Development Phases in India

Planning of India’s development started long before Independence and the First Five Year Plan was introduced in 1951. The Five Year Plans are the integrated documents for national economic development. All the countries which had state-led development had used this method to set a goal and keep track of the development, their achievements and failures.

 

Timeline	Basic Needs	Government Policies	Results
1951-56	Influx of refugees, severe food shortage	Low-Income group housing scheme.	Objectives of rehabilitation of refugees, food self-sufficiency & control of prices were more or less achieved.
1961-66	Agriculture	Central Housing Board.	The Plan was thorough failure in reaching the targets due to unforeseen events – Chinese aggression (1962), Indo-Pak war (1965), severe drought 1965-66.
1966-69	New agricultural plans were implemented.	Cellular concrete plan.	It paved the path for the planned growth ahead.
1969-74	Main emphasis was on the growth rate of agriculture to enable other sectors to move forward.	Urban Development programme.	Influx of Bangladeshi refugees before and after 1971 Indo-Pak war was an important issue along with price situation deteriorating to crisis proportions and the plan is considered as a big failure.
1985-90	Focus – rapid growth in food-grains production.	Water supply and sewage Boards.	The plan was very successful as the economy recorded 6% growth rate against the targeted 5%
1992-97	Fiscial and economic growth	Reforms including liberalization	High economic growth, the growth of agricultural, and improvement in trade. Reason:  Bad economic situation, worsening balance of payments.
1997-2002	Growth with social justice and equality.	Dependence on private sector priority given to agricultural and rural development. To generate employment and to eradicate poverty	Moderately successful.
2002-07	The targets included a reduction in gender gaps in literacy and wage rate, reduction in Infant & maternal mortality rates, improvement in Target Growth literacy, access to potable drinking water cleaning of major polluted rivers, etc.		successful.
2007-12	Towards more faster and inclusive growth. The savings, as well as the investment rates, increased. But growth was not perceived sufficiently inclusive for the SC’s, ST’s and the minorities. Broad vision: rapid growth reducing poverty, creating employment opportunities, access to essential services to health care and education etc. First year: the achieved growth rate of 9.3%, decelerated to 6.7% following the global financial crisis. Avg. annual growth rate of GDP = 8% and is lower than the target. Domestic savings + investment – below target, but not very far. Poverty: declined by 1.5% The issue of price stability – constrained supply of invest-able funds – 11th plan performed levels below the target.

Story of Niyamgiri

Niyamgiri hill otherwise known as Niyam Dongar, is located in the southwestern part of Odisha, between the districts of Kalahandi, Koraput and Rayagada.  The hill range is home to an indigenous tribal community called the Dongaria Kondhs. The word Dongar means agricultural land on the hill slopes.  The Dongarias generally live in the hill slopes and are known for their expertise in agriculture. According to the Dongaria mythology, the Dongarias have descended from Niyam Raja Penu who lives at the top of Niyamgiri hill.  Thus they believe that being the descendants of Niyam Raja makes them the rightful owner of the land. Also according to the Dongarias, the land can’t be used for anything but agriculture because the ancestral spirit of Niyam Raja haunts the Dongar lands. It is the spirit of Niyam Raja that apparently is the reason for the good crop yield. The social and cultural practices of the Dongarias protect and nurture the life in the forest. Thus creating a sustainable relationship of mutual dependence between the environment and the tribe. This important since Niyamgiri is an ecologically sensitive zone. In fact, owing to its rich biodiversity, in 1998 Orissa Wildlife Division had proposed to create a wildlife sanctuary in Kalahandi which incorporated the Niyamgiri hills i. Niyamgiri is also has a rich reserve of bauxite, iron ore, chromite, nickel, coal, diamond and various other minerals.

Vedanta Aluminium Limited is a subsidiary of Sterlite Industries India Limited which is further owned by UK-based company Vedanta Resources. Vedanta Resources is an LSE (London Stock Exchange) listed company and is constituent of the FTSE (Financial Times Stock Exchange) 250 index. The company is primarily interested in mining aluminium, copper, zinc, lead, silver, iron ore, oil and gas. It has several projects spread over eight countries through dozens of operations, mainly in India and Africa ii.

