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Private corporations and government bodies in India are in some kind of a symbiotic embrace:
the former feeds off the latter to become even stronger while enervating the latter. The massive
concessions and subsidies the state and central governments offer private mining in India have
enabled these corporations to assume such mammoth proportions, they have begun to resemble a
parallel government in the mining areas. And these corporations duly act to assume this new role
thrust upon them, something akin to White mans burden of the colonial era. Like in the
colonial era, naked self-interest is portrayed as universal social responsibility.
Their social responsibility takes myriad forms. Sometimes they directly fund armed counterinsurgency to quell peoples revolt, e.g. the funding of Salwa Judum by steel companies Tata and
Essar, as noted even by a report of the ministry of rural development. Salwa Judum was directly
involved in forced eviction and burning of nearly 700 villages in Dantewada district, Chattisgarh
between 2005 and 2007. By various estimates, this act displaced nearly 30% of the population of
the district, destroying their habitat and means of livelihood. Salwa Judum has also been
implicated in multiple cases of rapes and murders. The Supreme Court ordered the state
government to disband Salwa Judum and rehabilitate the villages. As things stand, none of these
orders have been acted upon and no member of the organization or their sponsors in the state
government or the corporate sector have been brought to justice, even as thousands arrested on
charges of practicing or supporting violence against the state languish in jails and await judicial
trials. Tata is one of companies that have sponsored commercials to highlight their investment in
social programs in India.
Corporations do not just move to fill the vacuum created by the states abdication of social
responsibilities in the neoliberal era, they in fact help create that vacuum. And it is a vacuum in
which notions like social entitlements are things of the past. Surely, socially disadvantaged
groups such as the tribal communities of Dantewada district, subject to displacement destroying
their social cohesion, constant threat, and subjugation cannot so easily demand social
entitlements. They find themselves at the mercy and the goodwill of government and corporate
bodies, the very organizations largely responsible for their present plight.