ABSTRACT
Vulnerable people may need more than a strong legal framework to protect their rights and secure meaningful benefits from development. India’s national legal framework intended to safeguard tribal peoples’ customary land, cultural heritage, and religious rights through informed consultation with them and through seeking their consent to developments. This chapter examines how and why a state government circumvented national laws to support a privately financed bauxite mine and aluminium refinery project impacting tribal lands. The author poses two counterfactual questions. Firstly, what if, from the beginning, the state had accepted and applied the laws by recognising the existence of tribal people on the land and by taking seriously their rights? Informed consultation with the tribal people, and efforts to seek their consent, could have fostered a sense of partnership, so minimising their opposition and avoiding the reputational damage and the significant waste of time and money that resulted from the eventual project cancellation. Secondly, what if the project had proceeded on its original planning basis? Tribal people, displaced without consultation and consent from their customary sacred lands into, at best, land-for-land compensation and rehabilitation measures, would have struggled to survive the shock, risking significant economic, social and cultural impoverishment.