On 7th June 2003, Vedanta Aluminium Ltd. (VAL) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Odisha Mining Corporation Ltd. (OMCL) for the construction of an Aluminium refinery in Lanjigarh, Kalahandi district. It is a 1 MTPA (one million ton per annum) Alumina Refinery with a 3×30 MW coal-fired cogeneration power plant iii. The plan was to mine bauxite from the Niyamgiri hills (Lanjigarh is at the foothills of Niyamgiri), to produce Aluminium in the Lanjigarh plant. They had built this plant without legal permission for mining bauxite from Niyamgiri. In fact, the document submitted by VAL to Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) on June 3, 2003, claimed that there were no reserve forests within a 10 km radius of the project site, which is in contradiction to the facts. According to MoEF guidelines, the company is supposed to get an environmental clearance before starting construction. And MoEF pointed this out to VAL on March 24, 2004. But six months later the ministry changed its stand and gave an environmental clearance to Vedanta for construction of the refinery iv.

On September 21, 2005, Central Empowered Committee (CEC) after looking into the matter, submitted a report to the Supreme Court. The report questioned the methods used by Vedanta and the involvement of the local authorities in the matter along with the environmental impact assessment, of the project and its violation of tribal rights. It appealed to revoke Vedanta’s Environmental clearance and to stop the project in Niyamgiri. But this was rejected by the Supreme Court on August 8, 2008. This is when the main popular phase of the struggle began and the story of the Dongaria Kondhs came to the attention of the mainstream media and international human rights groups.

The next two years saw a series of protests and demonstrations by the Dongaria Kondhs in Niyamgiri and various human rights groups showing their solidarity through protests in London in front of the Vedanta office. In 2010 the government of India sent a fact-finding team to assess the effect of mining in Niyamgiri. The team reported that the indeed Vedanta mining in Niyamgiri would have damaging consequences both for the environment and the Kondhs living there. In July 2011, the environmental minister Jairam Ramesh revoked the environmental clearance following which in 2012 Vedanta closed its Lanjigarh factory due to the insufficient supply of Bauxite. Meanwhile, the Odisha government petitioned to reverse the mining ban, to this Supreme court passed the judgement to give the Dongaria Kondhs decisive power on the mining ban. The decision was taken by 12 gram sabha all of which voted against the mining.

---

The struggle between the Dongaria Kondhs and Vedanta began all the way back in around 2004 but the struggle didn’t receive much attention till around 2010 when Supreme Court of India rejected the appeal to revoke the environmental clearance. Most of the local newspapers that report the incident, draw a ‘primitive’ image of Niyamgiri. And the usage of primitive here carries a negative connotation to it, the tribe is described as living in poor conditions and need to be integrated into the modern mainstream society. This kind of narrative influences the perception of the mainstream society, since it is reducing or belittling the religious traditions, practices of the  Kondhs and therefore disregarding the importance of the struggle. Also the development narrative is very popular in the Oriya media, which claims that the tribe is tired of the NGOs hindering the chances of development in Niyamgiri. These kind of stories are mainly from the newspapers which support the ruling party. Similarly, the national newspapers like Times of India report Rahul Gandhi as the saviour of Niyamgiri and credit his efforts to be the cause of Supreme Court’s verdict.

Political Lobbying:-

In 2010 when N.C. Saxena Committee submitted its report on the Environmental and social impact assessment of the Vedanta mining project, the MoEF announced the revocation of Vedanta’s Environmental clearance. The real reason behind MoEF’s decision is believed to be corporate lobbying, Vedanta’s apparently used the Niyamgiri issue to hinder Vedanta’s aggressive success in mining. At the same time, Rahul Gandhi had started allying with the tribals in their struggle. Rahul Gandhi criticised Naveen Patnaik’s blatant disregard for the right of the indigenous and his misuse of power to help the multinational companies instead. Obviously, Gandhi’s involvement meant there had to be a political agenda behind it.

BJD has been in power for more than two decades in Odisha and Congress has little power in the state. For the Congress, this was a perfect time to gain popular support and vote banks. Political parties often use unrest among the people to gain political support, as we see in the case of Singur-Nandigram in West Bengal.

Conclusion

The Niyamgiri-Vedanta conflict is what many would refer to as the classic case of a local indigenous community being exploited by the powerful multinational company whose only aim is to make profit, whatever may the consequences be.

The Vedanta-Niyamgiri struggle is a highly complex issue and includes more than just q binary struggle behind Dongaria Kondhs and Vedanta. There are many other factors that played in such as the state vs centre, use of the Maoists labelling to control the struggle, the local goons and international protests. All of these factors clubbed together along with a decade-long history.

