Indigenous people's rights to land and livelihood.

[Muriel kakani]

Globally, in the name of progress and development, indigenous people who inhabit world's richest regions in natural resources, face the gloomy prospect of dispossession and displacement due to mining, oil and gas development, large dams, plantations, industrial farming, industries, thermal plants….

Out of planet's 200 eco-regions or biodiversity hotspots, 80% are inhabited by indigenous people. There is a strong and definite correlation between regions of high biodiversity and regions inhabited by indigenous people. Indigenous people's attitude towards nature and their vast amount of ecological knowledge resulting from a long history of managing the environment has played a crucial role in the conservation of biological diversity on earth.

In India too, the tribal belt that stretches from Gujarat in the west, up to West Bengal in the east, and encompassing the states of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand overlaps with the map of natural resource-rich India. For example, the state of Jharkand meaning “forest tract” and populated by 30 % Adivasis is the leadingproducer of mineral wealth in the country: iron ore, coal, copper ore, mica, bauxite, graphite, limestone, and uranium. Jharkand accounts for 40% of the mineral resources of India. The total value of mineral production is amounted to over Rs. 3000crores.

And what it costs in human suffering to rape Mother Earth and extract those Rs. 3000 crores has been best documented in the following films that expose most truthfully the injustice that has been done to indigenous people in the name of development.

Read more... and see Buddha weeps in Jadugoda

[Vinodh Valluri]

Thank you for sharing this information. It is unfortunate that Indians would rather [a majority] not think about the repercussions of their mad dash towards so called 'progress', which is nothing but the defilement of one's body, one's nation and one's planet. Here in the US, results of this "progress" are evident in the Gulf of Mexico, and the polluted air above Texas... Why does India, even after "Bhopal" continue to sacrifice its environmental and social chastity in the name of industrial development?