‘Give back livelihoods’ — newspaper ads pop up in support of Sterlite plant, shut since 2018 stir

While anti-Sterlite protesters call the ad 'corporate scheming', those in favour cite setback to local economy caused by plant's closure. The case comes up in SC on 21 February.

File photo of the closed Sterlite copper smelting plant at Tuticorin | Suraj Singh Bisht | ThePrint

Chennai: On Friday, major Indian cities woke up to a full-page advertisement in prominent newspapers lobbying for the reopening of the controversial Sterlite copper smelting plant in Tamil Nadu’s Thoothukudi. The advertisement by a group of three associations from Thoothukudi came just ahead of the 21 February Supreme Court hearing on a plea by the Vedanta group seeking a lift on the state government’s order to close the plant. 

In 2018, when the plant came up with an expansion plan, an anti-Sterlite protest began in the city, demanding its closure citing pollution, environmental issues, and health concerns. The protest lasted 100 days. On the 100th day, 22 May 2018, police firing left 13 people dead. A week later, the then All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) government ordered the permanent closure of the factory. 

Ever since, Vedanta has been taking legal recourses to get the plant reopened. In 2020, the Madras High Court, which was hearing a case on reopening the plant, ordered its permanent closure, saying, “When the economy is pitted against the environment, environment will reign supreme.” Vedanta’s appeal in the Supreme Court is still pending and comes up this week. 

While activists who protested against the plant and demanded its closure call the advertisement “corporate scheming,” associations that worked for Sterlite call the plant closure a setback. 

“A well-planned systematic propaganda is being set by the corporate by using its ancillary or dependent companies to run this campaign. The government had taken a policy decision and the Madras High Court in 2020 had in its order upheld the permanent closure of the plant,” said M. Krishnamoorthy, a member of Anti-Sterlite Thoothukudi District People’s Alliance. 

‘Protecting livelihood’ 

The full-page advertisement, which had no mention of ‘Sterlite’ in it, read, “Our copper factory gave us livelihoods for 22 years. Five years ago, it was shut down. Lakhs of people are jobless and suffering.”

The advertisement was taken out by the Thoothukudi Makkal Vazhvadhara Padhukappu Sangam, the Thoothukudi Industrial Suppliers Association, and the Thoothukudi Contractors Association. It added that the factory’s practices were affirmed by the National Green Tribunal and mentioned that the plant had been operational during the pandemic, producing oxygen and “saving thousands of lives”.

Apart from direct employment, the plant brought business for small entrepreneurs as well. Take the case of I. Lenin, owner of Rali Engineering works and head of the Thoothukudi Industrial Suppliers Association, who started working with Sterlite in 1993 when the factory was being set up. As a local company, Lenin’s firm supplied everything, from engineering spares and machine spares to machine components and fabricated items, to Sterlite.

Lenin’s company, which comes under micro, small and medium enterprises, had an annual turnover of around Rs 32 crore in 2015-2016. “Since the closure of Sterlite, work opportunities have dropped and last year, my company had a turnover of Rs 5 crore,” he said. 

There are over 5,000 families who are dependent on industrial supplies, and Sterlite’s closure has had a major impact on them, he said. “There are no new factories coming up here, and those that are already here have also reduced their operations,” added Lenin. 

According to S. Thiagarajan, a founding member of the Thoothukudi Contractors Association and president of the Thoothukudi Makkal Vazhvadhara Padhukappu Sangam, “The factories that operated in Thoothukudi used raw materials produced by Sterlite. With Sterlite shut, importing material from other places has made the production process expensive.”

With around 50 contractors and over 10,000 labourers working for them, Sterlite used to be the main source of work for contractors such as Thiagarajan. “Around 80,000 tonnes of raw material used to come from abroad to the Thoothukudi port. Lorries would be stationed at the port to bring them to the factory but now all of that has stopped,” said Thiagarajan.

He owns six lorries, two cranes and two JCBs that were put to use on a daily basis at Sterlite factory. “Now we are forced to take up small jobs and are struggling to pay our dues,” he added. 

‘Blood sacrifice to save Thoothukudi’

Around 20 km from the Sterlite plant at Sahayapuram, Thoothukudi, not a day goes by that J. Vanitha does not think about her daughter, Snowlin. Seventeen-year-old Snowlin was the youngest of the victims in the 2018 Thoothukudi police firing. 

“We wanted to fight for the people of Thoothukudi who have been suffering because of the factory, but that took away the most precious thing in our lives,” said Vanitha. 

“She would have been 22 this year. Her sacrifice to save the people of Thoothukudi will be seen by God; we believe in the judicial system to give us justice,” she added. 

Call for reopening gains momentum

In an interview in 2022, Vedanta Group founder and chairman Anil Agarwal had said that the anti-Sterlite protests were political or NGO-driven, and might have had Chinese involvement, too. Vedanta, which had reportedly also announced the sale of Sterlite, has shelved the plan and is working towards expediting the process of reopening the plant. 

For a revamp, the plant, which has been incurring a loss of Rs 5 crore a day, will reportedly need Rs 800 crore – Rs 1,000 crore. 

According to Krishnamoorthy, “These advertisements are used to spread false perceptions. This is a contempt of court and against the government decision too.” He added that the factory was found to have polluted the environment on a large scale. 

Meanwhile, pro-Sterlite groups state say reopening the factory would play an important role in improving district’s economy. “We have been pushed back to the 1990s,” said Lenin, adding that the advertisement was to spread awareness about the pro-Sterlite sentiment that is also prevalent in the region. 

Thiagarajan said, “The case is in the Supreme Court so we did not want the word Sterlite mentioned in the advertisement. But we wanted everyone across the country, especially the state and the national capital, to notice that there are people who are dependent on this factory.”

Vedanta set up the Sterlite plant in Thoothukudi after facing rejection from Gujarat, Goa and Maharashtra. But ever since it began its operations in 1996, the plant has faced hurdles with the local community in Thoothukudi.

The first major trouble came in 2010 when the Madras High Court ordered the plant’s closure for defying environmental norms. This order was set aside by the Supreme Court. In 2013, a sulphur dioxide leak from the plant led to the Supreme Court imposing a Rs 100 crore fine on the factory.

In 2022, the state government informed the high court that the Sterlite plant had dumped 5,37,765 tonnes of copper slag in the district that had not been cleared till then. 

(Edited by Smriti Sinha)