World | India
Jharkhand villagers up in arms against steel plant
Thousands of villagers marched in eastern India on Sunday to protest a proposed ArcelorMittal steel plant, police said, the latest in a series of confrontations over industry on farmlands.
- Agencies
- Published: 00:55 October 21, 2008
Ranchi: Thousands of villagers marched in eastern India on Sunday to protest a proposed ArcelorMittal steel plant, police said, the latest in a series of confrontations over industry on farmlands.
Armed with bows and sickles, the villagers, members of poor local tribes in the state of Jharkhand, held banners that said: "We need food, not steel". They shouted slogans, swearing they would give up their lives but not their farmlands.
The world's largest steelmaker is planning an $8.2 billion (Dh30.16 million) plant in the mineral-rich state, which it hopes to build over four years.
The company needs 11,000 acres (4,450 hectares) for the 12 million tonne plant and an industrial town.
But angry villagers say they will not give up land for the project. "We will not give an inch of land to Mittal steel," Dayamani Barla, a protest leader, said. "We will further intensify our agitation, if the Mittals make any effort to grab our land."
A company official in Ranchi, the state capital, said they were trying to defuse the situation by talking to villagers.
The protest reflects a larger standoff between industry and farmers unwilling to surrender land in a country where two-thirds of the population depends on agriculture for a living.
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