Undeterred by union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh’s opposition to fresh mining in Saranda, Jharkhand — India’s largest iron ore reserve, and also its largest sal forest — union minister of state for environment and forests, Jayanthi Natarajan, cleared mining leases for Jindal Steel in the forest’s Ghatkuri region.

Natarajan gave her approval to recommendations of the Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) to give Jindal Steel 512 hectares in Saranda’s core area. Interestingly, the FAC had rejected a proposal for the leases to Jindal two years back noting that that the core area was of great ecological significance as a part of an elephant corridor in the Singhbhum region.

The question on mining in Saranda has got increasingly complex in the recent years given its context of ecology, its tribal inhabitants and their rights to forest resources and the presence of Maoists. Jairam Ramesh had, on many occasions, argued against fresh mining permits, especially for privately-owned companies, citing its undermining impact on the state’s anti-Maoist strategy. The minister had said to counter left wing extremism, the state needed to adopt a four-pronged strategy — of security operations to combat armed cadres, setting governance right through development packages to remedy grievances, delivering justice through the legal system for individuals caught in the extremists conflict with the state, and of political empowerment of tribal people, especially with regard to their rights over the forest, its land and its resources. Ramesh has also written recently to the prime minister, who heads the cabinet committee on investment that has been pushing for fast-tracking clearances to pending projects, saying that the move will undermine the rural development ministry’s Rs 270-crore Saranda Development Plan (SDP), a governance revival project launched in Saranda in December 2011. With certain sections of the civil society claiming that the Plan had been launched to ‘literally smoothen the roads for entry of private mining companies’, the minister had told Governance Now in Ranchi last year that his ministry would consider rolling back SDP if private mining were to be allowed.

Mining and new permits have triggered many concerns about Saranda. Saryu Roy, a former BJP MLA and activist from Jamshedpur, said, “First, Ramesh overruled the FAC recommendation against mining licence for SAIL (Steel Authority of India Limited) in Chiria in 2009. He later explained that SAIL got the go-ahead because it was public sector undertaking (PSU). He said that he was against private mining but now his own government has cleared Jindal Steel.”

“The move is bound to have large-scale effects on the environment given that Ghatkuri is in an ecologically sensitive zone. It is not just about the unsustainable mining practices that would follow. It is also about transportation. As it is, companies are under-reporting production and sneaking out ore, thus, under-reporting transportation as well. With fresh mining licences, the only things that would accrue to the government are environmental and revenue losses. Moreover, there has been no environmental impact assessment of the road network being built in Saranda at the moment,” he told Governance Now.

Roy also believes that the government will not be able to check green law violations in the area. “If you look at the companies mining in Saranda, all of them flouted the green laws blatantly. For example, some of them claimed in their compliance (of environmental regulations) reports that they have no ‘first order streams’ that have to be protected in their areas. Some have said that they are mining well above the groundwater level to avoid having to set up and report the mandatory monitoring of groundwater. This is dangerous trend. Even if you are mining on the top of a hill, it has to have water below its surface that you need to monitor. If it (the government) has not been able to enforce these basic laws for existing companies, including one of its own, not much can be expected of it when new companies mushroom in Saranda,” he explained. He said that he had come across many tribal villages where the streams had dried or had become unusable (for potable water) because of nearby mining activity.

Another rousing concern, Roy alleged, was the complicity of the forest officials in the awarding of licences. “They are behaving more like mining officials. There are efforts from ground up in the department to sell away the very forests they have been deployed to safeguard,” he claimed, saying that forest officials assist the mining lobby in making sure that reports don’t become hindrances to licences.

Roy’s concerns are not fringe ones. Many in Saranda, even those politically opposed to him, seem to be sharing his concerns. Sushil Barla, a tribal rights activist and Congress leader from Manoharpur, the block from which most of Saranda is governed, told Governance Now, “SDP had roused hope among us – that the government had our interests in mind as well and not just the forest resources. Union minister Ramesh ji came and spoke to the villagers. But now, the implementation of the Plan is crippled by graft among the officials and the people’s hope is wearing thin.”

He fears that the move for fresh mining licences could send out the “wrong signals” to the locals. “Earlier, the Maoists entered and expanded in Saranda promising to uphold our rights to the forest and all its resources, including the land. Then, they let business continue as usual for the mining companies for levies. That’s when the SDP talked about Forest Rights Act and other laws giving tribals hope. With the latest move, the government is undoing everything that it had built and hoped to build with SDP. Now, people are asking why the government has not given van pattas (titles to forest land) and if it is because it wants to give away the land to mining companies. The messy implementation of some parts of the Plan is also not helping. These doubts could give the Maoists a chance for a comeback. That would be unfortunate and tragic. The government needs to do something fast before things slip away entirely,” he said.

While the investment climate in the country and globally may make the decision to clear mining projects in the region seem logical, the government also needs to take into account the aspirations of the people caught in conflict zone. If the state needs them by its side, it will have to demonstrate greater sincerity in upholding their interests. In Saranda, mining, whether public-owned like SAIL, or private-owned, even responsibly, like in the case of Tata Steel (which mines at Noamundi, a fringe of the forest), has not bettered the tribal people’s condition, neither economically nor socially, to a visible extent. The interventions, routed through corporate social responsibility, are patchy to the extreme of being negligible. At the same time, mining activities have significantly eroded traditional livelihoods.