Farmers allege compensation not enough

A group of men is sitting under a grove, playing a game of cards at noon. Around them, thousands of acres of land, mostly arable, lie dotted with small hamlets. There are no roads, just dust tracks that wind around low limestone stocks and through dusty fields. This is Lohandiguda, where one of the world’s largest steel companies wants to build a five-million-tonnes-per-annum integrated steel plant. But the proposed Rs 19,500-crore Tata Steel project in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar district has made little headway since the steelmaker signed a memorandum of understanding with the state government in June 2005.