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Sijimali: The Earth Is Not for Sale

Ma Mati Mali Surakhya Mancha

04 June 2026

Dear Friends and Comrades, Johar!

Hands Off Schedule V Areas!!

Keep the Bauxite in the Ground!!

Ma Mati Mali Surakhya Mancha is overwhelmed with the support and solidarity that has poured in from across Odisha and the entire country for our struggle to hold on to our land, forests and hills. Soon after the the brutal police crackdown on Kantamal village on the night of April 6–7, teams from various political parties, Left and democratic organisations, mainstream and social media, social activists, youth groups, and researchers travelled to Sijimali to express solidarity with our people. You got to know about the vicious midnight raid on March 10 at Talaampadar village and the arrest of 21 villagers, including ten women. Since February, the entire region of Sijimali had become like a conflict zone with drones in the sky, police vehicles on the roads and police marches through our villages. In the last three years ever since the bauxite reserves have been leased out to Vedanta in Sijimali and Adani in Kutrumali, there has been continuous repression with countless fabricated cases on our people. This Fifth Schedule area, where we Adivasis, Dalits and grazing communities have cohabited peacefully always, has turned into a hell. However, our struggle will go on. And your support and solidarity strengthens our resolve to continue the struggle.

Our struggle is not only for our lives and livelihood. Our struggle is for the protection of mother earth, for the entire planet. Our fight is for the protection of all life species, fish and birds, sheep and goats, forests and streams. They belong to us and we belong to them. We are one, we are inseparable.

As the threat of climate crisis and global warming looms large over the entire globe making it urgent to protect both nature and environment, we see one after another all bauxite hills of the Eastern Ghats being handed over for capitalist greed and profits. This is happening in Khandualmali, Niyamgiri, Mali Parbat, Balda Nageswarimali, Serubandha, Kodingamali and Karnakondamali in Narayanpatna. If mining operations are carried out, hundreds of perennial streams that originate from the Eastern Ghats and join our rivers will quicky dry up. Odisha will turn into a desert, a vast pool of toxic waste. Ever since mining began in the Baphlimali hills and the alumina refinery was set up near Tikri, we have witnessed severe pollution — dust and smoke filling the air, and toxic effluents from red mud ponds contaminating our rivers, turning them poisonous. It is the same with the Lanjigarh refinery plant. Leave alone human beings, even cows and goats cannot drink the water, and all fish are dying. Naturally, communities like ours in bauxite-rich regions, who depend largely on nature and its resources, are today waging a long struggle across South Odisha, resisting the destruction unleashed in the name of development. All these struggles are one common united struggle.

Another side of the development saga we experience daily are the inhuman and brutal acts of the police and administration. What kind of development is this when an elected government turns the police and paramilitary forces on its own people? Public servants and officials, whose salaries are funded by our contributions and who are entrusted with the duty of serving the people, are instead subjecting us to repression. Does development mean offering lies, bribes and wedging divisions among us? It is a shame that middlemen dole out petty bribes to buy the consent of villagers, it is a shame that middlemen engineer conflicts among us to weaken community ties. Hired goondas are used to attack our youths before handing them over to the police.

The administration carries out midnight raids to break our fragile houses made with our sweat and blood, with our toil and labour. And they charge us with cases of damage to public property. They stop our friends and supporters from coming here by issuing prohibitory orders but they themselves bring in masked goondas hired by companies to attack us. As forest dwellers, we carry our traditional weapons on our shoulders or bows and arrows in our hands. They accuse us of carrying deadly weapons and put sections of the Arms Act on us. They put charges of attempt to murder on our people while they douse our sleeping children with tear gas and hit the elderly with lathis and guns inflicting head injuries.

The constant presence of police and goondas affects our work and weekly market activities. The fragile economic basis of our existence is being razed such that we are eating one less meal a day and are spending our meagre income on bails and making jail visits.When we turn to the courts for justice, we are trapped in prolonged bail hearings. When we get bail, further humiliation is inflicted through inhuman and casteist bail conditions. How will families survive when peasants and wage workers spend months in jails?

