Seriously?” one of the participants in a training session exclaimed. “You mean to say the site inspection report was prepared after an aerial visit, and there was no on ground verification?” All I did was a combination of a half nod, half smile. I have told this story several times before and each time the recipient of the news gives me a variant of the same reaction. It is a combination of disbelief, anguish and a knowing smirk in reaction to an officially documented fact. The approval for diverting forest land for one of India’s largest Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) was actually done without a field level assessment. A large steel plant and a captive port of the same project proponent were granted permission by the government despite this and several other lacunae.
For the people of the area, their agricultural fields, fishing areas in the coastal habitat of sand dunes and estuaries, this was not just a mere procedural lacunae. It was an official acknowledgement that the place they called home, the land they grew food on and the space that was in the realm of commons could just be picked up and handed over to a South Korean company POSCO. Worse, it was not even considered necessary to verify what constitutes life at the site of investment. As a result, a good 10 years have been lost for many. For those who did not resist, it was a long wait in transit camps and for those who resisted, a decade long struggle against the most violent odds. This real story of east coast of India, comes alive in many shapes and sizes across the country. The actors change and so does the location. What remains constant are impacts. When a mine, dam, port, industry or road is constructed, it is not without consequences.
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