People evicted without compensation as India expands mining operations, says Amnesty International report
The bulldozer came to Barkuta village at 10am one February morning. Nirupabai was working in the fields when her neighbours called, telling her to rush home. By the time she reached her house it had been reduced to rubble. “I cried, I screamed, trying to save it,” she says, recalling the eviction now in an Amnesty International report, two years on. “All my things, my son’s school books, a year’s worth of rice, everything was scattered, everything in ruins.”
Barkuta is one of seven villages that neighbour the Kusmunda opencast coalmine in the state of Chhattisgarh. In 2005, the government drew up an emergency coal production plan to curb the effects of huge, impending energy shortages in the rapidly industrialising country. Kusmunda was one of 16 mines identified for expansion. In 2014, the bulldozers came, and Nirupabai had no home.
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Source: Guardian Environment