Long gone is the time when climate disasters were being predicted for the future! Every ‘brink of climate catastrophe’ sign gets passed, and new warnings, more glaring and desperate, appear. People are dying due to heatwaves, floods, droughts, cyclones, and wildfires across continents. Despite all this, governments and corporations continue profiteering activities unabashedly. The role of multi-national corporations with the servitude of the state machinery is evident in causing this crisis. Imperialist powers continue to exploit the resources and labour of countless poor countries, and shift the burden of climate destruction on them as well.
Across India, corporate plunder has scoured forests, rivers, coasts, mountains, agricultural land, destroying the lives of Adivasis, peasantry, fisherfolk, workers, and landless communities. Since the transfer of power in 1947, then by the LPG reforms in the 1990s, and now under the fascist Hindutva regime, natural resources have increasingly been handed over to the private corporations under the language of ‘development’. Forests are cleared for mining projects, rivers diverted or covered up for industries, coasts privatised for ports and tourism, and agricultural land acquired for infrastructure.
In Central India, mineral-rich forests inhabited by Adivasi communities are now zones for extraction by mining corporations like Adani and Vedanta. In Hasdeo, Bastar in Chhattisgarh, and Sijimali in Odisha, we are currently witnessing massive mining projects despite widespread protests by the Adivasis. Entire ecosystems and livelihoods are being destroyed to feed the demands of thermal power and mineral industries. Forests that sustain biodiversity and traditional livelihoods are being reduced to a commodity to be played with for the corporate giants. Any resistance in these regions and the military sets up camp to eliminate these ‘security threats’!
The country’s rivers have become victims of this assault as well. These rivers today have become dumpyards of toxic industrial waste, chemical pollution and sites of extraction of sand and silt. These actions again affect the aquatic ecosystems and livelihoods of the people dependent on the water bodies. Mega dams constructed in the name of development have displaced lakhs of people, especially Adivasis and farmers, and that too, without any compensation and rehabilitation. Rivers are also diverted to meet the water needs of industries or commercial farming, neither of which benefits the people. The Ken-Betwa River Linking Project is a good example of how, in the name of development and water security, thousands of people will be displaced and large parts of Panna Tiger Reserve will be submerged, just so that commercial agriculturalists may gain the ‘surplus’ water from Ken river. Not a grain of sand is left untouched by the corporations. This is not an overstatement because the intensifying plunder by the sand mining mafias across India has exposed yet another brutality of corporate plunder in India, powered by the state. Illegal, corporate-backed sand extraction has ruined river systems from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. Sand mafias operate through links and contracts between politicians, contractors, police, and of course, corporates. Activists, journalists, whistle-blowers, exposing illegal mining have faced threats, and even been murdered.
India’s coastlines are another site of violent corporate assault. From Vishakhapatnam, Vizhinjam, Kanyakumari, Honnavar, Palghar, to Gujarat, the Sagarmala and other grand projects envision private ports to ease the transfer of natural resources of our country into the hands of the imperialists.
One might think urban areas cannot further contribute to this ecological and social stress. Lo and behold! The data centers that require thousands of liters of water per day to function are ironically being set up in urban water-scarce regions. Parts of Greater Noida, Bangalore, Visakhapatnam, where these will be set up already have depleted groundwater levels. The so-called digital economy, projected as clean and futuristic, rests upon enormous extraction of water, electricity, land, and labour.
In all these settings there is some universality. One, the people are not consulted in decisions that permanently alter the course of their lives. Two, when there is resistance against these private players, the state rushes in to crush any movement by the people to ensure smooth functioning of the corporations; military, judiciary, media, and legislature use their power to quash lives and livelihoods. Three, it is always the Adivasis, Dalits, Muslims, women, and landless communities that face the brunt of this corporate loot. This is a global pattern– in Brazil, the Amazon rainforest is being destroyed for mining, logging, and commercial agriculture, displacing millions of indigenous people and severely accelerating climate collapse. In Nigeria, large parts of the Niger Delta are being handed over to multinational corporations, destroying fishing livelihoods and poisoning rivers.
Imperialism in its death throes can only survive on extraction of resources and cheap labour. Across the world we are seeing how people are fighting back against these moribund forces! The only solution to this grim situation is channeling the movement against the climate crisis towards building a truly democratic society. Only through collective ownership of natural resources and democratic control by the working class can humanity break free from the cycle of corporate plunder and climate destruction.
Long live the fight for Jal-Jangal-Jameen!
