Sunday, April 18, 2010

"What is our Bauxite doing in their mountains? What is our furniture doing in their forests?"

Not my lines, of course. Arundhati Roy's. She is talking about (See her Essays: "Mr Chidambaram’s War" and "Walking with the comrades") multi-trillion dollar loot. This time it is from the mineral belt - Jharkand, Chatisgarh, Orissa and parts of West Bengal, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. On one side: the tribals living in these forests and mountains for centuries, who will never survive in what we call our civilized society.  Other side: Government of India, Respective state governments and powerful companies like: Vedanta Resources Plc (P. Chidambaram was a director in this company), Hindalco, Tata Steel, Jindal Iron and Steel, Mittal Group, Essar Group etc, and... all the mainstream medias.

First reaction of the intellectually disabled: Oh! These anti-development talk.

We are talking about $4 trillion in the form of Bauxite (key raw material for production of Aluminum) in the state of Orissa alone - and that itself is 4 times India's GDP - to give you an idea about the size.

Thats good - India will get $4 trillion! - Just from Orissa! Vow! 

Will we? For every $1, we get 7 cents. 93 cents would go to the corporations. Thats $3720 Billion for Big corporations (comprising of say, 1000 rich people) and $280 Billion for the development of 1100 Million People. How does that sound? 

After Kickbacks and layers of corruption and inherent inefficiencies, we would be lucky to walk away with a net of $100 billion. The price: The elegant Mountains and virgin forests, the ecosystem, a whole civilization - and a permanent scar in our conscience.




By the time the welfare money (if, any) filters through a million levels of bureaucracy, the needy would be long gone - they would be left begging in our cities.

It is estimated every square inch of land in these areas are covered by MoUs with the corporations. And there are more than 100 MoUs signed so far.



As always, the labelling was done: The tribals are "Maoists" and are therefore the "gravest internal security threat" according to our Prime Minister.


Arundhati Roy calls the choice the "Bush Binary" (Are you with Saddam or US?)  - you are either with us or with them. As if there is no choice in between. Most importantly, as if that is a choice.

So, on whose side are you? Are you pro development or anti-development? Does being on the side of tribals mean that you are against progress? Are things that simple? Watch...


Has she mocked Gandhi? I dont think so...


And who are these Maoists?




For the greener ones amongst us, production of 1 tonne of Aluminium will use 1400 Tonnes of water and would leave 15 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere. See "Keep the Bauxite in the Mountains" by Felix Padel & Samarendra Das.

How much can you pay as compensation for these people? And how do you fix the social responsibility for the big corporations? I always felt Corporate Taxes are not a good enough yardstick. There should be a system of extraction of money from these corporations based on some broader criteria like human costs, current and future impact on ecosystems etc. In other words, there should be a holistic view rather than the profit view.

If you have made up your mind to sell the family silver, why sell it cheap?  Why not 80 cents for you and 20 Cents for the corporations? I am sure that 20 cents will cover the cost of production, marketing and associated dirt.

Remember, we help these companies steal them. We work for them, we make money for them. By not reacting, we are responsible.

What can we do? I have a solution. We can buy shares in these companies and make an immediate profit. Then dump it and donate half the money to fund resistance.

The ending trouble

We all suffer from "Starting Trouble"...

Just to prove I was alive all the time... (click on the picture - It is my draft list- list of incomplete blogs) 

Almost all of the blogs I published including this one might have had an editing time of say, 3 hours. The idea is, the weak eggs go to the draft. They are allowed to hatch on their own until they become the Godzillas I can't ignore. 





Either the Godzillas don't scare me or I have ending trouble.