Why in news?
In Tamilnadu peaceful demonstration of the Sterlite protest has been violently ended up through police action.
What is the brief account of Sterlite protest?
- The Sterlite Copper Industries is owned by the Vedanta Mining Corporation and setup in 1994 at Thoothukudi, Tamilnadu.
- The industry has been categorized has critically danger by NGT as it releases toxic by-products.
- Local grievances since the establishment of the company has been ignored in the quest for turning Tamil Nadu into the dynamic industrial hub it had become.
- Complaints from locals about the air and water pollution posed by the smelter date back to the time the plant was set up in 1997.
- Since then, there have been several attempts to close the plant only to have them overturned by the machinery of the state.
- In 2013, local complaints about eye irritation and respiratory problems were dismissed by the local bureaucracy.
- Soon after a gas leak the then Chief Minister order the closure of the plant, an order that was overturned on appeal by the National Green Tribunal.
- The plant’s licence to operate expired on March 31 this year, the application for a renewal having been rejected on grounds that the company had not complied with local environmental laws.
What happened recently in Thoothukudi?
- Amidst of various controversies the company has announced that it was investing Rs 25 billion towards doubling the capacity of its existing facility.
- Since March, there has been a series of peaceful protests against this expansion.
- This alerted the state administration as it would have read the signals of a simmering crisis that demanded intermediation between aggrieved locals and the company.
- After 99 days of peaceful protests state government held protestors for inviting reprisals from the armed state security apparatus.
- Which ended up in a violent clash between the police forces and protestors, 13 innocent people lost their lives and several other demonstrators were seriously injured.
What need to be understood from such tragedy?
- Tuticorin tragedy holds a critical lesson for the political leadership of all states that hope to bank on rapid industrialisation to create jobs and move up the development ladder.
- It is that people and politicians do not necessarily view industrial development through the same prism.
- For the former, it can spell dispossession of land or a deterioration of lifestyle, livelihood and health.
- The latter often fail to understand these deep-seated reservations in their quest for the glittering electoral prize of job creation.
- Thus the failure to address the genuine apprehensions of the people imaginatively harmonise corporate action with local concerns.
Source: Business Standard
