indro, head of the Serkapadi village council, where the first of the 12 gram sabhas was held, says only two children have managed to study till Class VII and no help has been provided under the Indira Awas Yojana to the majority of families in the village for construction of pucca houses. ?Not a single work under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) has been taken up here,? he says.
Even though the locals are sharply divided in two, against and for the refinery, their economic hardship is a common factor, and right now, neither side is happy about it.
