As we inch closer to observing another World Environment Day mandated by the United Nations to fall on the 5th of June every year, the hundreds of treaties, summits, and conferences signed and convened by the economic superpowers have never rung hollower. The global climate crisis looms larger with extreme weather events and global boiling on the rise while we have our political leaders representing the interests of capitalist leeches, with no mitigation of the crisis visible on the horizon. The current model of development based on the loot of natural resources remains the single biggest factor driving this climate crisis. As of now every square kilometre of our subcontinent has been scouted exhaustively by the mining giants in their quest for profit. The people are left bereaved of land and livelihood with a cratered surface in the wake of massive deforestation and mining activities. Even coastlines and rivers are not safe from these capitalist scavengers. For people facing the direct brunt of this development model serving the profit-making interests of a rich minority, their cries echo similar stories of displacement, corporatisation, and militarisation.
The moment corporatisation is met with people’s resistance, the state takes position as keepers of corporate interests, unleashing its wrath in a hundred forms through the police, paramilitary, bureaucracy, and even the judicial process. Thus, corporatisation and militarisation go hand-in-hand, one feeding off the other. Corporate interests can only be served at the expense of the peace of the people snatched away militarily by the state.
We see this repeating all around us in myriad forms. The vast mineral-rich tracts of forests starting from West Bengal through Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and Maharashtra, is home to millions of India’s Adivasis. This stretch, called by the media as the ‘Maoist corridor’ is dubbed as the ‘MoUist corridor’ by Arundhti Roy who writes in length about the extent of corporatisation ongoing there. The Indian government has perhaps signed hundreds of Memoranda of Understanding with giants like the Mittals, Jindals, Tata, Essar, Posco, Rio Tinto, BHP, Vedanta, etc., effectively handing over the fate of the millions surviving on these forests. Hence, Amit Shah’s repeated emphasis on 31st March, 2026 being the deadline for sanitising this land ‘infested’ by the Maoists. Security forces have killed 400 and arrested 1422 people in the last one and a half years alone, many of who are innocent Adivasis. Amidst appeals for peace, the CPI (Maoist) general secretary and 27 other rebels were killed recently by security forces. Even in death many of their bodies were not handed over to their families flouting court orders. This denial of dignity in death shows the extent to which this fascist state can stoop to appease their corporate masters.
If we look at Hasdeo forests of Chhattisgarh, the Adivasis are fighting against Adani’s mining schemes that will be endangering India’s largest contiguous stretch of forest land. Only last year, local activists were brutally beaten up for resisting deforestation.
Coming south to Karnataka, displacement, resistance, and militarisation are omnipresent. Displacement of farmers from agricultural lands is rampant in the outskirts of Bengaluru, particularly in Devanahalli taluka where the locals have been protesting land-grab by the government for 3+ years now. Recently, there has been an upheaval in Honnavar of Uttara Kannada over the construction of a private port that will bring an end to local fishing communities. Story of another sustained resistance emerges from Nagarhole where Jenu Kurubas have reclaimed their ancestral land within the tiger reserve. There are other Adivasi communities like Betta Kurubas, Paniya, Solaga, Yerava, Malai Kudiya, and Asula in the Mysore-Kodagu region that have been evicted to promote tourism, reducing them to bonded labourers in the local plantations. These are the plantations developed by the British on the graves of the forests of Western Ghats. Please read the June issue for updates on these struggles. In all these places militarisation has been a common thread.
Even if we look at conflict zones like Manipur or Kashmir, the mining angle jumps out right at our face. From Lithium mines of Kashmir ‘waiting’ to fuel electric vehicles globally, to limestone, chromite, malachite, azurite, magnetite, and various platinum group elements (PGE) discovered in Manipur, facilitating the loot of jal-jangal-jameen remains on the priority list for the Indian state. Anyone who opposes these activities that run the engine of capitalism are labeled ‘anti-development’ or ‘anti-national’. What it means to truly care for the land and its people gets blurred by the bourgeois chest-thumping over mining, damming, and port-building.
As the UN focuses on individual efforts to reduce plastic pollution this year, let us resolve to stand firm against the rampant loot of jal-jangal-jameen. Let us stand strong against profit-making activities conducted at the cost of human and nature. Let us also reiterate that there can be no solution to the ticking clock of climate crisis under capitalism, only a system based on true democracy of the masses can provide a solution.
