For over 11 years, Hasdeo Arand, central India’s largest unfragmented forest and the last surviving pristine forest, has echoed with the cries of resistance and been stained with the blood of those who have dared to stand up for it. On the morning of October 17, 2024, the villagers of Salhi, Hariharpur, Ghatbarra, and Fatehpur found themselves in yet another violent confrontation with the Chhattisgarh Police. Villagers were pleading in desperation as ancient trees—revered as gods—were felled by Adani Enterprises to make way for coal mining in phase II of the operations there.
The latest skirmish is but another chapter in an ongoing tragedy, where development’s cost is measured not just in acres but in lives, livelihoods, and a way of life that is slipping through the cracks of India’s environmental and political conscience.
The video footage, shared by villagers, is disturbing: police in riot gear lathicharging protesters, chasing them through the fields and forests. Among the injured was Ram Lal Kariyam, a prominent activist with the Hasdeo Arand Bachao Andolan (Save Hasdeo Arand Movement), his head soaked in blood after a blow. Women, standing defiant, pushed back against police shields with their bare hands. But in the end, it was the bulldozers that won. Centuries-old trees, sacred to the tribal communities, were cut down.
Yet, it was only in early 2024 that the Chhattisgarh Forest Department reported to the National Green Tribunal that 81,866 trees have been felled since mining operations began in this area.
The timeline is staggering. Between 2012-13 and 2017-18, 50,014 trees were cut down; from 2018-19 to 2022-23, another 31,852 trees followed. Environmental activists dispute these numbers. They claim that more than 3.5 lakh trees have been felled since 2012.
Should the price of development be paid by virgin forests and indigenous communities, who end up losing their land, livelihood, and way of life?
How it began
To understand this, one needs to trace the story back to its roots. In 2010, a government study classified the entire 1,898 square kilometres of Hasdeo Arand as a protected area. However, two years later, in 2012, forest clearances were granted under the then United Progressive Alliance II government, and coal blocks were allotted in Hasdeo Arand.
In 2013, the Parsa East and Kanta Basan (PEKB) coal mine in Surguja district of Chhattisgarh was allotted to Rajasthan Rajya Vidyut Utpadan Nigam Ltd (RRVUNL) to supply its thermal power plants in Rajasthan. RRVUNL in turn appointed Adani Enterprises Ltd (AEL) as the Mine Developer and Operator. A joint venture called Parsa Kente Collieries Ltd (PKCL), in which AEL owns 74 per cent share and RRVUNL 26 per cent, was tasked with developing the mine.
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AEL began mining the region. It was the first phase of a project that, as it expanded, would swallow more and more land, trees, and villagers’ rights.
In September 2020, RRVUNL requested an expansion of the mining area from 762 hectares to over 1,031 hectares. Activists feared that this could mark the onset of stage II of the mining operations, despite official statements claiming otherwise. As per RRVUNL’s statements, the PEKB mine would produce 137 million tonnes (MT) of coal over 15 years. But by July 2020, the company had only extracted 61.1 MT, with an additional 20.91 MT still to be mined, far lower than the initial estimate.
Felled trees in Hasdeo Arand.
| Photo Credit:
Alok Shukla
The company claimed it had made a calculation error and said that stage I reserves had been prematurely exhausted. This prompted RRVUNL to seek more land for mining, and in February 2022, permissions for phase II mining operations were granted although the protests had intensified by then.
In October 2023, production was halted at the PEKB mine, and a notice said that RRVUNL had failed to get approval for tree felling on 91.21 hectares of land. But by November 2023, clearance for an additional 93 hectares was granted.
Increasing presence of Adani Enterprises
The destruction is not just physical; it is deeply psychological as well. As mining operations advanced, so did the Adani company’s presence in the region, which transformed from a distant corporate entity to an omnipresent local force. Crossing into Udaipur tehsil, one is greeted by the Adani logo everywhere: plastered across street lights, rest stops, schools, and even police barricades. For the villagers, the company is not just a name any more; it is a government unto itself. As Amar Saeed, a 33-year-old villager, said: “Adani company has the biggest weapon possible that we cannot dare to possess—the government.”
The relationship between the company and the villagers is steeped in a power dynamic that goes beyond the usual corporate hegemony. The brand did not come in as a mere mining company; it positioned itself as a guardian of progress.
The sarpanches of Salhi, Ghatbarra, and Basen villages told us how they have never witnessed such organised corporate intrusion before. What started as a distant operation in 2013 soon became a force at their very doorsteps, with trucks, workers, and company officials entering their fields and knocking on their doors.
