Villagers lose ‘homes and land’ to feed India’s booming power sector

This news has been read 10032 times!

PIDARWAH, India, Nov 4, (RTRS): Siyaram Saket refuses to give up his one-and-a-half acres of farmland in central India – no matter how much the coal mining company offers him. Whatever the amount, said the 55-year-old, it will not be enough to replace the value of the fertile land feeding his family of six in Pidarwah village, Singrauli district.

He knows of people in nearby villages who moved on the promise by the government and power companies of money, jobs or homes in exchange for their land a decade ago. Now homeless, they are still waiting for compensation, he said. “We can see what happened to those villagers. They’ve become beggars,” Saket explained. “We’re not going to let that happen with us.”

As energy-hungry India seeks to fuel its continued economic growth, millions of people are being robbed of their homes by companies building power plants on their land or mining the coal below it, activists and villagers say.

India’s energy output has tripled in the last 15 years – according to CARE Ratings, a credit rating agency – making it the world’s third-largest electricity market.

In Singrauli district alone, more than 1.3 million people have been displaced as the result of government deals with power companies since the 1960s, says Climate Agenda, a local nonprofit. The government and the power companies often renege on the terms of their land acquisitions, said Priya Pillai, a senior researcher at Asar Social Impact Advisors, a sustainable energy consultancy, who has worked for several years in Singrauli.

“The biggest problems in the area are displacement, a lack of livelihood and environmental degradation,” Pillai told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“Mines (have) destroyed entire lives and whatever was promised in return never happened.” The government led the first wave of displacements in the mid-1950s to build the 300-megawatt Rihand Dam, said Ravi Shekhar, a campaigner with Climate Agenda. Lured by the steady electricity supply, private and state-owned companies soon followed, he said. Some families have been moved as many as four times to accommodate energy projects, he added.

This news has been read 10032 times!