Is ours a republic of the people for the people or is it a republic for corporations? We wonder whether it is a crime to raise our voices for our constitutional rights, for justice, and for the protection of our environment. Isn’t the constitutional right to express dissent using peaceful means also ours? Are the laws meant to protect us or work only in the interest of companies? We have followed the due process of law and unanimously rejected the mining project in the environment public hearings. We have rejected the diversion of forest land for mining in our gram sabhas. However, clearances are being issued one by one for mining operations. Forest clearance has been initiated for the construction of the approach road to the mining site while the matter is pending in court. More recently, the central government’s expert panel has approved of environment clearance.

We often think we are fighting a big ghost of a system without any dialogue with elected representatives or officers. They never respond to our hundreds of appeals. But they descend on us like a ghost and attack everything we have. To suppress our voices, they have foisted hundreds of criminal cases on our people across all five panchayats. In the last three years, we have lost count of the number of arrests, incarcerations, and criminal cases. They have also done advance booking by putting 100 or 300 “others” in each FIR. Yet, we carry on the struggle with courage and determination.

Our struggle is for the past, present and future. It is for our cultural heritage and history. It is for the protection of the abode of Tij Raja and all our sacred groves. It is for the present times when to live and labour in dignity is being made impossible. And our struggle is to preserve natural resources for future generations. When and where have the revenue and profits that get siphoned from the land ever returned to the people of Odisha? There has always been wanton plunder of natural resources by the rich and powerful while our youths migrate to distant lands to earn wages. Let us uphold and work for the principle of intergenerational equity and protect natural resources. These hills, forests and streams have been there since thousands of years. They have nurtured our ancestors, they nurture us and they will nurture those yet to be born. Can there be any market price of our natural resources? They are neither for sale nor profits. They are for life and living. The earth is not for sale!

• We salute our brave fighters who are confined to prison walls for protecting the land and natural resources.
• We salute all struggling people and all marginalised communities who are up against the rich and powerful.
• We appeal for the unity of all mass movements in the hill ranges of the Eastern Ghats.

Join our voices to demand:

• Withdraw the proposed bauxite mining projects of Vedanta Limited and the Adani Group in Sijimali and Kutrumali and all mining projects in the Eastern Ghats.
• Release all prisoners from jail and quash the hundreds of fabricated cases on our people.
• Protect the land and the natural resources for future generations.

President, Subhas Singh Majhi; Vice President, Lai Majhi; Secretary, Laxman Majhi

Maa Mati Mali Surakhya Mancha (Sijimali-Kutrumali-Majhingimali),

Rayagada – Kalahandi, Odisha

[Courtesy: Countercurrents.org, an India-based independent online journal founded in 2002, publishing articles on peace, democracy, social justice, ecology, secularism, and people’s movements. Edited by Binu Mathew, it is known for giving space to progressive, grassroots, and alternative voices often ignored by mainstream media.]

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The Unmaking of Hasdeo: How Coal Is Reshaping a Forest and Its People

Utkarsh Mishra

In the Surguja district of Chhattisgarh, around 18,000 Adivasi people are watching the forest they have lived with for generations disappear tree by tree. Hasdeo Arand — recognised by the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education as the largest unfragmented forest in Central India — is being opened up for coal mining, while the legal protections meant to safeguard both the forest and its communities are being treated as obstacles to be cleared rather than rights to be upheld.

On July 7, 2025, the Chhattisgarh Forest Department recommended diverting 1,742.6 hectares of dense forest land for the Kente Extension coal block, allocated to Rajasthan Rajya Vidyut Utpadan Nigam Limited (RRVUNL), with Adani Enterprises as the mine developer and operator. The recommendation targets 99 per cent of the Kente Extension coal block — the third Adani-operated mine proposed inside Hasdeo Arand’s 170,000-hectare expanse. According to the official inspection report, at least 4.5 lakh trees are slated for felling.

As of May 2026, the story has largely slipped out of the national spotlight. There has been little sustained corporate media attention on the July 2025 clearance of the Kente Extension coal block, the allegations and findings around forged signatures on consent documents, or the scale of what is being proposed in Hasdeo. For the Adivasi communities living there, however, the crisis has not paused. The plan still involves the clearing of hundreds of thousands of trees across protected tribal forest land, while many residents continue to question how decisions affecting their homes and livelihoods were approved in the first place.

The Consent That Wasn’t

The Forest Rights Act, 2006, and the PESA Act, 1996, are unambiguous: forest land in Scheduled Areas cannot be diverted without the Gram Sabha’s informed, documented consent. In Hasdeo, that requirement has been treated as an obstacle to manage rather than a law to follow.

