Mining in Bellary by Tehmina Sabuwala

What is the Bellary mining scandal?

-       Bellary is a district in Karnataka, one of the largest producers of iron ore in India. Yeddyurappa brothers been accused to ship tons of iron ores out of India.

They are two main issues that according to me are important, which I would like to highlight: 

1. This is core example of how Lokyukta was successful and played its role and Yeddyurappa was forced to resign. 

2. Only few media highlight these important issues, media in India our definitely not controlled by the government but are controlled by the corporates that do the agenda setting. 

From the first point, Lokyukta in Bellary had honest and un-corrupt officer, Santosh Hegde. When ‘Tehelka’ magazine first published the story it mentioned how the evidence was destroyed of the illegal mining done by the Yeddyurappa brothers. The honest people who tried to highlight this issue were threatened and beaten up. The only evidence they had was the ‘pink slips’. Pink slips where the passes the trucks drivers got when they had to pay the octroi. These trucks were filled with iron ore and were supplied to China and they used it during the Beijing Olympics. Isn’t it sad to see all the rich mineral of India going to other country? The iron ore that will never come back again. How unjust is that? Who are we to blame? Ministers, China, or the media?

Yes, I say the say media. This is where I come to by second point. What role has media really played to change or develop this nation? We are just puppets of the corporates. If we had researched and given importance to this issue, we would have not lost are thousand and thousand of iron ores. ‘Tehelka’ was the only magazine to cover the Bellary mining scandal following was CNN IBN. Later we had a beautiful documentary by Pranjoy Guha Thackeray. The documentary covered more on the political aspects rather the effects; it gave less of human angle. For example, the water in Bellary is red water, ‘lal paani’ people cannot obviously cannot drink the water and to add to that, the main occupation is agriculture because of the water the plants/crops are destroyed.

So, we are not only losing our land but facing adverse effects from it. No agriculture means no productivity, which means no money and that’s means more of suicide by framers. So, inequality always remain between the haves and the haves-not. Lokyukta did play its role because it had honest officers. I hope it does the same in the future.