Date:24/04/2003 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2003/04/24/stories/2003042403061200.htm

National

Tribals displaced by coal mines seek compensation

By Our Staff Correspondent

NEW DELHI APRIL 23. It has been a decade since the World Bank approved the Coal India Environmental and Social Mitigation Project (ICSESMP) for funding the opencast coalmines at Hazaribagh in Jharkhand (erstwhile Bihar) and two years since the fund was stopped on completion of the loan term, but the displaced people of Parez village are yet to get compensation.

This, despite the fact that the Inspection Panel of the World Bank — a unit with powers to conduct investigations that reports directly to the Bank's Board — found the management guilty of 31 violations in this project.

The panel sent its report to the management in November last for response within six weeks, but there has been no word so far. The 100-page report has accused the World Bank management of violating its own policies on resettlement, indigenous people's rights, lack of environmental assessment and project supervision.

Having laid its hands on this so-far confidential report, the Chotanagpur Adivasi Sewa Samiti, along with several other non-governmental organisations, has submitted an action plan to the World Bank executive directors, seeking compensation for the displaced.

``We would want the World Bank to fully endorse and accept this action plan and ensure its implementation for all the projects funded by it that invariably displace the indigenous people,'' says Bina Stanis, member of the Samiti. The post-project audit is not sufficient to address these issues, the action plan recommends, adding that there must be an independent agency actively involved in supervision and remedial programme.

The action plan suggests a policy statement to be made about the necessity of base line surveys to record all common property resources and ensure continued access to natural resources such as land, forests and water.

Rejecting the one-time cash grant method, as applied to the Parez villagers, the action plan suggests that the grant be replaced by other options such as company jobs, replacement of land, and regular transitional allowances to be calculated according to a known time-bound transition period after displacement.

Importantly, the people should have a right to say no to the mining of their villages and the financial institutions should be barred from using their power to impose their ideologies of development which are harmful to the people and bypass their constitutional rights.

The Parez mine is one of the 24 opencast mines, started by the Central Coalfields Limited with the help of World Bank in 1993. A large percentage of the people displaced as a result of this mining are tribals who lived in the dense forests and survived on farming. The land acquired for mining was not tenancy land but Government land, which tribals were cultivating under traditional rights.

The Inspection Panel points out that the management's failure to ensure that the original Resettlement Action Plan reflected the ground reality resulted in many problems. Many of the displaced people have not been compensated at full replacement cost.

It says that it was difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile the Bank's aim of development with a one-time cash grant for acquisition of home and land. ``Presenting a poor oustee, whose previous source of survival included a small patch of land, with a cheque may be a legal way of getting them to move on, but it should not be confused with development,'' the report says.