The fury of a patient man

Attached to the black leather strap of his plain, white-dial Citizen wristwatch is a little black compass. The Tribal Affairs and Panchayati Raj Minister, Vyricherla Kishore Chandra Suryanarayana Deo, from the Congress Party, says it keeps him from losing his way—whether in the jungles of Visakhapatnam, his sprawling electoral constituency in Andhra Pradesh, or in the political labyrinth of Delhi’s Raisina Hill.

If ever a man needed to know his way around, it is Deo. He’s fighting several battles simultaneously—against fellow ministers, bureaucrats, and the mining lobby.

What’s caught most of his opponents by surprise is that Deo is prepared to battle vigorously. The tribal affairs ministry has traditionally been considered a somewhat “soft” post, and Deo has been out of the reckoning for some 30 years. (He won his first election in 1977, and was in the Union Cabinet as minister of state for steel, mines, and coal in 1979-80. He’s not held a Cabinet position since, despite being elected to the Lok Sabha four more times, and nominated once to the Rajya Sabha.) He was given the tribal affairs ministry in 2011, and since then, the soft-spoken 65-year-old has made it into a ministry to be reckoned with. “He has given teeth to a relatively new ministry [tribal affairs is only 11 years old], which was considered an appendage to the rural affairs or environment ministry,” says M. Sashi Kumar, executive director at Yugantar, a Hyderabad-based not-for-profit working on development issues, who has studied Andhra Pradesh’s mineral belt for more than a decade. “No tribal minister has been able to achieve what Deo has been able to,” adds Kumar.

Deo’s big achievement has been to stand between the mining lobby and traditional tribal lands. It’s not an easy job, given the money that is involved. The pressures Deo sometimes faces even from his own party, are acute. But he doesn’t appear fazed by it. “I have seen the timber mafia cut down forests and even burn the stumps so that they can accuse the tribals of slash-and-burn agriculture. These are the kind of atrocities that have gone on for decades,” says Deo.

He refuses to elaborate on the “timber mafia”, though I know what he means—it’s a thinly veiled reference to some Congress leaders in Andhra Pradesh, whose businesses are closely allied with the timber industry. I ask him to at least concur, but he only says: “You know what I mean.” Earlier this year, in a report to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Deo allegedly called the head of the Congress committee in Andhra Pradesh, Botsa Satyanarayana, a “don” with interests in “liquor, land, and mining”.

“The area I come from has been the nerve centre of Maoist activity since the ’60s,” says Deo, referring to the militants also known as Naxalites, who fight for the tribals and other segments they claim the government ignores or oppresses, especially in the areas of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, and Orissa. Visakhapatnam was the area where 11 government officers were kidnapped by rebels in 1987; in 1993, Pasupuleti Balaraju, then a Member of the Legislative Assembly and now state tribal affairs minister, was kidnapped and later exchanged for the release of a top rebel; and in March 2004, the husband of then tribal affairs minister Mani Kumari was killed by a member of the People’s War Group (one of the many militant groups that later formed the Communist Party of India (Maoist)). “The main cause is lack of development and destruction of forests by the timber mafia,” says Deo, who is clear that tribal lands and livelihood cannot fall victim to the mining industry. “If the Maoist problem is only seen as a law and order problem, then that is completely flawed,” he says.

Many of his colleagues in government don’t agree. They believe that overwhelming force is the answer to what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called “India’s greatest security challenge”. In Chhattisgarh in 2005, Mahendra Karma, a Congress leader, created a vigilante army, Salwa Judum or Purification Hunt, which had tacit government support. Last month, in an ambush in the heart of Chhattisgarh, some 100 Maoists attacked a Congress convoy, killing 28 people, including Karma. In a statement, the Communist Party of India (Maoist) claimed that the attack and killing of Karma was revenge for the “atrocities” committed against the tribals.

Deo says he’d been warning the administration for the last five or six years that something like this could happen. “By encouraging companies to take away what has traditionally been the source of livelihood for tribals, we are creating grounds for Maoists to carry on their bloodshed, with the sympathy and support of the tribals. What was Salwa Judum? Young boys taken from their homes, trained barely for a day with a gun and a few bullets, and then sent to kill and be killed. This is no answer.”

