'We Will Not Leave The Forest': Tribals In Chhattisgarh Vow To Protect Hasdeo Aranya

“What other options are we left with? We approached everyone and everyone kicked us around like a football. When Congress was out of power, they promised to stop the felling of trees if they formed the government. Then they came to power and the tree-felling continued. Those in power now (the Bharatiya Janata Party) had made the same promise, and they too have reneged on it. Where do we go now? We will not leave the forest even if we end up paying with our lives.”

Ramlal Kariyam, 38, has been sitting on a dharna for the past several weeks to protest the clearing of trees in the Hasdeo Aranya area, a fight he vows to keep up until his last breath.

The forest of the Hasdeo Aranya is spread over 1.70 lakh hectares across the districts of Korba, Surajpur, and Surguja in Chhattisgarh. In the past, thousands of trees were cut in these areas to make way for mining. Since December 2, 2023, large-scale deforestation has once again been underway, provoking protests not only in Chhattisgarh but from tribals all over the country. Many of the protesting activists and villagers have been detained by the police.

In three villages of the panchayat that falls under the Udaipur block of the Surguja district, as much as 90 per cent of the population is on strike against the clearing of the Hasdeo forest. Kariyam, who is associated with the Hasdeo Aranya Bachao Sangharsh Samiti, tells us that the tribals of the entire Surguja division, including women, men, and even children, are sitting in protest to save Hasdeo, and will do so until death.

Speaking to Outlook, Kariyam says further, “When Vishnu Deo Sai became Chief Minister, we thought that a Chief Minister who belongs to our caste would certainly work for our betterment. But he is just a puppet who is working to bring Adani's rule."

According to Kariyam, during the Congress term, 15,000 trees covering 42 hectares were cut in his area alone. The villagers fear that 2.5 lakh more trees will be cut – a target that the government of Chhattisgarh has appeared to gallop towards this past month.

What is the Hasdeo Aranya movement all about?

There has been a decade-long movement to save the Hasdeo Aranya, dubbed the lungs of central India, from coal mining. During this period, coal mining was promoted initially by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, and it progressed at an accelerated pace afterward under the Congress-led government that came to power in 2018.

The first phase of the Parsa Coal Mining Project started in the area in 2013. Upon its completion, the project is now being expanded for a second phase. For this, the Parsa East and Kanta Basan (PEKB) blocks are allotted to the Rajasthan Rajya Vidyut Utpadan Nigam Limited, which is operated by the Adani Group.

Alok Shukla, convenor of the Chhattisgarh Bachao Andolan and a part of the Hasdeo movement, says that by 2019, 1.5 lakh trees were cut officially on 762 hectares of forest in the first phase of the PEKB. As part of the second phase, 140 hectares out of the designated 1136 hectares have been cleared since September 26, 2023. According to government sources, about 25 thousand trees have been cut so far. Shukla claims that the actual number of trees cut is much higher. According to the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), the Hasdeo Aranya houses, on average, some four hundred trees per hectare. Shukla estimates that a total of eight lakh trees will be sacrificed for the PEKB project.

Coal is basically a state subject but the right to allocate or auction it lies with the centre. However, both the centre and the state have equal rights on forests. The state government can stop the cutting of trees if it wishes so, says Shukla, because it is the state that issues the environmental clearance and the final order for deforestation and it has the right to withdraw its orders as well.

The government says the country is in great need of coal. Shukla counters that coal is not the only option for power generation. Besides, by the government’s own admission, the country has enough coal to meet its needs for the next 70 years from sources other than Hasdeo.

Shukla continues, “Chhattisgarh has 55 thousand million tonnes of coal, whereas Hasdeo has only about a tenth of that, i.e., five thousand million tonnes. As it is, Chhattisgarh accounts for as much as 21 per cent of the total coal production in the country. Is it necessary to extract coal from an area like Hasdeo where the people have been fighting already for their constitutional rights?” He also points out how successive state governments too have acknowledged the widespread destruction that will result from mining in the Hasdeo Aranya.

