2023-06-19 17:16:02
Par Nikhil Inamdar BBC News, Barsu
3 hours ago
image caption,
Manasi Bole is among the protesters who do not want the refinery in Ratnagiri.
“We don’t want this chemical refinery. We won’t let dirty oil from an Arab country destroy our pristine environment,” Manasi Bole says.
She is one of thousands protesting plans to acquire a vast laterite plateau – flanked by cliffside fishing villages, mango orchards and ancient petroglyphs – to build the world’s largest petrochemical refinery. of the world in the ecologically fragile Konkan belt in western India.
Angry protests erupted in Ratnagiri district in India’s western state of Maharashtra in late April as authorities began testing the ground for the megaproject to be built by a consortium made up of Indian state oil companies and global giants Saudi Aramco and Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC).
Thousands of villagers, women in the lead, braved the intense summer temperatures and lay down on the roads to prevent officials from entering the site. Many others shaved their heads and went on hunger strike to show their disagreement.
Talks with the villagers failed, so police imposed a curfew on their movements and used batons and tear gas to disperse protesters. Protesters and activists once morest the refinery have been arrested, some for several days.
Across the region, discontent is simmering over what villagers accuse of being “undemocratic and coercive” tactics by the authorities to impose on them a gigantic industrial project they have fiercely opposed for nearly a decade.
Assembly of the opposition
In all the villages we visited, the refinery is causing concern.
“They say the plateau is barren land, but it is a source of water for our springs, a place where we go to get berries and where we grow vegetables,” Ms Bole said.
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Fisherman Imtiaz Bhatkar said he fears every day that he will lose his livelihood because of the refinery project.
Aboard his trawler, fisherman Imtiaz Bhatkar said he feared losing his livelihood every day because of the refinery project.
“We will not be allowed to fish within 10 km because the tankers will be moored at sea,” Bhatkar said. “About 30,000 to 40,000 people – local and outside – depend on fishing in this village alone. What are they going to do?”
Mango growers in the region – renowned for its highly prized Alphonso mangoes – told us that even the slightest air pollution and deforestation would seriously harm their yields, given that the Alphonso variety is very sensitive to the vagaries of wind and weather. meteorological.
mired in politics
Successive Maharashtra state governments have taken a fast-paced stance on the refinery. They supported it when in power and challenged it when in opposition.
Originally planned as a $40 billion undertaking, the project’s size of 60 million tons per year had to be reduced by a third due to long delays in its implementation.
The project was first announced in 2015 to be built in the village of Nanar, a few kilometers from the current site in the village of Barsu in Ratnagiri. The plans were scrapped following encountering strong opposition from Nanar residents, its village council and environmental groups.
The state’s previous chief minister, Uddhav Thackeray, revived the project last year, proposing Barsu as a new site. But he is no longer in power and has changed his mind in favor of the inhabitants.
image caption,
In April, protesters braved intense summer temperatures and stretched out on the roads to prevent police from entering the site.
The current government, made up of a splintered faction of Mr Thackeray’s party and the BJP, says resistance to the plan is politically motivated.
“This is a non-polluting green refinery. As industry minister, it is my job to dispel misunderstandings of people who are misled by outside forces,” said Uday Samant, a minister. of the State, at the BBC.
Contrary to popular claims, the petroglyphs – or rock carvings – in the area, which are now part of UNESCO’s tentative World Heritage List, will not be damaged, he added.
Mr. Samant also claimed that the government has already acquired 3,000 of the 5,000 acres of land on which the refinery will be built. What the BBC saw on the ground, however, belied some of his claims.
For example, soil testing for the project took place just meters from some of the plateau’s 170 petroglyphs. Authorities brushed aside objection letters from at least six local village councils, arguing that the residents of those hamlets did not own the land on which the refinery would stand.
But residents say they were tricked into selling plots of land at ridiculous prices to investors – some of whom were politicians, police officers and civil servants – without being told they would be handed over for a refinery project.
“The government is allowing the fate of this region to be decided by 200 investors rather than its people,” said Satyajit Chavan, an anti-refinery activist who spent six nights in jail for posting social media messages inciting locals to join the protests.
Ecology versus economy
In this tropical idyll, the differences over the refinery are multiple: geography, social class and ideology.
Away from rural areas, in the town of Rajapur, small business owner Suraj Pednekar insists the project will significantly improve the lot of Ratnagiri district, an industrial backwardness in the wealthiest province of the country.
According to government estimates, Maharashtra’s GDP is expected to grow by 8.5%.
image caption,
The petroglyphs – or rock carvings – in the area are part of the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List.
“Entire generations of young men and women have to go to Mumbai and Pune every year to earn a living,” Pednekar said. “Villages are emptying out because there are no jobs. If the refinery is located here and employs 50,000 people, the population will increase and local businesses will benefit. Why should we oppose it? ?
His view is shared by several other residents of large cities, whose traditional livelihoods will not be directly affected by the project. But the villagers do not hear them that way.
“These so-called jobs will go to graduates, not local fishermen. We don’t need such jobs,” Mr Bhatkar said.
According to Ms Bole, even if the locals get work, it will be menial jobs as sweepers or caretakers.
Across the state, there appears to be growing support for this grassroots fight.
At a recent meeting in Pune, local writers, poets, activists and resistance groups vowed to galvanize massive crowds to pressure the authorities to drop the project.
“Our campaign will be aimed at urging people not to vote for politicians or political parties in favor of the refinery,” Chavan told the BBC.
Whether it’s Enron in the 1990s, the French attempt to build a nuclear power plant here in the early 2000s, now stalled, or various major industrial projects of Indian conglomerates such as the Reliance group and the Tata group, over the years, local resistance groups have rolled back several Konkan behemoths.
It remains to be seen whether the proposed refinery will meet the same fate. But a crowd of villagers told us that they would fight until their last breath to make it disappear.
Once once more, this region seems to have become a fault line between India’s economic ambitions and the ecological sensitivities of its people.
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