Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Sitting on a pink plastic chair and dressed - suitably for the hot, humid weather - in
a white singlet and dhoti, he brusquely told me: 'We will never let POSCO build here.'
Though it was a poor area, there was enough prosperity for people who wanted to stay.
'This is fertile land,' he said, referring to what the villagers called the local 'sweet sand'
where they cultivated betel vines for labour-intensive crops of paan leaves. There were
also cashew nut, fruit and rice crops as well as fishing. Most villagers lived in rough mud-
plastered homes covered with straw roofs, but the betel-vine crop provided a good living
for landless labourers of Rs 200 to Rs 250 a day, double the wages in other nearby areas,
and Rs 20,000-30,000 a month for a family owning land. Sahu said he planned to start op-
position later in POSCO's iron ore mining area, where a leading BJP politician and former
central government minister was also involved.
POSCO was promising bigger plots of land and homes on a nearby site to those who
moved, plus compensation for existing homes and land, which had been accepted by other
villages. There was also one job per family on offer in the steelworks (both during con-
struction and after commissioning), plus job training for a second family member. Those
who wanted to continue fishing, the company said, would receive assistance including a
boat and nets, and POSCO would build a new wooden jetty. There would also be help and
advice on animal husbandry and other occupations. 'If people want more, we will negoti-
ate,' said Gee-Woong Sung, then POSCO-India's project director, but this failed to break
the deadlock.
The company's experience illustrates what can happen when executives step outside ter-
ritories they know well and try to operate in a political and bureaucratic culture which, they
gradually discover, is very different from what they had expected. 'POSCO can't under-
stand officials who don't mean “yes” when they say “yes” and don't mean “no” when they
say “no”,' an influential Odisha official told me in 2008, insisting on anonymity. The com-
pany also seemed to believe that blunt speaking would help. According to the same source,
a very senior and impatient POSCO executive unwisely thumbed the company's agreement
in a government meeting and impatiently told officials they should 'act on the agreement
and hand over the land'- not quite the way to win friends and influence people in India.
In July 2013, POSCO abandoned a planned $5.3m steel project in Karnataka after three
frustrating years of delays and protests over use of land, but it is not pulling out of Odisha,
presumably because the state government has provisionally allocated rich iron ore mines
that make it worth staying on for, indefinitely.
Odisha
Odisha is one of India's poorest states. though one of the richest in minerals, and its failure
to realize its potential is far greater than most other states. Few big mining and metals pro-