As per the agreement between AEL and RRVUNL, it is the Adani arm that is responsible for obtaining clearances for land acquisition, resettlement, and coal extraction. Before phase II began, employees of AEL had already started to visit the villages concerned, trying to convince the locals to relinquish their land. All villagers claimed that they barely heard references to the State-run RRVUNL; instead, it was the Adani brand name they heard.
Manufacturing consent
The battle for land is a fight for territory but it also works through calculated social engineering. The strategic branding, the co-opting of local systems, and the reshaping of indigenous rights and local administration into issues of corporate governance are part of a larger playbook. In Hasdeo Arand, communication between the company’s representatives and the villagers, particularly in obtaining their consent, is a key issue and one that raises deeper questions about corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its influence on local communities.
A house in Salhi village displays the Adani Foundation’s logo and slogan on water conservation. The logo is prominently visible across villages in the region.
| Photo Credit:
Mohit Kumar
According to the scholars Judith Verweijen and Alexander Dunlap, the central issue revolves around “participatory” and “community-oriented” interventions under CSR initiatives. CSR has increasingly become a corporate tool to pre-empt and neutralise criticism without fundamentally altering harmful business practices in most mining areas across the world. In Hasdeo Arand, this has played out vividly.
Take Adani Vidya Mandir, commissioned in 2013 in Salhi panchayat for children whose families were impacted by the project. In 2018, the school shifted to new premises, inaugurated by Raman Singh, the then Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh, and Gautam Adani, the chairman of the Adani Group. However, a closer look at the Adani Foundation’s annual report from 2013-14 shows that the foundation had already, from 2013-14, been deeply embedded in the villages of Salhi, Hariharpur, and Ghatbarra and had initiated crucial services like coaching classes, healthcare, opening bank accounts for farmers, and water projects.
The Adani Foundation began to permeate areas that are typically managed by State governments, subtly embedding itself within local institutions. Over time, its presence became so ingrained that questioning it seemed almost redundant.
“The Adani Foundation began to permeate into areas that are typically managed by the State government, subtly embedding itself within local institutions. Over time, its presence became so ingrained that questioning it seemed almost redundant.”
For instance, the panchayat building in Salhi bears the Adani Foundation logo on its board. The shift is not merely one of signage; it reflects the encroachment of the private sector into what are traditionally public spaces. With no visible opposition, it underscores how community symbols of governance have been quietly repurposed, blurring the lines between state authority and private influence.
Additionally, since women have played a significant role in the Hasdeo Arand Bachao Andolan, the company’s CSR initiatives have been aimed at involving local women in order to deflect their protest.
In 2018-19, AEL helped set up Mahila Udayami Bahuddheshiya Sahakari Samiti Ltd, a cooperative of 250 women across 10 villages of Parsa, with the stated goal of empowering them through skills development and financial independence. The cooperative engaged women in activities such as white phenyl production, mushroom cultivation, and cooking midday meals for Adani Vidya Mandir. According to the company’s 2018-19 annual report, 56 women were employed under this initiative, earning an average of Rs.2,300 a month.
However, for women like Neeru Urrain, the promise of empowerment quickly turned into disillusionment. Initially, Urrain was drawn to the cooperative because it offered a way to earn additional income during farming off-seasons. But as she got more involved, she realised it was a trap. “The cooperative was headed by some officials who said they were part of the Adani company. They showed us a vision where we would earn independently and expand. We worked from 9 am to 5 pm, with only 15 minutes for lunch. Our daily wage was set at Rs.100,” she recalled.
For women like Neeru Urrain from Ghatbarra village, the promise of empowerment quickly turned into disillusionment.
| Photo Credit:
Mohit Kumar
Ultimately, not only was Urrain not paid her wages in full but she was also taken off the rolls for protesting. Urrain claims this was a common experience for other women as well.
Such CSR initiatives reveal a deeper strategy: the use of CSR to create a narrative of community development and engagement, while masking exploitation of local resources and manipulation of consent. For instance, many women who were given jobs as midday meal workers in the Adani Vidya Mandir told us that the school would then “convince” them to accept the company’s mining proposal and give up their land.
Highlights
- Adani Enterprises Ltd (AEL), tasked with developing coal mines in Chhattisgarh’s Hasdeo Arand forest, is swallowing up land, trees, and villagers’ rights in collusion with the State government
- As mining operations have advanced, so has the Adani company’s presence in the villages, with the AEL permeating into areas that are typically managed by State governments
- Provisions under the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act (PESA), 1996, and the Fifth Schedule of the Indian Constitution, which covers the administration of tribal areas, have been blatantly violated
Worldwide, corporations, particularly in the extractive industries, collaborate with governments to silence dissent and manufacture consent. The anthropologist Oscar Ulloa Calzada describes how companies now engage directly with indigenous communities, bypassing traditional state mediation, offering what seems like autonomy in negotiations but is ultimately designed to benefit corporate interests.