In July 2025, the Chhattisgarh Forest Department recommended a diversion that bypassed mandatory consent from tribal Gram Sabhas, whose approval is required by law under the PESA Act and the Forest Rights Act, according to a Down to Earth report.

The Ghatbarra village’s community forest rights — legally recognised under the FRA — were revoked by the state government on the grounds that ‘mining was already ongoing.’ In October 2025, the Chhattisgarh High Court upheld that cancellation, ruling that the CFRs were granted ‘by mistake,’ and that displaced families could claim monetary compensation but not restoration of their land or forest rights. The logic is circular and brutal: mining that proceeded before proper consent was obtained is then cited to invalidate the rights that stood in its way.

Chhattisgarh’s Governor had promised an inquiry into how consents for the Parsa mine were obtained after communities alleged fraud. The government approved the project anyway.

What Displacement Actually Looks Like

Large numbers have a way of flattening loss. Eighteen thousand people. Thousands of hectares. Lakhs of trees. They tell us the scale, but not what disappearance feels like.

What is being lost is not just land. Families are being split apart. Villages that existed for generations are being erased from the map. People are moved into resettlement colonies where the promise of a better life often arrives late, if at all.

For forest communities, displacement is not simply a change of address. The forest is their source of food, medicine, income, and memory. It shapes how they work, what they eat, and how they live through the year. When the forest goes, an entire way of life goes with it. Compensation may replace a house. It cannot easily replace everything that made that place home.

Sacred Ground, Broken

The loss of Hasdeo cannot be measured only in trees cut or coal extracted. For the communities that live there, the forest is woven into memory, belief, and identity. Certain hills, streams, and trees are not simply parts of the landscape; they are places of worship, stories, and ancestral connection. When these places are damaged or disappear, something far deeper than physical land is lost.

The environmental consequences extend well beyond the mining sites. Forests that once supported wildlife are shrinking, rivers and streams face increasing pressure, and dust from mining has become part of daily life in nearby villages. The costs are carried not only by the people being displaced today, but by the land and ecosystems that sustain the entire region.

A Resistance That Has Not Stopped

The Hasdeo Aranya Bachao Sangharsh Samiti has been fighting for over a decade. In October 2024, villagers of Salhi, Hariharpur, Ghatbarra, and Fatehpur faced Chhattisgarh police while opposing Phase II tree-felling. The Washington Post revealed in 2023 that the central government had deployed the Income Tax authorities, the Enforcement Directorate, and the Central Bureau of Investigation against Hasdeo activists — internal documents showed one environmentalist was accused of ‘conspiring against Adani’ simply for sharing research with foreign academics. After government raids, lawyers representing tribal communities in court quietly withdrew from the case.

Their demands remain unchanged: cancel all mining projects in Hasdeo Arand, reinstate Ghatbarra’s community forest rights, implement mandatory Gram Sabha consent under PESA, and recognise all individual and community forest rights across the region.

India has pledged to tackle climate change. It has also put in place laws that recognise the rights of forest-dwelling communities and their relationship with the land. On paper, both commitments are clear. In Hasdeo, however, the gap between promise and practice is difficult to ignore.

At the heart of this conflict is not a simple choice between development and conservation. The people of Hasdeo are not arguing that nothing should change or that economic growth should stop at the edge of the forest. Their demand is far more basic: that the rules meant to protect them be followed, that their consent matter, and that decisions about their future not be made without them.

That these remain demands, rather than guarantees, reveals what this struggle is really about. Hasdeo is not only a story about coal, forests, or climate targets. It is a story about whose voices count when difficult decisions are made, whose rights can be negotiated away, and what happens when communities are asked to bear the costs of progress while having little say in defining it. The future of Hasdeo will be decided in courts, government offices, and mining plans. But the question it raises is much larger: whether the protections promised by law mean anything when they are needed most.

[Utkarsh Mishra is a journalist based in Ranchi writing on law, labour rights, and the environment. His work has appeared in Feminism in India, The India Forum, Down to Earth, The Policy Circle, Verdicto News and Zee News. Courtesy: Countercurrents.org, an India-based independent online journal founded in 2002, publishing articles on peace, democracy, social justice, ecology, secularism, and people’s movements. Edited by Binu Mathew, it is known for giving space to progressive, grassroots, and alternative voices often ignored by mainstream media.]