June at paulcarvill.com, the home of Paul Carvill on the web 2010 at paulcarvill.com, the home of Paul Carvill on the web

This article in the Guardian about the exploitation and effective displacement of tribal people in Orissa, India by the British mining company Vedanta will make you very angry. To further your fury I would also recommend reading Arundhati Roy’s excoriating piece in Outlook magazine on the oppression, illegal eviction and phony war against the tribsl and forest peoples of India. A quote,

The antagonists in the forest are disparate and unequal in almost every way. On one side is a massive paramilitary force armed with the money, the firepower, the media, and the hubris of an emerging Superpower. On the other, ordinary villagers armed with traditional weapons, backed by a superbly organised, hugely motivated Maoist guerrilla fighting force with an extraordinary and violent history of armed rebellion. The Maoists and the paramilitary are old adversaries and have fought older avatars of each other several times before: Telangana in the ’50s; West Bengal, Bihar, Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh in the late ’60s and ’70s; and then again in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Maharashtra from the ’80s all the way through to the present. They are familiar with each other’s tactics, and have studied each other’s combat manuals closely. Each time, it seemed as though the Maoists (or their previous avatars) had been not just defeated, but literally, physically exterminated. Each time, they have re-emerged, more organised, more determined and more influential than ever. Today once again the insurrection has spread through the mineral-rich forests of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa and West Bengal—homeland to millions of India’s tribal people, dreamland to the corporate world.

Also, Simon Chambers’ documentary film Cowboys In India on Vedanta’s deeply troubling disregard for the people whose land and livelihoods they are poisoning, and this Telegraph article from April 2008.