Pohang Iron and Steel Company (POSCO) - Quit Odisha, India!

Background:
As one traverses the district of Jagatsinghpur in Odisha, the amazing influence of water on land is evident all around. This is particularly the case during monsoons, when the great Mahanadi sumptuously meanders through its innumerable streams, rivulets and tributaries to join the Brahmani and form a massive estuarine complex and one of India's most extensive and fertile deltaic regions. Land surfaces rather incidentally in this amazingly diverse aquatic ecosystem.

On productive and fertile lands of the villages in Jagathsinghpur district (and dedicated forest lands) of Odisha State would now come up a massive steel plant with a production capacity of 12 million tonnes per annum (MTPA),
which is equivalent to the combined production of the top 6 steel plants of
India: Bhilai, Bokaro, Durgapur, Rourkela, Burnpur and Salem.

Of the 4,004 acres demanded by the company here, 200 acres would be
required for the port and over 1,000 acres would be exclusively dedicated to dump 10% of the fly ash and other hazardous solid waste that would be generated.

The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between POSCO and the Odisha state granted the company an unprecedented deal:

POSCO could extract 600 million tonnes of high quality iron ore over a 30 years lease period, 60% of which could be exported without processing. There was a rider though that such export would have to be in tandem with equivalent import of similar quality of iron ore – a specious practice indeed considering that it is in the interest of India not to allow export of raw ore at all and insist on value addition in-country. In addition, the clause demanding that an equal amount of
similar quality of ore must be imported back to replace the quantity exported out,
raises questions about what this transport game is all about.


POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (PPSS) -
For almost 6 years now, under the leadership of PPSS the affected communities have engaged in staunch and peaceful resistance against POSCO and its own Odisha government.

We, The Family of India and Families world over stand unified and support the following:

We, the Family of India and Families world over, oppose this monstrous of an undertaking that would ensure annihilation of the breathtakingly beautiful life and landscape of the district of Jagatsinghpur of coastal Odisha and the life and life styles of the simple villagers, tribes, forest dwellers of Odisha. WE DEMAND THAT POSCO QUIT INDIA.

We, the Family of India and Families world over, stand in solidarity with the people comprising of betel vine farmers (Paan Kethi farmers), fishermen & women,tribes/forest dwellers that have been the stewards of the forests and the land, in their peaceful fight against the mighty POSCO.  
We, strongly condemn the oppression and suppression
that the villagers have suffered at the hands of its own government in all eagerness and greediness to make way for this Foreign direct Investment (FDI)proposed by POSCO.

We, the Family of India and Families world over, join hands to support the indigenous peoples' way of life and dignified means of livelihood which is in complete harmony and understanding of the turbulent and violent forces of nature in this coastal zone.  
We, the families of the world demand that the ruthless, violent and illegal displacement of these villagers stop immediately.

We, the Family of India and the Families world over, come together to show our earnestness in preserving the knowledge systems of agrarian economies from these villages in the form of completely eco-friendly and organic practices in cultivating betel (paan) leaves etc.  The world famous Benarasi Paan is grown in these villages.  These villages also produce and export cashewnuts and Kewra flowers, both very high yielding cash crops.

We, the Family of India and the Families world over, understand the uniqueness and respect the Gandhian observation that the "real India lives in her Villages" and to vanquish the villages in the name of development is to destroy the very heart of India and retard her development.  (This would also close to the world the uniqueness of these Indian villages in terms of experiences, inspirations, life-styles and knowledge base.)

We, the Family of India and the Families world over, join hands for the survival and continuation of the families of the Endangered Olive Ridley Turtles that nest along the banks of Jatadharmohan creek and families of the equally endangered Horse Shoe Crabs in other critical spawning areas,both protected under the Wildlife Protection Act.   
The POSCO undertaking poses a grave danger and threat to these endangered species, other species and bio-diversity.

We, the family of India and the families world over, stand firmly against the pollution of air, land,oceans and water that would result from Posco's mega undertaking and only further worsened by the changing global climatic conditions and the sheer unmanageability of the volumes of hazardous solid wastes and other pollutants that would result from these mega operations
and certainly not to forget the history that India has had in the matters of pollution, for instance, the Bhopal gas tragedy and so on.

In solidarity,
Family of India and Families world over.

Source and for more info: http://esgindia.org/sites/default/files/resources/reports/resources/water-landscape-esg-posco-final-b-filed-.pdf