Fracturing the community
One sees this pattern playing out across Chhattisgarh’s Ghatbarra, Hariharpur, and Fatehpur villages. In Ghatbarra, the sarpanch Jainandan Porte, elected in 2020, found himself heading a deeply divided village. The previous sarpanch was charged with facilitating widespread legal violations to allow corporate access to the village. The 2020 Panchayat election became a battleground not only for leadership but for control over resources, with powerful factions in the village backing the corporation’s interests. Porte said that the company had dangled promises of huge compensation, jobs, and a better life to lure the villagers into supporting its agenda and had thus also fractured the community.
In fact, a form of highly questionable groundwork to obtain sanction from the villagers was laid in 2017-18, long before RRVUNL sought to expand the PEKB coal mine in 2022. Muneshwar, a prominent activist, recounted how gram sabha meetings were held ostensibly to discuss village administrative matters but with the real objective being to coerce villages into consenting to the coal mining project.
It was through an RTI application filed by Porte that the full extent of the corporate and state collusion came to light. The RTI response revealed that panchayat secretaries were taken to a State guest house in Udaipur tehsil in 2017-18, where they were forced to sign documents approving environmental clearance for mining in the Parsa coal block. The gram sabha, which is required to grant consent under the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act (PESA), 1996, had not actually discussed or approved the proposal.

Ghatbarra villagers make their way home around midday after spending the morning foraging for wood and grazing their livestock in the forest before the heat of the day sets in. The villagers’ way of life is being destroyed by the mining project.
| Photo Credit:
Mohit Kumar
In fact, most villagers were unaware of the gram sabha purportedly held on August 20, 2019. According to RTI documents, the final gram sabha minutes had the forged signatures of deceased individuals. The Panchayat Secretary of Ghatbarra, Gopal Das, denied the charges and said the gram sabha had met and given unanimous consent to the proposal. “We have pictures and videos from the sabha as proof,” he said. However, he has not responded so far to requests to share the images.
The blatant disregard for the Fifth Schedule and PESA has continued for years. The Chhattisgarh government implemented the PESA rules only in 2022, nearly 28 years after the Act’s implementation by the Centre. This delay allowed corporations to sidestep crucial legal requirements, using every loophole available to gain control over tribal lands.
Violation of rules
PESA is a powerful piece of legislation that recognises the authority of gram sabhas in Scheduled Areas to make decisions on land use and protect their traditional rights. In theory, PESA is meant to ensure self-governance by giving gram sabhas control over their land, resources, and culture. However, as Jainandan Porte’s RTI query revealed, these protections are often undermined by collusion between corporations and government officials.
Under these circumstances, the supposed consent for coal mining can be regarded as manipulated consent. Many villagers were either unaware that the meeting had taken place or discovered that a consent clause had been quietly added to the official records later.
The brazen violation of rights does not stop with PESA. Under the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution, which covers the administration of tribal areas, State and Central governments have a responsibility to protect tribal autonomy. A landmark case, Samatha v. State of Andhra Pradesh (1997), set a precedent when the Supreme Court ruled that land in Scheduled Areas, including government land, must remain with the tribal communities, and any lease for mining or other purposes should be given only with their consent and due consultation with Central and State committees.
In theory, these protections should prevent the exploitation of tribal lands. Yet, despite clear legal safeguards, powerful corporations manage to override the provisions by fabricating the consent of villagers in collusion with state machinery. The PEKB coal block expansion of 2019 seems to have been approved on the basis of such manufactured consent.
In the first week of October 2024, the Chhattisgarh Scheduled Tribes Commission, led by Bhanu Pratap Singh, held an inquiry that uncovered a chilling account of intimidation and falsification. Multiple gram panchayat secretaries testified that they had been forcefully detained at the government rest house in Udaipur for 10-15 days. They stated that they were held under duress by “state and company representatives” and pressured into falsifying records. They said they were coerced into adding a line to the gram sabha meeting minutes that claimed that the village councils had granted consent for the mining project. The secretaries explained that this point, which appeared as the “22nd” item in the official records, was inserted after the meeting had concluded, without discussion and without the knowledge of the villagers.
Children, one of them studying at Adani Vidya Mandir, stare at the coal mines in their backyard in Sarguja, Chhattisgarh in April 2023.
| Photo Credit:
A.M. Faruqui
In Hariharpur village, Sewaram Porte’s wife was the sarpanch at the time. It was widely known that she was a figurehead, with Sewaram Porte wielding the actual power. According to Sewaram, in the months leading up to the gram sabha, he was under enormous pressure from both the company’s officials and State authorities.