But one the few things that we can conclude from this is the to understand the difference between the definition of development. “Economic growth” today is mainly focused on the extraction of mineral, water and forest resources to meet the demands of industrial and economic growth for the ‘civilized’ population of the world. It is not that culture of  “Civilized” or city-centric dominant communities is worth more than the traditions, economy, the culture of the tribal groups. They are not the only inhabitants of this planet and have no more rights to the world’s mineral, water and forest resources than the original/ indigenous inhabitants of the forests.

For more information :

https://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/dongria
https://www.survivalinternational.org/about/niyamgiri

https://scroll.in/article/838121/the-dongria-kondh-defeated-vedanta-but-are-caught-between-the-state-and-the-maoists

http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/odisha-bauxite-mining-fake-surrender-niyamgiri

Development

What is Development?

The word development essentially means “improvement” from the current situation to something that is considered better. The general idea of development is that it is a process that creates sort of a positive change in growth or progress in the physical, economic, environmental, social and demographic conditions of the world. The purpose of development is to raise the level and quality of life of the population, and the creation or expansion of local regional income and employment opportunities, without damaging the resources of the environment.

---

History of Development

Development, as we know it today, emerged after the Second World War, as a result of the need to rebuild the war-stricken countries in Europe. Later on, these European and American organisations involved in reconstruction in Europe turned their attention to the problems faced by countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America as these countries began to gain independence and as people and governments in former colonial countries recognised that they faced both obligations and opportunities in raising economic activities and living standards in their former colonies. In other words, it was the white man’s guilt that drove the development in former colonies, the “third-world” countries.

During Cold war, the idea of development went through rapid changes, as international development assistance was seen as an extension of foreign policy, and the capitalist West (US, Canada, Europe, and Australasia) competed with the socialist East (Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and China) to attract and keep Asian, African, and Latin American countries within their spheres of influence and trade. The development was redefined by different theorists with different notions of change and different amounts of emphasis on political, social, economic, and technological change.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War led to, and coincided with, important changes in the practice and theory of international development, which has since largely been dominated by the west. There have, however, been continuing alternative currents, notably in some Latin American countries, such as Venezuela, Cuba, and Bolivia, in some non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and anti-globalisation and environmental movements in the West, and most recently in the emergence of China as a major investor and economic player in Africa.

The United Nations was formed after the WWII, UN divided the all nations in the world into two categories developed and developing based on the rate of industrialization and economic wealth. Although over the years this has changed and United Nations Development Program (UNDP) now, rates countries’ development annually according to its Human Development Index (HDI), which includes measurements of citizens’ access to healthcare, educational attainment, and standards of living, among other factors.

During 2012, the five countries with the highest HDI rankings were Norway, Australia, United States, Netherlands and Germany, while the five countries with the lowest rankings were Niger, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Chad and Burkina Faso, all African countries. In fact, 37 of the 46 states ranked as having low human development are located in Africa. In contrast, 32 of the 47 states considered to be very high human development are found in Europe (Human Development Report 2013). As these figures demonstrate, development is often a highly localized issue, leading to great wealth disparities between distinct global regions.

---

Ways of Measuring Development

Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

It is a monetary measure of the market value of all final goods and services produced in a period (quarterly or yearly) of time. GDP is commonly used to determine the economic performance of a whole country or region, and to make international comparisons. It does not, however, reflect differences in the cost of living and the inflation rates of the countries. Many environmentalists argue that GDP is a poor measure of social progress because it does not take into account harm to the environment.

1990 Human Development Index

As a response to the limitations of GDP, Amartya Sen and Mahbub ul Haq developed the HDI. The Human Development Index (HDI) is a composite index of life expectancy, education, and per capita income indicators, which are used to rank countries into four tiers of human development. A country scores higher HDI when the lifespan is higher, the education level is higher, and the GDP per capita is higher. It is framed in terms of whether people are able to “be” and “do” desirable things in their life.

Genuine Progress Indicator GPI

It is a metric that has been suggested to replace, or supplement, gross domestic product (GDP). The GPI is designed to take fuller account of the well-being of a nation, only a part of which pertains to the size of the nation’s economy, by incorporating environmental and social factors which are not measured by GDP. For instance, some models of GPI decrease in value when the poverty rate increases. The GPI separates the concept of societal progress from economic growth.

2006: Happy Planet Index HPI

The index is designed to challenge well-established indices of countries’ development, such as the gross domestic product (GDP) and the Human Development Index (HDI), which are seen as not taking sustainability into account. Each country’s HPI value is a function of its average subjective life satisfaction, life expectancy at birth, and ecological footprint per capita.

---