Is determination to stand up for the rights of the tribals has turned Deo, whose family name Vyricherla means “the sword that killed the enemies”, into one of the champions of green. He virtually stands alone between the forests of Visakhapatnam and a group of large and influential mining companies, which want to mine these forests for bauxite, from which aluminium is extracted. Deo’s own constituency, the sylvan Araku Valley, is one of the largest parliamentary areas in the country (over 3,500 sq. km.), and is also one of the most pristine forest areas in the country. Beneath its woods lie more than 42 million tonnes of bauxite: Throw in the neighbouring areas, and there’s more than 570 million tonnes of the ore waiting to be tapped.

Much of the land belongs to the tribals and they are afraid that rampant mining will destroy the forest, their source of livelihood. Local tribes have fought the invasion of bulldozers to the valley for more than two decades but have never had a campaigner like Deo, often described locally as an aristocrat. (He comes from a family of tribal chiefs, is called ‘Raju’, and, when in his constituency, resides in his ancestral home, an 18th-century fort in Kurupam.)

Deo has prevented a Rs 25,000 crore exploration of the region by major firms, including the Ras Al Khaimah government of the U.A.E., its Indian partner Anrak, a subsidiary of Hyderabad-based Penna Cement; Jindal South West of the JSW Group; and Nalco, the state-run aluminium major. Three of these—Ras Al Khaimah, Anrak, and Jindal South West—have signed agreements with the Andhra Pradesh Mineral Development Corporation (APMDC) to mine in this region. (As a government body, Nalco has not signed an MoU, but was awarded a mining lease here.)

Under the Alienation of Land Transfer Act, non-tribals are strictly prohibited from buying or leasing land in Schedule 5 areas. The Indian Constitution defines Schedule 5 and 6 as regions historically inhabited by tribals who live in and off the forest lands. In Schedule 6 areas—the northeastern states—the tribal populations are the majority, whereas in Schedule 5 areas—Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh—tribals are numerous, though not a majority.

There is also a legal precedent for preventing mining in these regions. In the ’90s, one of the leading NGOs working for tribal welfare in Andhra Pradesh, the Samata Foundation, fought a case against the state government. Ravi Rebbapragada, an activist with Samata, says the Supreme Court had ruled that no land in Schedule 5 areas can be leased to private mining companies and that village gram sabhas or councils would have the right to prevent such exploration. The court added that minerals can be extracted only by tribals historically living in the area either individually or through a cooperative society with the financial assistance of the state, and at least 20% of the profits must go into a permanent fund for the development of the locals. It also prohibited the transfer of any lease or fresh lease of land to any non-tribal.

The Andhra Pradesh government signed agreements with mining giants from around the world through APMDC, claiming that the corporation was a “local” company. “But that was fundamentally wrong,” says Rebbapragada. “The APMDC was basically just signing the deed while all the work would be done by the private companies. The real power on the ground was with private companies who had nothing to do with tribals.”

This is one of the angles to Deo’s fight. In a 14-page letter to the governor of Andhra Pradesh, Ekkadu Srinivasan Lakshminarasimhan in April, Deo hit out against one of Andhra Pradesh’s most popular Congress chief ministers, Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, popularly called YSR, who died in a helicopter crash in 2009. In his letter, Deo criticises the agreements signed between APMDC and mining companies between 2005 and 2011, claiming that the “local” company was “neither owned nor controlled by people belonging to Scheduled Tribes”. This, he says, is a betrayal of the tribals and “amounts to a flagrant violation and affront to our constitutional provisions.”

To understand the reasons behind this criticism, a little history may help. Like Deo, YSR was a veteran Congress hand, and for 30 years had won every election he contested. When he came to power as chief minister in 2004, India was fast becoming the world’s third-largest exporter of bauxite, shipping half of its annual output of nearly 100 million tonnes to a growing China. “YSR could see that minerals could potentially bring in more money than information technology [the previous chief minister, N. Chandrababu Naidu, focussed on IT, to international acclaim], especially in the short run,” says a Member of Parliament from Andhra Pradesh, who asked not to be named.

