Development, Or Just Diktat?

On 7 April 2026, Rayagada in Odisha turned into a flashpoint when tribals and police clashed over a 3-km approach road linked to the Sijimali bauxite project. Reported injury figures reached 70 people, including 58 police personnel, and the project itself is tied to Vedanta, which won the block in 2023. The Indian Express also notes that the deposit is estimated at 311 million tonnes of bauxite, making this not a tiny village quarrel but a giant corporate-earth-politics collision.

And here comes the old, polished drama of "consent". The district administration said Gram Sabhas were held in eight affected villages on 8 December 2023 and that approval was given, while villagers have alleged the process was fraudulent and signatures were forged. That is the real wound here: not just a road, but the question of who gets to speak for a village, and who gets to stamp it into silence.

Now the irony is Odisha’s current Chief Minister, Mohan Charan Majhi, is in office today, and an official Odisha bio lists him as a Scheduled Tribe, caste Santal. India’s President Droupadi Murmu has said she belongs to a tribal society and comes from a small tribal village in Odisha, while the President’s office says she is the first woman President from a tribal community. So the question is not decorative. It is overdue.

So here is the question, straight and unsweetened, to the CM of Odisha and the President of India: when tribal families in Rayagada say their land, forest, and consent are being trampled, who exactly is development serving? The village, or the file? The Constitution, or the contractor? 

If Odisha can send a tribal daughter to Rashtrapati Bhavan and a tribal son to the CM’s chair, why do tribal people on the ground still have to fight like strangers in their own homeland? A government that speaks the language of progress should not arrive at the village gate with fear in one hand and a bulldozer in the other. It should arrive with truth, hearing, and dignity.

And now the curtain lifts a little more. Independent academic and legal research backs the wider alarm around Sijimali. The proposed mine is reported to cover 1,549 hectares, including around 699 hectares of forest land, with serious risks to forests, biodiversity, tribal rights, displacement, pollution, and the erosion of consent under Fifth Schedule, PESA, FRA, LARR, and UNDRIP protections. So this is not just a mining project. It is a stress test for law, democracy, and moral memory. When the forest is treated like a footnote and the tribal voice like a checkbox, development stops looking like progress and starts looking like paperwork with a bulldozer stamp.