Digging in their heels to protect Tij Raja’s abode against Vedanta’s next bauxite mining venture in Odisha

PHOTO BY RAJARAMAN SUNDARESAN

“Our fight, today, is against the same Vedanta that our brothers and sisters from Niyamgiri had rejected, to save the destruction of their jal, jangal, zameen [water, forest and land] and to preserve the way we prefer to live, work, and conduct our affairs,” Lāi Mājhi said. As Lai addressed an impromptu gathering outside his modest home, where we arrived close to sunset, after an exhilarating motorcycle ride through Karlāpāt Wildlife sanctuary, we were soon joined by around forty others—men and women sauntering out from the huts and hamlets nearby. “It is a right we get from the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution, and the PESA of 1996. We cannot be displaced until the majority of our individual and community claims to titles over forest lands, under the Forest Rights Act of 2006, are settled.” Lai is the vice president of Maa, Maati, Maali Surakhya Manch, a front for the…


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Prashant Rahi is an electrical and systems engineer, who completed his education from IIT, BHU, before eventually becoming a journalist for about a decade in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. He was the Chairperson for Human Rights and Democracy at the annual Indian Social Science Congresses held between 2011 and 2013, contributing to the theorisation of social activists’ and researchers’ experiences. Rahi devoted the greater part of his time and energy for revolutionary democratic changes as a grassroots activist with various collectives. For seven years, he worked as a Correspondent for The Statesman, chronicling the Uttarakhand statehood movement, while also participating in it. He has also contributed political articles for Hindi periodicals including Blitz, Itihasbodh, Samkaleen Teesri Duniya, Samayantar and Samkaleem Hastakshep. From his first arrest in 2007 December in a fake case, where he was charged as the key organiser of an imagined Maoist training camp in a forest area of Uttarakhand, to his release in March 2024 in the well-known GN Saibaba case, Rahi has been hounded as a prominent Maoist by the state for all of 17 years. In 2024, he joined The Polis Project as a roving reporter, focusing on social movements.