by DEBARSHI DASGUPTA
Wide vista A worker on a huge farm in Ethiopia owned by Karuturi, an Indian firm. PHOTO/Getty Images
Obtaining millions of hectares for farming in Africa, Indian firms are playing predator
Reports of Indian firms farming large tracts of land acquired in faraway countries like Uruguay and Madagascar have so far been convincingly sold as success stories showcasing an emerging India flexing its economic muscle. But there has been little introspection, if any, on the harm these Indian firms might be causing to the land and to the indigenous peoples living there. With foreign firms like Posco being criticised for taking land away from locals in Orissa, and with the Maoist problem being seen partly as the result of corporate greed for resources, can India turn away from problems caused by Indian firms leasing land abroad?
Ethiopia—where more than a million hectares are being handed over to Indian firms at bargain prices, supressing local dissent and causing displacement of people—is an important case in point. Many are describing India as a “neo-coloniser”. The phenomenon has in fact received wide local coverage, with damning headlines like ‘Indian agribusiness devastates W. Ethiopia’.
One such instance, involving a little-known Indian firm, came to light earlier this year when the US-based Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia (SMNE) revealed letters, copies of which Outlook has, to show how Verdanta Harvests was granted the lease of 3,012 hectares in the Gambela region despite opposition from affected locals, who were supported by none other than Ethiopian president Girma Wolde-Giorgis and the country’s Environment Protection Agency (EPA).
According to these letters, affected locals from the Godere district went to meet the president in early 2010, when they learnt that their means of livelihood—including the forests where they hunted and gathered food—were threatened by an Indian firm that was going to clear the land to grow tea and other crops. Upholding their complaint, the president wrote to the EPA to ask the ministry of agricultural and rural development not to go ahead with this project. The EPA, too, argued in favour of the locals and said the short-term benefits of leasing the land do not offset the long-term environmental damage. The ministry, however, overlooked the objections, drawing a strong rebuke from the president, who wrote to the minister of agriculture on December 10, 2010, and told him to stop this project immediately. Yet, the firm got the go-ahead. Wolde-Giorgis has been described as a “figurehead” president, while real power rests with the dictatorial Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.
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