Land for the alumina refinery was spread over five Panchayats in S Kota Mandal and thus required separate decisions for all five. Despite bearing the name of a village council, each of the Panchayats consisted of a large number of villages and hamlets, none having more than a few hundred inhabitants and sometimes only a few families. Within each of the Panchayats there was only a relatively small amount of land being acquired meaning that many of the Panchayat members neither lost land themselves nor lived in the villages affected. The S Kota area being
101The described area would cover all the bauxite ore deposits of Visakhapatnam District.
non-Scheduled meant both tribal and non-tribal people were represented among the elected Panchayat representatives. Though not being of very large means, the Sarpanches were found to be significantly better off than most other residents and seemed to be somewhat isolated from pressures from those losing land. Crucially the Sarpanches were all Congress party-associated and non-tribal. Panchayats which are supposedly apolitical were found to be heavily dominated by Congress and TDP during fieldwork. Many of the key opposition figures were or had in the past been elected to local positions as TDP supporters (a situation found to be very similar in Araku and Ananthagiri Mandals).
Approvals according to Panchayat Raj were ‘engineered’ swiftly as soon as the refinery move to S Kota had been decided. An administrative order was passed to direct the local government-employed Panchayat staff to organise Panchayat meetings before end of December 2006 (Government of Andhra Pradesh, Mandal Development Organisation 2006). At the meetings identical resolutions were drafted by all five Congress sarpanches, according to interviews since they had been developed “in consultation with” the local Congress ZP politician. The only difference between the draft resolutions seen were the details of survey numbers to be acquired (Kiltampalem Gram Panchayat 2006; Mushidipalli Gram Panchayat 2006; Interviews with sources with insight into S Kota panchayat operations, S Kota 19/3 2008).
The Panchayat member of the village surveyed as part of fieldwork, also a tribal, was continuously met in a drunken state during fieldwork and admitted to knowing nothing of these plans. Frequently he would simply put his thumb print to any document he was presented, given that he was illiterate. Whether or not signed and verified copies of the Panchayat and Gram Sabha resolutions actually existed remains unknown since it was not possible to obtain these.
Certainly no villagers had ever seen the resolutions or discussed them. The resolutions can only be assumed to exist since land acquisition and the environmental approval were able to move ahead.
The long reach of the bauxite alliance to the refinery site has its roots in the control over local political institutions and politicians. The exact nature of this control is difficult to grasp but has to do with money power and to some extent, the control over the bureaucracy and all supposedly independent government institutions. An interview with an agricultural extension worker frequently sent out to do surveys for land acquisition confirmed the behaviour encountered for the S Kota Panchayat approvals. The administrators stay away while party workers and politicians
figure out ways to deal with those opposing land acquisition (Interview Local Government Employee, Visakhapatnam 14/3 2008). What is presented seems to conform with the wider experience of studies in India that “decentralisation have failed to prevent a local (and primarily landed) elite from controlling the local bodies” (Johnson et al. 2003, 2).
Bureaucratic creativity in relation to land acquisition has tended to be in favour of displacement with a minimum of local deliberation. Srinivasulu describes the general administrative involvement in land acquisition for Special Economic Zones across Andhra Pradesh as follows:
The role of local revenue administration ... is crucial in making or rather pressurizing farmers to concede without resistance to the establishment of an SEZ [Special Economic Zone].
Using their connections with the local pyravikaars [local fixers] and the Panchayat raj functionaries, the subaltern bureaucracy of the Revenue Department could successfully spread the message that there was no point in resisting land acquisition as the government has supreme power to acquire ‘any land, any where, any time’ (Srinivasulu 2010, 13).
An important point not elaborated by Srinivasulu is to what extent, if at all, the Revenue employees worked on their own initiative or were directed by higher up interests. The experience at the refinery land acquisition was that even though local employees would get rewarded for
‘efficient’ land acquisition, the real control was with high level politicians who would make phone calls to emphasise current priorities by directing employees of various departments to drop other work and go out to do surveys.
While it was possible for JSW to secure the necessary Panchayat and Gram Sabha approvals via Congress party connections at the refinery, much energy has been spent on not having to go through the same procedures for the mines in the Agency. It is not clear why it would have been more difficult to get the desired decisions in a similar manner given that similarly ‘politicised’
Panchayats were found in Araku during fieldwork dominated by Congress and TDP. Perhaps a remnant of earlier difficulties to convince the tribal MLAs of the Tribes Advisory Council about the 2001 mining project’s benefits still remained (Rajendra Prasad 2000). Or maybe it was simply since the unclear status of Panchayat regulations in the Agency opened up for the possibility to avoid potentially ‘messy’ discussions completely.
APMDC has several times responded that it feels there is no need to consult Panchayats before mining starts but changed the reason why this is the case from time to time. At one point it was since major minerals like bauxite do not need consultation since PESA only gives local decision-making rights over minor minerals (The Hindu 2008c; Human Rights Forum 2008b). Later
APMDC tried to view the environmental public hearing as sufficient in terms of consultation.
One unnamed APMDC employee was quoted saying that “[a]s per the Mines and Minerals Regulations the outcome of the public hearing is construed as the consent of the people” ('Senior APMDC Officer' cited in The Times of India 2009). These rare statements from APMDC could be easily countered in the media by arguments about how PESA also gives decision-making rights over forest produce and water bodies, while the environmental public hearing is based on entirely different legislation compared to both the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act cited in the news article and PESA, making APMDC position(s) irrelevant. But statements in the press were not enough for inclusion and the protests continued with further demands for PESA/Panchayat deliberations (as discussed in chapter 7).