GetUp! Advocacy group steps up anti-Adani campaign in Australia

Latest GetUp video on Mundra

By Our Representative
The Australian advocacy group GetUp has begun a new, sharply focused campaign against the Adani Group, which has planned a $10 billion investment into a coal mining project off ecologically fragile Great Barrier Reef, by widely distributing a video documentary showing how its power plant in Mundra, Gujarat, has “degraded” farmlands.
GetUp senior campaigner Sam Regester has said that the video interviews "expose the ugly truth of how Adani does business". He has added, "GetUp will be submitting over eight hours of video evidence gathered in India to the examination being carried out by the Queensland government, and to Federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt who has previously chosen not to examine Adani's track record in India."
"The federal and state governments must immediately cancel Adani's licence to operate in Australia. We cannot let this company near our communities, land or our Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area", he has demanded.
GetUp’s video documentary gives a sharply negative picture of the Adani's environmental track record in India, which it says the local provincial government in Queensland and the Australian government “should have considered before granting approvals to the Indian mining giant.”
GetUp commissioned an Indian film crew to document the impact of the company's power plants on the environment and livelihoods of Mundra villagers.
"The Adani power plant came in 2007," the five-minute video quotes Praveen Singh, a Mundra farmer, as saying. "When the company came in, we thought our businesses will prosper but slowly the company revealed its true face. Initially they gave jobs to the villagers but they soon dismissed those they had employed after they had acquired all the land from the government."

GetUp video on Adani "threat" to Great Barrier Reef

Another villager, Bhikha Lal Natubhai, says emissions from coal stacks have affected the community's salt trade since the power plants were set up in 2007. "The emissions leave black residue on the salt, we are no longer able to get good rates for it in the market," he says.
Zubeida, a fisherwoman, speaks from a hut on the coast, surrounded by her relatives. "The sea water gets polluted, reducing the fish," she says. "We don't get any other work. The company will not employ our men or us. Catching fish in the sea is our work and now the fish has also reduced."
Meanwhile, an Adani Group spokesperson in Australia has said the video is a clear campaign to "frustrate Adani's strictly regulated mine, rail and port projects in Queensland", ignoring “the good work” done by it to support healthcare and education opportunities in India.
Reporting on the spurt in the controversy around the Adani project, the Sidney Morning Herald, of of the country’s largest selling dailies, has said, “Environmental activists are increasingly targeting the government's decision not to consider Adani's environmental track record in India in their assessment of the company's plans to develop in Australia”.
It has added, “Environmental Justice Australia is challenging Queensland's environmental regulator over why it gave no regard to official reports in India that claimed companies in the Adani group were destroying mangroves, blocking waterways and bribing officials.”

Comments

'Enough evidence' in Indian tradition to support legal basis for same-sex marriage

By Iyce Malhotra, Joseph Mathai, Sandeep Chachra* The ongoing hearing in the Supreme Court on same-sex marriage provides space for much-needed conversations on issues that have hitherto remained “invisible” or engaged with patriarchal locker room humour. We must recognize that people with diverse sexualities and complex gender identities have faced discrimination, stigma and decades of oppression. Their issues have mainly remained buried in dominant social discourse, and many view them with deep insecurities.

Buddhist shrines were 'massively destroyed' by Brahmanical rulers: Historian DN Jha

Nalanda mahavihara By Our Representative Prominent historian DN Jha, an expert in India's ancient and medieval past, in his new book , "Against the Grain: Notes on Identity, Intolerance and History", in a sharp critique of "Hindutva ideologues", who look at the ancient period of Indian history as "a golden age marked by social harmony, devoid of any religious violence", has said, "Demolition and desecration of rival religious establishments, and the appropriation of their idols, was not uncommon in India before the advent of Islam".

Victim of communal violence, Christians in Manipur want Church leadership to speak up

By Fr Cedric Prakash SJ* The first eleven days of May 2023 have, in many ways, been a defining period of Indian history! Plenty has happened in a rapid-fire stream of events. Ironically, each one of them are indicators of how crimes and the criminalisation of society has become the ‘new norm’; these include, the May Day rallies with a focus on the four labour codes which are patently against the rights of workers; the U S Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) released its Annual Report on 1 May stating that conditions for religious freedom in India “continued to worsen in 2022”; the continued protest by the Indian women wrestlers at Jantar Mantar for the expulsion of the chief of the Indian Wrestlers Federation on very serious allegations; the Elections in Karnataka on 10 May (with communalism and corruption as the mainstay); the release of the fake, derogative and insensitive film ‘The Kerala Story’; the release of World Free Press Index on 3 May which places India

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

Polygamy in India "down" in 45 yrs: Muslims' from 5.7 to 2.55%, Hindus' 5.8 to 1.77%, "common" in SCs, STs

By Rajiv Shah Amidst All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) justifying polygamy, saying it “meets social and moral needs and the provision for it stems from concern and sympathy for women”, facts suggest the the practice is down from 5.7 per cent of Muslim families in 1961 to 2.55 per cent in 2006.

Modi govt 'wholly untrustworthy' on Covid data, censored criticism on pandemic: Lancet

By Rajiv Shah* One of the world’s most prestigious health journals, brought out from England, has sharply criticised the Narendra Modi government for being “wholly untrustworthy on Covid-19 health data”, stating, the “official government figures place deaths at more than 530 000, while WHO excess death estimates for 2020 and 2021 are near 4·7 million.”

Undermining law, breastfeeding? Businesses 'using' celebrities to promote baby food

By Rajiv Shah* A report prepared by the top child welfare NGO, Breastfeeding Promotion Network of India (BPNI), has identified as many as 15 offenders allegedly violating the Indian baby food law, the Infant Milk Substitutes Feeding Bottles, and Infant Foods (Regulation of Production, Supply and Distribution) Act 1992, and Amendment Act 2003 (IMS Act), stating, compliance with the law “seems to be dwindling by the day.”

Delhi demolitions for G-20 summit: Whither sabka saath, sabka vikas?, asks NAPM

By Our Representative Well-known civil rights network, National Alliance of People's Movements (NAPM), even as expressing solidarity with “thousands of traumatized residents of Tughlakabad and some other bastis in New Delhi whose homes have been demolished and whose lives have been ravaged both prior to as well as in the lead-up to the G-20 Summit”, has said this is in utter disregard to “their minimum well-being and gross violation of their rights.”

'Misleading' Lancet estimates on zero food intake in infants, young children of India

By Srinivas Goli, Shalem Balla, Harchand Ram* India is one of the world's hotspots for undernourished children, both in terms of prevalence and absolute numbers. Successive rounds of National Family Health Surveys ( NFHS ) have revealed that the progress observed since the early 1990s is far from what is expected when compared to the country's economic growth.

Greater reasons for Asia to unite than Europe, 'overcome' costly hostilities, political egos

By Dr S Faizi* Europe, once a theatre of internecine wars, now has a robust European Union shaping the common destiny of its people. Although Europe is only a subcontinent of Asia as Arnold Toynbee had observed and as is visible to anyone looking at a map, we still not have a common Asian platform for economic and political cooperation. It is high time Asia had its well mandated regional organisation to secure a common Asian future, ending the costly hostilities and political egos. We can have the Asian Union even when the bilateral hostilities, unique to Asia, refuse to go away completely.

Search This Blog