A dispossessed village leader describes the hardships faced by him and his family despite financial ‘compensation’ for land acquired for an Adani coal project. He warns other villagers facing the same fate from the next Adani coal project not to accept company promises but to keep fighting for their rights.
Ramal Kariyam, a village leader in India’s Hasdeo forests, describes how his community is standing up to Adani and the authorities, despite unwarranted detentions and an arson attack.
Alok Shukla, defender of the Hasdeo forests and its people, receives the prestigious Goldman Award, May 2024. Abir Dasgupta interviews him for AdaniWatch. The Adani Group operates a coal mine in the forests and is attempting to develop more, despite the opposition of people who depend on the forests for their livelihoods and way of life.
Chaotic scenes as authorities try to strong-arm village approval for Adani coal-mine expansion. The Adivasi tribal residents of the Hasdeo Aranya forest in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh are dealing with a mix of good and bad news. On the one hand, they have reason to celebrate as an interim order by the Chhattisgarh State Scheduled Tribes (ST) Commission has temporarily put a stop to a coal mine being opened in the Parsa coal block, which is adjacent to the PEKB coal deposit.
The campaign to protect India’s Hasdeo forests from coal mining received a boost on 13 February 2024 when prominent Congress leader, Rahul Gandhi, met with leaders of the movement and pledged the support of his party. The indigenous tribal people of the biodiverse Hasdeo forests have been struggling gamely to protect their ancestral homeland from a string of coal projects being developed by the Adani Group. A change of state government in December had disastrous consequences, with dozens of campaigners detained by police while a swathe of forest was felled.
Soon after it was elected to power in December 2019, a minister in the new government of the Indian state of Jharkhand said Adani’s massive coal-power project at Godda should be reconsidered. Construction was at an early stage and there had been a powerful grassroots campaign against the project. Media reported that the contentious project now stood on ‘less sure ground’. For over two and half years since those comments, however, Adani has forged ahead with construction.
Governor Ganeshi Lal assured the Adivasis that he would write to the Odisha Chief Minister recommending that they be rehabilitated and resettled as per law, no further projects are taken up in the area, and no penal action is initiated against them until then.
Congress figurehead, Rahul Gandhi, has said tribal protests against Adani’s coal mines in the Hasdeo forests are ‘justified’. Results of his work behind the scenes on the ‘problem’ should be ‘visible in a couple of weeks.’
Since March 16, the displaced persons, led by Oram, were sitting on an indefinite dharna protesting further displacement and demanding the implementation of recommendations made by the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes.