“They repeatedly tried to bribe me,” he said, naming key officials. He accused Ajay Tripathi, who was the Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM) at the time; Kiran Kaushal, the then District Collector; and the tehsildar of Udaipur of visiting his home and offering him lakhs of rupees to manipulate the outcome of the gram sabha meeting. Sewaram’s personal stake in the situation adds a bitter layer of irony to the story. Only 1 acre of his property falls within the designated coal block, with the rest outside the proposed mining area.
Kiran Kaushal is currently under investigation by the Chhattisgarh government for corruption related to the illegal granting of Forest Rights Act certificates to villagers in Korba, a nearby district, but no formal investigation has been launched regarding her alleged involvement in the bribery and manipulation of the gram sabha in Hariharpur. The inaction highlights the systemic failures and state complicity that allow such land grabs to occur under the guise of development.
Sewaram’s account reflects a much larger and darker trend: where corporate greed and state machinery work in tandem to erode the rights of indigenous communities, bypassing legal frameworks like PESA and the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution.
Injecting a sense of inevitability
Research shows that a sense of inevitability played a crucial role in diminishing resistance from the villagers. Company officials appear to have used years of manipulation to foster a perception among villagers that their land would be taken away anyway, until a point when it seemed better to accept whatever compensation or benefits they could get from the company rather than resist. Company officials also appear to have sowed seeds of division within the community and capitalised on it.
One significant division, for instance, was between the Dalit and Adivasi populations. In Ghatbarra village, the only village in the area with a Dalit settlement, tensions began to surface despite a history of relative harmony. The Adivasi community began labelling the Dalits as “dalals” (middlemen) and “drunkards”, accusing them of complicity with the company.
Members of the Dalit community shared a different perspective. A Dalit woman who has lived in Ghatbarra for generations said her family had been involved in the movement against the coal mine since its inception in 2013. “But the community never gave us the place in the movement that we deserved,” she said. Dalits in Ghatbarra have typically owned very little land, and the small plots they cultivated were on forest land. Poverty and social marginalisation are rampant, making them especially vulnerable to the company’s influence.
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Jagrupan Kurrey, a Dalit man from Ghatbarra, described how officials would visit their homes with mithai dabbas (sweet boxes) that had cash hidden inside. He claimed that he personally receives Rs.10,000 a month from the company. “They don’t say much but sometimes ask us to convince other community members to give up their land and welcome the project,” he said.
Leveraging the Dalit community
AEL also leveraged Dalits during moments of conflict, such as when trees in the forest had to be felled. Company officials would ask the Dalit community to intervene and diffuse the situation. This effectively pitted the Dalits against the supporters of the Hasdeo Arand Bachao Andolan, with the company framing the protesters as the ones “preventing” tree felling and “clashing” with fellow villagers.
“In the face of poverty, it’s difficult to make choices,” one Dalit farmer said. In the 10 years of the Hasdeo Arand Bachao Movement, he said, every leader or sarpanch who had approached them for support eventually disappeared, leaving them unsure of whom to trust. “Just like we’re being paid, maybe they are being paid too. Why are we the only ones labelled as dalals?”
Meanwhile, the Hasdeo Arand Bachao Andolan continues its struggle, but the helplessness of the local panchayats has only deepened over the years. Sripal Porte, the sarpanch of Basen village, recounted a personal experience to the writers.
“We wanted to build a community centre for the village and needed space for a garbage dumping area. I ran from office to office—between the tehsildar and the SDM—but each told me the land was not under their jurisdiction. The forest department had no answers either. Then, suddenly, people from Adani came and offered me a small plot of land for the purpose,” Porte said.
When it was pointed out that the PESA provisions give the gram panchayat authority over local land decisions, Porte said: “By law, I am supposed to decide where to allocate land, and the gram sabha has to approve it. But today, I have to ask the state, which in turn directs me to Adani, even for something as basic as a space for dustbins. I can no longer make independent decisions. The land belongs to the company.”
As of the time this article went to press, the Adani Foundation had not responded to our emails regarding the various controversies surrounding the Parsa East and Kanta Basan coal mine.
Shubhangi Derhgawen is a freelance journalist and a lead researcher with the Visual Storyboard Team of the Centre for New Economics Studies (CNES), O.P. Jindal Global University .Deepanshu Mohan is Professor of Economics and Dean, IDEAS, Office of InterDisciplinary Studies, and Director, CNES. He is a visiting professor at the London School of Economics and currently a visiting fellow to the Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Department at the University of Oxford.