Once again, we have been witness to an unequal battle – thousands of women and men, defending their land and livelihood against corporate land grab armed with nothing but sticks and chilli powder facing a thousands-strong police platoon armed with batons and guns. Sompeta in Srikakulam district of Andhra Pradesh is the latest to enact this heroic scene of resistance – seen earlier at Kalinganagar, Singur, Nandigram, Dadri, Jagatsinghpur and many other places. Four fishermen were killed in the police firing while over 60, including many women, were reportedly severely injured in the brutal lathicharge.

At Sompeta, rural poor, mainly fisher-people were protesting the setting up of a thermal power plant by NCC Power Projects Limited (NCCPPL), a subsidiary of a real estate company, the Nagarjuna Construction Company (NCC). The power plant had been granted Environmental Clearance in spite of the fact that it would have destroyed the fragile ecosystem of the Beela wetlands in the area, thereby also devastating the livelihoods of the fisher-people.

Just a week ago, the Union Minister for Environment and Forests, Jairam Ramesh, had visited Sompeta and assured villagers that their concerns would be examined sympathetically. The power plant's environmental clearance had been challenged, and the decision of the National Environment Appellate Authority (NEAA) was awaited. The plant was yet to get clearance from the State Pollution Control Board. Yet, in spite of the fact that so many issues were pending, why did the Congress State Government not only allow the NCC to go ahead with its plans to erect a boundary wall, but even back up the company with a police force of 2000? In full view of the police, the NCC had further amassed private goons in the guise of 'construction workers', and these goons joined the police in beating up the protesting villagers.

On the day that the boundary wall of the thermal plant was to be constructed, people of 24 affected villages gathered to protest. The police (and NCC's private goons) chased and rained baton blows and eventually bullets on the protestors who offered a brave resistance. Later in the day, the police continued their terror spree, raiding villages and thrashing villagers. The police even attacked a hospital run by a well-known local environmentalist, beating him up as well as villagers being treated at the hospital.

At the cost of their lives however, the villagers of Sompeta did win a victory. The National Environment Appellate Authority (NEAA), following the firing, quashed the environment clearance which had previously been granted by the Ministry of Environment and Forests to the NCC. Acting on appeals by environmental activists and concerned citizens against the clearance, the NEAA had sent a team in June itself, which had submitted a report. The report categorically found that the clearance was based on false information by the MoEF's appraisal committee; the latter had indulged in “concealment of information” regarding the ecological importance of the wetlands area proposed for the power plant. The NEAA has further ordered that “no new power project be approved in the State of Andhra Pradesh till a survey of all wetlands is completed”.

It is telling however that it took a militant protest by thousands of villagers and the death of four in police firing to force the NEAA to act on the report submitted by its own team! Also, it must be asked, who will take responsibility for the clearance granted by MoEF which smacked blatantly of bias in favour of the private company in flagrant violation of all environmental norms?

In Andhra Pradesh, successive Congress Governments have unleashed repression – at Mudigonda, Gangavaram and now Sompeta – on the rural poor when they protest against land grab or demand their right to homestead land. Meanwhile the same Governments have turned a blind eye to corporate land grab and illegal mining by private corporations like Satyam-Maytas or NCC in blatant violation of the laws of the land. Alongside the issue of the Sompeta firing, allegations of large scale illegal mining against the son-in-law of former Chief Minister YSR Reddy are also rocking Andhra Pradesh. In neighbouring Karnataka, too, the BJP Government has given a clean chit to its two mining mafia MLAs, the Bellary brothers, despite overwhelming evidence of their being implicated in illegal mining.

Clearly, across the political spectrum, the ruling class is committed to ensuring full freedom to private corporations to loot and scoot, even at the cost of the livelihood and lives of our country's people. It is only the determined and heroic resistance struggles of the people in the face of the most brutal repression that offers any challenge to corporate loot and land grab – and any hope of saving the country's land, livelihood, environment and resources.