In July 2005, YSR’s government signed the first memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Jindal South West. According to the agreement, the Jindals would spend Rs 9,000 crore to create an aluminium refinery and smelter, which would produce 250,000 tonnes of aluminium each year. APMDC was to supply the bauxite from the Araku Valley and its neighbouring Sapparla reserves, which together had more than 240 million tonnes of ore. Then, in 2007 and 2008, APMDC signed similar MoUs with the Ras Al Khaimah government and Anrak, respectively. (Anrak is a joint venture between Ras Al Khaimah and Penna Cements, owned by Prathap Reddy, YSR’s friend.)

In all cases, the Maoists fought fiercely to protect the forests from miners, and violence in the region went up. Deo, then not a minister, was convinced that mining in Araku and Sapparla would result in a bloody backlash, and said so on several occasions. For YSR, however, the only answer to militants was gunfire, and he sent elite Greyhound commandos into the forest to attack Maoist camps and kill rebel leaders. His hard line was widely hailed by politicians and businesspeople.

Yugantar’s Sashi Kumar says YSR and Deo also had deep ideological differences. The tribal king is a socialist, and the late chief minister was essentially a capitalist, he says. “There is a tradition of liberal feudalism in Andhra Pradesh, to which Deo belongs. Here royals have often been part of socialist parties. Look at other former royals like Anand Gajapathi Raju or Raja Rameshwar Rao who were socialists and considered themselves the trustees of the wealth of the people.”

Rebbapragada talks of another reason the two Congress stalwarts did not get along. “Deo would not be servile. He was never servile to any chief minister including NTR [Nandamuri Taraka Rama Rao, the matinee idol-turned-politician who was one of the most popular chief ministers of Andhra Pradesh].... Deo was sure of his base, his clout, and his people. He would not bend to Hyderabad.”

Rebbapragada shares an anecdote about the two. In 2006, Deo was at his ancestral fort in Kurupam and YSR was visiting the area. Rebbapragada asked Deo if he was going to meet the chief minister. “He said, ‘I don’t think there is any invitation. Why should I go?’ That’s not the way it worked with YSR. If he was in your area, you went to show your allegiance.”

Deo has no commercial interests and no income from any source, apart from agricultural monies from his family lands. “I am a farmer, [and] have always been one,” he says. In comparison, YSR’s empire, now managed by his son Jaganmohan Reddy, sprawls across 13 companies from TV stations to power stations and cement. When Reddy, now in prison in a disproportionate assets case, contested a bypoll in 2011 after his father’s death, he declared assets of Rs 365 crore. The Central Bureau of Investigation says that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

With YSR gone, Deo’s voice against destructive mining has grown stronger. He now has support from the Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh, who used to be India’s most combative environment minister. At a recent public meeting attended by both Ramesh and Deo, the latter spoke against mining leases, asking the incumbent Chief Minister Kiran Reddy to cancel them. Reddy said the matter is being investigated.

In his 14-page letter to the Andhra governor, Deo writes: “During the last five years, they [the Maoist rebels] have slowly regrouped by gaining the sympathy of the local people only due to the threat of bauxite mining in Visakhapatnam district.” Most of the killings, he added, were “in connection with those who are said to have had close links with the bauxite mining lobbies and their agents”.

He also denounced the YSR-era mining agreements, saying “the mala fide intentions are abundantly clear”, referring to the fact that the Anrak MoU was signed by Y. Srilakshmi, the former (state) secretary of industry and commerce who is now in prison in the Obulapuram illegal mining case. Former APMDC managing director P.D. Rajagopal, who signed the supply agreement between APMDC and Anrak, is also in jail (in the same case).

So far, it seems like politics as usual, with one politician hitting out at the practices of another. But here’s the thing. Based on the agreements with the state government, companies have begun setting up smelters and factories in the region. Jindal, for instance, has spent Rs 3,000 crore or so to set up a smelter near Visakhapatnam. Today, in the absence of Andhra ore, the company is transporting bauxite from Gujarat. Other companies are also growing restive. Despite repeated requests, none of the companies responded to queries on this issue.

