Rob all! Loot all! Take all! That is the new mantra of the chiefs of the South Block and the well known agents of the imperialists — Manmohan Singh, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Chidambaram, et al. There is not a single part of the country’s natural wealth that is not up for sale, either directly or through collaboration with the Indian compradors. Not only India’s mineral wealth, but also its water, electricity, genetic wealth, flowers, fruits and even its yogic exercises are up for sale. In this article we shall just look at the latest steps taken to sell some of the mineral wealth of the country; others will be dealt with later.

Without the direct privatization of the main oil majors, against which there has been much resistance, the government is allowing the international oil majors into new fields — either directly or in collaboration. In fact in Assam there was an entire state bandh against the handing over of an ONGC oil field to a Canadian company. The Amguri Oil Field in Sibsagar district was given over to the company Canaro Resource Limited.

Besides this the US giant Chevron Texaco plans to come into the country in direct collaboration with the highly profitable ONGC. Shell too plans a major entry into the country.

Worse still has been the recent handing over of numerous new exploration fields to foreign TNCs. BP (UK), Petronas (Malaysia), Hunt Oil (UK), Cairn Energy (UK), British Gas are amongst the 26 foreign oil companies that have bid for the 20 new exploration fields.

Besides this the USA is trying its best to sabotage to pipe-line project from Iran and replace it with high cost LNG gas supplied by US companies in the Middle East through US ships. It is with this perspective that they seek to re-start Enron and build the planned huge 2.5 million tonne gas terminal.

Manmohan Singh has openly said that the next major reform that is to be urgently pushed through is in the coal sector. He has threatened that this will take place in the very next monsoon session of parliament. India has a gigantic 91 billion tones of proven reserves, including 15 billion tones of the high quality coking coke. Yet, since the last few years, the country is facing a shortage and has been importing coal at a huge cost from Australia.

An atmosphere is being systematically built for the privatization of the coal industry saying that coal shortage will be 55 million tones by 2005-06. NTPC, the major consumer of coal, has already threatened to import large amounts for its power plants. Many new coal fields are not being started, expecting the new policy to come soon. In a criminal waste of the country’s natural wealth the richest coking coal deposits at Jharia (near Dhanbad) have been on fire for over a decade now; yet the country has been importing coking coal from Australia.

Already the CIL (Coal India Ltd) is seeking global bids for mining leases of the 3 latest blocks in the Mahanadi coalfields. The mines at Bhubanedshwari, Kaniha and Kulda will give 24 million tones of high-grade coal annually, giving gigantic profits to the imperialist investor. In the eastern zone already 148 blocks have been given over to the private sector.

In this monsoon session of parliament a private coal-mining bill will be introduced which will replace the Coal Mines (Nationalisation) Act, 1973.

A massive scheme is underway to sell off the rich iron ore deposits to the imperialists. This sale will take place through direct export of the ore and also in the form of the final product — steel. Orissa has particularly become the hub for this sell out, given the rich iron ore resources of the area. Here the pro-BJP State government and the Congress/CPM government at the Centre are functioning in total collaboration. This is a part of an international trend where the Imperialists are shutting down their steel plants in their countries due to the high costs and the drop in iron ore reserves and shifting their projects to low cost countries.

Chhathisgarh has also been targeted for its rich iron ore deposits, but due to the vehement opposition of the local tribals led by the CPI(Maoists) it is not on the immediate plans. Here, the tribals, who were earlier enticed into accepting such projects in the name of ‘development’, have witnessed a pathetic plight at the iron ore mines of Bailladilla where the ore is exported direct to Japan. They lost their lands, got little compensation, were given only menial jobs at very low wages and their women and young girls were sexually abused on a massive scale by the contractor/officer/official class. All their rivers and streams in the vicinity too have been now polluted by the waste from the mines. For example, the Talper River is deep red in colour. The tribals have learnt a bitter lesson from this so-called developmental project. They quite obviously oppose any similar project in Chhattisgarh.

The cement industry has virtually already passed into the hands of the giant TNCs, particularly three of the largest — the Swiss giant, Holcim, the French giant, Lafarge and the Italian company Italcementi. Lafarge has taken over much of the Eastern belt of cement plants. Holcim now has a controlling stake in the biggest cement company, Tata’s ACC and also 67% share in Ambuja Cement India Ltd. Thereby the total production of cement in India by Holcim will be a massive 27 million tones. ACC has now also appointed a foreigner as CEO to head the company.

Besides these giants FIIs have also been swallowing up huge amounts of shares in the cement industry. The three major investment bankers that have been most aggressive in this sphere are the US’s Morgan Stanley, the UK’s HSBC and the Singapore Government. Just in the last year their investments have gone up drastically as indicated by the chart below.

This is only the beginning. It must not be forgotten that at one time the nationalization of Indian industry, as per the Bombay Plan (otherwise known as the Tata-Birla Plan) was done at a time which required large capital with low returns — the aim being to provide big industries raw materials cheap and use the people’s tax money for business interests. Today with vast sums of international finance available without much outlet (due to the crisis) the situation has changed and every commodity is being swallowed up in order to absorb their surplus capital and generate super profits for their business empires. So, in all the backward countries of the world, including India, not a commodity is being left untouched.