Panel presentation "Women and Mining". By Bina Stanis:
It is 30th
March 1999. Phulo Murmu is
sitting under a huge Banyan tree sadly watching the roof of her home being
dismantled. Phulo pleads with her nephew "why
don't we leave after the Mahua season"?
He doesn’t agree. The
little piglets are running helter shelter to avoid the Mining Company’s
bulldozer busy bulldozing the house.
Phulo recalls
"Parej was so beautiful.
My grandfather used to cultivate this land".
She recalls an old song.
We cut forests and made fields
We pleased the Gods, chased the bears
and the tiger
We built our homes
CCL has come recently
We are here for centuries
CCL and diku are hardhearted
People who don't think
Like birds they have removed us
from our homes to the trees
The Birds cry when the branches
of trees are cut
The birds cry for the tree
I cry for my home, my land
that is no more".
So saying
Phulo started crying bitterly.
Irrespective
of what type of mining, this is the struggle that women like Phulo and
several others experience, for whom
"death is easier than leaving the land of our ancestors.
Take any example,
coal mining in the upper Damodar valley Hazaribagh District by CCL, or
bauxite mining and processing in Kashipur Orissa by L & T, or the
Ratnagiri wildlife Sanctuary in Kolhapur District of Maharashtra threatened
by Indal’s bauxite mining, or uranium mining in Jadugora by UCIL, or calcite
mining in the Eastern Ghats by Birla, or gold mining in Kolar Gold fields.
Mining operations exact a
devastating toll on the environment surrounding the mines.
Further, the effects of the minerals once they leave the mines
for processing or final use are often not considered in environmental
evaluations of mining.
Mining and Development
Mining and sustainable development
are really a contradictory combination.
As defined,
interpreted and implemented, development has a patriarchal bias. This is so because from the point of view of women true development
is not one based on material surplus produced over and above the requirements
of the community, and then stolen and appropriated through violent modes
from nature and from women.
In India as
in most parts of the world mineral deposits are found in Adivasi regions
and therefore the impact of mining is felt most severely by Adivasi or
Tribal women.
Mining is
a well planned deliberate conscious systematic, "scientific"
secretive exploitation of the Tribal people dispossessing them of their
natural resources, which leads to the marginalization and impoverishment
of women.
Lack of Economic Ownership:
From the first notice of
an Acquisition till the so-called rehabilitation of the displaced persons,
women exist, but without any formal recognition of their existence.
Their lack
of ownership has made woman vulnerable forever dependent and with a greater
risk of being excluded from their homes and livelihoods.
In a displacement situation it is this ownership of land of property,
which ultimately governs one’s entitlement to compensation and rehabilitation.
Women's traditional
control over land is not in terms of ownership but right to land use.
Although women are generally not found to own the land traditionally
they have been engaged in operations of sowing, weeding a major part of
harvesting and practically entire threshing.
Land acquisition reduces women’s role in the field.
Thereby relegating them to domestic chores alone.
Displaced women have lamented men barely do any work of home since
women are there increasing the latter’s workload at home.
The new mining
projects are highly capital intensive women handicapped by lack of opportunities
for acquisition of these new skills unwanted by the new economy.
Women are thereby forced to work as contract labourers or as servants
in the projects town-ships. Work which is by force not by choice.
The fundamental
crisis relates to fuel, water, health care, delivery, housing, sanitation
and nutrition. The
inadequacies of these resources owing to land acquisition affect women
severely mainly because women have been primary providers of basic needs.
Low access to or shortage of cooking fuel and water has meant that
women have to walk longer to fetch water and collect fodder and fuel wood.
The loss of
traditional rights over common land has undoubtedly contributed to the
deterioration of women's status.
In fact the impact of deforestation is not merely fuel and fodder
crisis but has meant loss of access to forest based economic enterprises
for women.
Employment
is not provided to women by mining companies.
Take the example of BCCL even though women played a key role in
the struggle and in the trade union when VRS was introduced.
Women were encouraged to denote their jobs to their sons and husbands
very often women are kicked out by male relatives.
There is an increasing marginalization of women in ill paid, irregular and
unorganised sector especially in the coalfields.
Destruction of Social Systems:
Social evils like
dowry, alcoholism, wife beating,
beggary, destitution which do not exist in Tribal society gets
introduced by non-Tribals. Human rights violations are on
the increase. Customary
laws and leadership loses its stature, as the cohesiveness of the community
is lost. The customs of barter,
wage labour and community ownership would all be lost. Atrocities on Tribal women in the Birla mining project have
been silenced and this tendency will increase.