The other issue, which Deo mentioned in his letter, is that mining would poison the source of three rivers—Gosthani, Champavathi, and Sarada—and destroy drinking water supply in the Visakhapatnam area, which has more than 4.5 million people.

The hidden bombshell in Deo’s letter, was when he pointed out that state governors cannot claim that their hands are tied when it comes to taking hard decisions. In Schedule 5 areas, wrote Deo, the Constitution gives the governor the power to “repeal or amend any central or state legislation or any existing law applicable to such area”.

Deo quoted a presidential speech of 2008, the opinion of the Attorney General, as well as several court judgments over the years, all of which reiterate that a governor is not bound by the aid and advice of the state council of ministers in Schedule 5 areas. “You will also appreciate the fact that extremist activities have now reached a point which is threatening our national security. Your intervention at this stage will … strike at the basic premise on which the Maoists have gained sympathy in our state.”

Deo sent similar letters to the governors of other states suffering from Maoist violence: Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and Odisha. None of the governors replied to Deo’s letter, except for the governor of Chhattisgarh, Shekhar Dutt. In his reply, Dutt wrote that although Deo says that governors in Schedule 5 areas are not bound by the advice of the state council of ministers, in a 2012 case, the Bilaspur High Court had suggested that the governor is bound to consult the ministers. Dutt asked Deo for “the final opinion of the government of India”.

The minister’s office is working on a reply to Dutt. Deo, meanwhile, says he is “more concerned with response on the ground than response on paper”.

Deo's letter to the Andhra Pradesh governor created shock waves which are still felt. Within his party, there’s a faction (headed by the old guard, including people like finance minister P. Chidambaram, and Pranab Mukherjee when he was in the Cabinet) that wants to deal with Maoist violence with force. They see this as a localised phenomenon that can be stamped out, a strategy that has clearly failed. Since 2001, close to 12,000 people have been killed in Maoist-related violence.

At the other end are ministers such as Deo and Ramesh, who believe that mining in tribal areas is a fraught subject and one that needs to be handled with sensitivity. “It is true that Deo is a marginal voice in the Cabinet since his ministry is not a large one, but on tribal matters in Andhra Pradesh he is listened to with the utmost care,” says Chandra Bhushan, deputy director of the New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment.

Deo says he’s not an obstructionist, standing in the way of economic development. All he is trying to do is to ensure that tribals have a voice in the development of their localities. “I go by empirical evidence. I am not against mining but I have seen that in region after region, indiscriminate mining has brought no benefits to the people.” As he has several times before, he says winning over the tribals is the best way to fight the Maoists.

He’s had some wins. Bhushan says credit must go to Deo for introducing the clause of giving 26% of profits to local tribals in the proposed, new Mining and Minerals (Amendment) Bill, 2011, which is being considered by the Parliamentary Standing Committee. “It is a vital clause and something that has never happened anywhere in the world. That this clause is even there in the bill is a huge achievement. Deo is important because the understanding of the party leadership is that he is scrupulously honest, he knows what he is talking about and has no private agenda,” says Bhushan.

Deo minces no words in pointing to government and business malpractice as the cause of Maoist violence. Activists in Andhra Pradesh say Deo’s strident voice is today perhaps the only thing that’s preventing war from breaking out in the dense jungles along the Andhra Pradesh-Odisha border. “There is a sense that he understands and sees the problem from the perspective of the locals. Without that, the situation could worsen very quickly,” says Hyderabad-based Sashi Kumar.

Rebbapragada says Deo’s clout with the locals, whether Maoists or not, can be seen every time the minister visits his constituency. “He travels with barely one constable, if that. Compare that with the visit of state tribal affairs minister Balaraju in the area; there is always a huge convoy, scores of police and commandos, there is security everywhere, the routes are checked for mines; it becomes a jamboree. But Deo has nothing to fear in the hotbed of Maoist violence. What can be better evidence for his argument?”