Significance of the Anti – POSCO Struggle

The anti-POSCO agitation drew great attention not very long when the struggling people there took a challenging step by ‘imprisoning' or detaining some South Korean officials of POSCO who dared to infiltrate within the area of their proposed ‘site'. But, the anti-POSCO peoples' steigruggle took a grave turn with the pro-POSCO party-government lobby in Orissa led by the BJD-BJP alliance and particularly forn capitalist friendly BJD Chief Minister and the local BJD MLA replicating the notorious ‘Nandigram-recapture conspiracy' of CPIM in Jagatsighpur district of Orissa against the anti-POSCO agitators there. The bourgeois media took its investor-friendly role by highlighting the pro-POSCO govt-BJD sponsored attacks on the struggling people there as ‘movement' by pro-POSCO ‘people!' — as if the ongoing struggle is a fight between two section of the people there and as if a section of the people are in favour of the proposed project! But anyway, the ruling BJD is perhaps more ‘wise' now after taking lessons from the Nandigram ‘recapture' episode, they are utilising their governmental forces too by deploying armed police there together with BJD mercenaries. Certainly the revolutionary workers will stand by the side of the anti-POSCO struggle and the struggling people there. Certainly they will have to come forward to help the struggle. But apart from that there are some other features too that this struggle has objectively brought forward and those demand serious consideration.

It has been reported in the media that POSCO is going to invest Rs 510 billion or more than half trillion rupees. If that happens, it will be the largest single foreign direct investment in India. Showing the people this fat red herring, the ‘prospect' of huge ‘development', ‘industrialisation', ‘chances of employment generation' and etc the govt is giving away thousands of acre of land to POSCO of which there are 3000 acres of forest land! But not only that, the govt is giving away two iron mines to that firm from which they will have the right to excavate and export any amount of iron ore out of India. And the MOU (memorandum of understanding) signed between POSCO and the govt of Orissa permits the firm to export almost as much ore they will use here in the proposed plant, which is nothing but letting a foreign firm loot natural resources of this country! A source mentions that just from the ‘ore export business' POSCO will profit at least 1 trillion rupees, i.e., twice the value of their investment here. So loot of natural resources will be twice the amount invested here for ‘industrialisation', and our rulers call this brazen betrayal of national interest as ‘development' and are trying to force-feed us their make-believe story of development!

But POSCO is not the exceptional case. Major part of India's mineral wealth is concentrated in Orissa, Jharkhand and Chattisgarh. And different state governments and central govt have given rights to many foreign and native Capitalists to loot this wealth through different MOU-s. Orissa is perhaps on the top of the ‘hit-list' of these capitalists. Within next 25 years some big companies are going to loot 41% of Bauxite (Aluminium ore), 26% of Iron ore, 68% of Chromium ore and 20% of Manganese ore from this state. An organisation, ‘LOKAPAKHYA' showed that the value of Bauxite to be looted from only Kasipur district is 2.88 trillion rupees as per current price and for that the govt of Orissa will get a ridiculously low royalty of only 12 billion rupees!! The looter company will pay the govt 0.6% of the value looted as royalty — and the govt calls this shameless loot as ‘development', ‘industrialisation'!!!

Alongside this veritably unhindered plunder of mineral wealth, some other ‘projects' are in the pipeline in Orissa recently, of which the first name to come is that of a TATA project in Kalinganagar, and for the resisting the forced-eviction for that project 13 tribe people were killed by the police in early 2006. For all such projects mainly the Adivasi people i.e. the tribe people are to suffer the pain of eviction. Most probably there are two reasons behind the fact that the Adivasi people are mainly facing eviction. Firstly, the places with abundant mineral wealth are generally not much fertile. Fertile lands from the Adivasi people had been already looted in the past to settle other agricultural communities there, and hence the Adivasis had to flock in such well nigh barren and forest areas. Then, for looting of the mineral wealth, the Adivasi people will now to be evicted from such places! 73% of the tribe people in India inhabit Orissa, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh – the most mineral wealthy states. Perhaps the second reason is that: as the Adivasi people are the most economically weak section and helpless, and so they were in the main targeted in all eviction-for-industry drives in the past. Adivasi people are only 7.5% of the total population of India, but among the ‘displaced' or ‘internal-refugee' population of India due to various ‘development' drives from 1950s till 1990s the Adivasi people constitute 40%!! Among those evicted due to various ‘development' projects in Orissa alone in between 1950 and 1995, 40% are Tribe people, 20% are Dalits and another 20% are OBC!! All these evicted people and people in general saw by their bitter experience that the ‘promises' given by leaders regarding ‘jobs' etc are hogwash. Hence, for every eviction-development program now we see resistance movements cropping up. Such a heroic fight we have seen in Kalinganagar; it was not a day's gallant resistance, but a protracted peoples resistance for months. People are getting organised, starting to fight other projects too like the anti-POSCO, anti-HINDALCO, anti-VEDANTA etc struggles.

Two characteristics of these struggles are highly important. Firstly, in most of such struggles we are witnessing that the people are distancing themselves from the established parties of various colours, as the people have become more or less disgruntled by the betrayal of all established parties, by their abject surrender to the liberalisation-globalisation bandwagon. Secondly, these struggles are not going through the ‘pattern' of movements that we see in case of so-called ‘movements' led by the established parties and neither through the media-adorned NGO-pattern: they are not going through tedious and protracted ‘appeals' and other ‘peaceful' programs, rather quickly they are turning militant facing the violence of govt-capitalists-parties combine and the state-terror that is being unleashed on them.

Though these struggles, the anti-POSCO, Kalinganagr struggle, etc are on the face of it struggles against eviction, but in reality those struggles are against the imperialist sponsored-dictated economic policies, against foreign and native capitalists, against the state that let the capitalists whimsically, outrageously, unlimitedly plunder nature. So, essentially, these struggles are part of or prelude to the countrywide revolutionary struggle of the working class, peasantry and all other toiling people towards establishing social control over economy, society and nature at large. Keeping that future struggle in mind the advanced fighters of the working class must organise itself as a class-conscious force; and alongside this they are to understand the significance of the struggles of poor toiling people of India including these struggles of the Tribe people, they are to stand by the side of these struggles as co-fighters.

 

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