Once non-Tribals enter these remote regions, especially with 150
trucks plying each day for the Birla project alone deadly diseases like
AIDS will spread and
reach serious proportions
before the State can control or identify in these interior areas.
Land could
earlier sustain larger families with the land gone it is "easier this way".
Nuclearisation of families once the family is dispossessed of their
land every member has to fund for themselves.
Women seem worst hit emotionally and economically as families disintegrate
especially widowed and single women. Their vulnerability relates to the restrictions they experience
in regard to residence, inheritance, remarriage and employment.
A problem
highlighted by women time and again which has not received much attention
is the problem of bathing, defecating etc in the absence of a pond or
forest in the village due to acquisition.
Project authorities rarely kept these problems of women while acquiring
or planning to resettle communities in a different place.
Environment and culture:
In spite of the existence
of strict environmental laws and regulations there are serious violations.
Forestland is denotified by the Government for mining activity
under the pressure of strong mining lobbies.
Even rivers are leased out and diverted to mining companies.
Compensatory
afforestation is taken up the best done so far by the company consist
of tree plantings here and there sometimes on old overburden dumps, sometimes
on leasehold land lying vacant and sometimes on residential quarters of
its important executives. Many
saplings die those, which survive, are of little use to local communities
by way of food, fodder or fuel.
The value able topsoil is lost wherever open-cast mining is operated.
-
Coal India is fascinated with machines and entirely impatient with
human beings. Its apparent
approach is to do away with people whether by displacing them in mining
expansion or by sacking them in masse in an attempt to attain economic
efficiency.
-
Main objective of foreign companies "more hole more coal".
-
Storage of overburden and topsoil will contaminate the surface
stream. Making it unfit for
an aquatic life, irrigation and human use.
Major rivers like the Damodar, Subarnrekha, Sarda, Varaha are badly
affected.
-
Destruction of invaluable species flora and fauna especially medical
herbs & trees.
-
Destruction of forests results in the extinction of trees like
and Sal and Karm which are special for the Tribals whose life, rituals
and festivals revolve around these trees like the Sarhul and Karma festivals.
Festivals are reduced to more drinking and feasting.
Song and dance is replaced by loud speakers blaring Hindi songs,
depriving women of their enjoyment and relaxation.
-
the salaried workers are introducing festivals like Saraswati Puja,
Holi, Durga Puja,
Vishwa Karma etc. These
have become occasions of great show and expenditure where the Tribal exhibits
he is not less than his caste neighbours.
The men folk enjoy themselves immensely the women have no role
to play.
No Right to Information:
The right to information
if considered important is clearly denied to women first by the displacing
agency who consider it not their responsibility to tell the women about
the project, the attitude is they are too ignorant to be told. Second it is denied by the male members in the
family who while complaining of the
"little” that is shared with them fail to
pass even
this little to
the women in the families.
The point is that in a displacement situation, while men perhaps
are no better off, women are worse off.
They are not consulted when houses are to be demolished, and how
shelters are to be planned designed or constructed and of course where
they are to be relocated. Issues
such as housing, water, sanitation are treated as a male preserve.
Women and health:
Families are larger.
She has no say in the spacing of her pregnancies.
The home remedies for controlling conception she knows have failed
her and afraid of Government sponsored family planning practice she is
faced with unwanted pregnancies.
She resorts to cheap village methods of abortion, which may cost
her life. Men are waiting
to bring in a second wife. Women
now live insecure lives.
Political:
India does not have a National
Rehabilitation Policy.
Policies and rules of the concerned State Governments, of sector
corporations govern the Resettlement and Rehabilitation of the displaced,
or those specifically formulated for the project.
The power
of "eminent domain" confers on the Government the right to take
private property for a public purpose.
In the name of development millions of people are displaced. Amongst these millions stand out those whose land and
other major assets are/were expropriated and they removed from their homes
to allow a "development project" intended for the over all social
good to proceed if there were voices of protest forcible evictions were
executed enforcing the State's power of eminent domain justified later
as a price to be paid for progress.
On one hand
high powered statements are made regarding the protection of Tribal communities,
the photos of Tribal leaders hang in Parliament house while at the same
time rape and destruction of Indigenous people and their resources continues.
Women must
have the right to information and decision at every level from acquisition
to any activity that would affect their resources.
Building linkages and networks with larger movements is essential.
The Supreme
Court judgement in the PIL of Samata Vs State of A.P. could be used wherever
possible.
Gender be
addressed in all rehabilitation measures when displacement is unavoidable.
Alternatives are studied and displacement minimised.
