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Confrontation mine

Confrontation mine one morning, without any prior intimation, the local authorities told Jairam Majhi to abandon her family home and "go elsewhere'. They told Majhi, who lives in Kucheipadar village in southwest Orissa, that it was in the "interest of the nation'. And Majhi was not alone. "National interest', the officials told her, would soon require all her fellow villagers in Kashipur tehsil of the state's Rayagada district to abandon their homes as well. Refusal to do so, as Majhi's village and some 70 others soon found out, would only bring trouble to this relatively peaceful area. Majhi and others of the Paroja-Kondha tribe, who comprise 85 per cent of Kashipur's population, were left shaken when they found out why they would have to re-locate. The region, their home for generations and extremely rich in bauxite, had been taken over by mining companies.

The area, located in the Eastern Ghats, is known for the vast amounts of bauxite ore in its subterranean vaults. Also known as East Coast Bauxite, it has some two billion tonnes of bauxite

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