How Congress and BJP changed their tunes after coming to power

Several Congress leaders and former ministers have joined the tribals in opposing the cutting of trees in the Hasdeo Aranya. Congress leader T. S. Singh Deo, who was also Deputy Chief Minister in the previous Chhattisgarh government, spoke with current Chief Minister Sai on the phone to demand a ban on the cutting of trees and the opening of new mines.

The Chief Minister countered by laying the blame squarely on the Congress’ door because it was the previous government of Bhupesh Baghel that issued the order for felling the trees.

The order in question was issued by the Baghel government in April 2022. Protests began as soon as the first trees were cut. Subsequently, the cutting was halted though no written order to that effect was issued. Chief Minister Sai holds the previous Congress government responsible for the original order.

Chhattisgarh has been governed by the BJP and the Congress by turns. The decade-long Hasdeo Aranya movement has received the support of both these parties at different times. Before 2018, when the BJP held power in the state, the Congress opposed mining in Hasdeo. When the Congress formed the government, the BJP railed against the cutting of trees in the allocated coal blocks.

In a notable development, on July 26, 2022, the members of the then-ruling Congress and the main opposition BJP passed a unanimous resolution to request the central government to cancel all the coal mine allocations in the Hasdeo Aranya area.

Another notable fact in the context of the Hasdeo Aranya movement is that when there was a BJP government in the state, there was a UPA coalition government at the centre, and when a Congress government was formed in the state in 2018, the BJP was ruling at the centre. Now for the first time since December 2023, there is a BJP government both in the state and at the centre.

Rahul Gandhi has been vocal about Hasdeo since 2015. He has said in many of his public meetings that the tribals have the right to water, forest, and land and that no one can deprive them of this right. Despite this, in April 2022, the Congress government in Chhattisgarh gave the go-ahead for cutting the trees.

Hasdeo is proof of both the main political parties’ dedication to crony capitalism.

What are the side effects of denuding the Hasdeo Aranya?

Observers have drawn attention to the similarity between the Chipko movement and the way the villagers have protested the felling of trees in the Hasdeo Aranya. After the order came in April 2022, women from multiple villages of Surajpur went and hugged the trees to save them from being cut. This shows how important the Hasdeo forest is to the tribals and the other traditional forest dwellers of the region. 

Mining in Hasdeo will adversely affect not only the livelihood of these people, but also the environment of central India, the health of irrigation in large parts of Chhattisgarh, and the elephant habitats, with dangerous consequences for all.

Following a Supreme Court order, the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education and the WII released their study report in May 2022 in which they delineated the negative impact that mining in Hasdeo will have on biodiversity and wildlife habitat in the region.

Senior journalist Alok Prakash Putul, who has been covering the Hasdeo Aranya for a decade, views the matter through a constitutional lens. He tells Outlook, “All the rules and regulations, be it the PESA Act (Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act) or the Forest Rights Act, have been tossed aside to allow coal mining in Hasdeo. They have also completely ignored the findings of the WII that cautioned strictly against coal mining. The destruction of the Hasdeo forest will affect the whole of central India. It will disturb the fine balance of biodiversity and exacerbate global warming, but that is not all; it will also accelerate the conflict between humans and elephants. There will be catastrophic changes in the climate.”

Putul also warns about the large-scale impact on paddy farming if the Hasdeo River were to dry up, which might happen because the catchment area of the river is the imperiled Hasdeo forest. He tells us that four lakh hectares of fields in Chhattisgarh are irrigated by this river.

Protesting against the cutting of trees during the previous Congress government, the tribals and indigenous people living in the Hasdeo Aranya area had walked three hundred kilometres to meet the Governor in Raipur, the capital of Chhattisgarh. They had said that the consent of the Gram Sabhas that was included among the various approvals procured for coal mining was a sham. Following this, the Governor issued an order in February 2022 to maintain the status quo until the matter was investigated. However, the cutting of trees has now resumed without any investigation.

Reviewing the whole matter, Putul wonders, who is that entity that stands above all and is hellbent on mining the area, with such consummate disdain for the lives of the people, the orders of the Supreme Court and the Governor, the resolution passed by the state Assembly, and the strict warning issued by the WII.

Translated by Kaushika Draavid