IndiaMatters is a repository of documented impacts on local communities’ health and environmental destruction related to corporate mining in Adivasi regions of India.

Under the rhetoric of ‘development’, the Indian state and corporations such as Adani, Tata and Vedanta are wilfully spearheading a model of extractive accumulation across the country that is causing ecocide, dispossession, displacement and migrantisation of Adivasi people in central and eastern India and all regions rich in natural resources.
By highlighting the resources available that evidence not only this destruction to people’s health and environment, but also the resistance, IndiaMatters asks its visitors to question why, how and which India must matter and to whom?

Mahua Tree Logo

Next to the name there is a little motif of two mahua flowers. The poem Kyon Mahua tode nahi jate ped se (Why the Mahua is not plucked from the tree) , by Adivasi poet Jacinta Kerketta from Jharkhand explains how and why the flowers are only picked once they fall, exemplifying how Indigenous peoples not only live in but also with nature for their subsistence and livelihoods.

Mahua is found across the forests of central and eastern India. It is an important part of Adivasi cultures, ritual festivities and food and sustainable economic practices. Mahua seeds and flowers are categorised as a minor forest produce (MFPs). These are items that communities in these areas rely on for their livelihood. Other kinds of MFPs are; bamboo, tendu patta (used for wrapping beedi, a kinda of cigarette), bamboo, gums, resin etc. As the forestlands are being destroyed, so too is people’s way of life and livelihood, forcing people to move to the bigger cities or take up jobs in the same corporations displacing them.