Mine Menace
- Two aluminium plants, of AnRaK and Jindal South West, coming up in tribal areas of Visakhapatnam
- APMDC will mine and supply them bauxite ore from some 3,600 ha of forested hills, home to tribals
- 2 lakh tribals from 270 villages (66 in Jerrala alone) likely to be affected, directly or indirectly
- Tremendous environmental damage feared, including that to rivers Sarada, Gosthani and Sileru and the Raiwada and Thatipudi reservoirs
- Protests growing in strength
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The hills and valleys are as scenic, their tribal inhabitants as abject, the industrial interests threatening them as powerful and rapacious. But, despite considerable mobilisation and the larger numbers of lives facing disruption, the resistance of tribals in Andhra Pradesh seems to have drawn less attention than that of the Dongria Kondh of Orissa against the Vedanta group. Like Orissa’s Kalahandi district, one of the...
