AnRak Aluminium is moving ahead with the bauxite mining project in Makavarapalem in Visakhapatnam district despite the local opposition warns this analysis in the Economic and Political Weekly with focus on social and environment impact of the project.

Amnesty International (AI) has urged the Indian authorities to order the immediate clean-up of an alumina refinery in Orissa, following a high court decision to reject plans for its expansion by a subsidiary of the UK-based Vedanta Resources. The High Court of Orissa upheld the Indian government’s decision made in August 2010 to reject Vedanta Aluminium's plans for the sixfold expansion of the Lanjigarh refinery, finding that the project violated the country’s environmental laws. (Letters)

In a state such as Odisha in which Dalit and tribal groups comprise about 40 per cent of the total population, the issue of ‘access’ to land and resources has apparently been central to all conflicts. For traditional communities, ‘access’ is directly linked to civilizational paradigms and cultural ethos, which rather decide their ‘economics’, and not the other way round that may be true for modern, techno-centric civilizations. Most mainstream discourses of history have, however, tried to locate the crisis in the ‘absence of state interventions’.