Living the good LIFE
The two lawyers have won a global award for going up against industrial giants in cases where they represent farmers, tribals, and applegrowers who stand to lose their land, livelihoods or way of life. Their aim, the two men say, is power in the hands of the people
Ten years after their fight began, 12 villages in the Niyamgiri hills in Odisha cast their vote in India’s first environmental referendum. It was 2013. They’d waited years to have their say. Now, unanimously, they voted against a massive bauxite mine proposed by Vedanta to feed its alumina refinery in the region. The Rs 50,000-crore project had been taken up in partnership with the Odisha government but was opposed by the Dongria Kondh tribe, to whom the hill is sacred. A David-vs-Goliath fight ensued, with the UK-based mining giant on one side and the tribals, activists and their lawyer on the other. The fight went to the Supreme Court, which eventually ordered the Odisha government to seek the consent of the villages that would be impacted by the project.
The 8,000-member tribe had won. Their lawyer was Ritwick Dutta, co-founder of Legal Initiative for Forest and Environment (LIFE), which recently won one of this year’s four Right Livelihood awards. Also called the alternative Nobel, the awards were introduced in 1980 by German-Swedish philanthropist Jakob von Uexkull and are given out annually “to honour those offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us today”.
When he took on the Niyamgiri case in 2004, Dutta says he had no real idea what he’d be up against. “Overnight I had to face big-shot lawyers who were appearing for the Odisha government and Vedanta,” says Dutta, now 47. “It was my first foray into issues where the intersection of wildlife, forest and tribals with corporate irresponsibility comes in.”
At the time, he had done stints at World Wildlife Fund and with human rights lawyer Colin Gonsalves. Taking on Vedanta brought in more work of a similar kind. By 2005, Dutta and his former lawcollege mate Rahul Choudhary teamed up to take on cases exclusively in the fields of environment law, rights and displacement. This initiative would become LIFE, registered as a trust in 2008. Dutta is managing trustee and focuses on business and litigation; as trustee, Choudhary, 47, spearheads on-ground efforts and case-related research.
“We didn’t have a grand vision, but we also knew we were not like other firms and didn’t want to name it after ourselves,” laughs Dutta.
LIFE has since gained a reputation for representing local communities in fights against developmental projects that will not benefit them and will degrade ecosystems they depend on, worship or wish to protect. On the other side of the ring are usually governments and mighty corporations. Some of the cases LIFE has fought and won have involved steelmakers POSCO (a project that was to bring in India’s largest foreign direct investment), Jindal Steel & Power, and the French industrial house Lafarge.
LIFE runs on payments from litigants who can afford to pay, and research and outreach grants from around the world. The 1 million krona (Rs 85 lakh) prize that comes with their Right Livelihood award will now be added to the kitty.
Since 2005, LIFE has taken on more than 600 cases and won some landmark judgements. These include rulings against: a hydroelectric power project in Himachal Pradesh that was opposed by local apple growers; a thermal power plant in Ratnagiri in Maharashtra, opposed by Alphonso mango growers; a steel plant opposed by betel leaf farmers in Odisha; a hydroelectric project that threatened the habitat of the black-necked crane in Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh, a case in which they represented Buddhist monks.
It’s a small team fighting the large battles: 21 people, including scientists, researchers and nine lawyers.
The effort wouldn’t be possible, Dutta points out, without brave litigants who have been threatened, arrested and shot at for their efforts. Where LIFE triumphs, he says, is in staying the course in a legal system that can feel broken, outdated, misused and manipulated. And in untangling the tangles to simplify what belongs to whom, and who should have the last say.
Dutta also likes to emphasise that no one is antidevelopment by default. No more than 1% of the lakhs of projects cleared at the central and state levels in India each year meet with public objection. A fraction of those makes it to the courts. And of the cases that make it to the courts, quite a few are settled in favour of the industrial project.
Even when LIFE loses, though, they try to make an impact. “We lost the Ashapura mining case in Maharashtra, but it was hard for the media and government to ignore the fact that their Environment Impact Assessment report was a copy paste of a report for a Russian bauxite mine, complete with names of rivers and animals from Russia,” Choudhary says.
Of all their achievements, Dutta says one of their greatest has been that they have found ways to put the power in the hands of the people. Today, LIFE’s work also includes conducting training and capacity buildings workshops with local communities. They work with Biodiversity Management Committees at the local level. As the Right Livelihood awards statement put it: LIFE was chosen for its “innovative legal work empowering communities to protect their resources in the pursuit of environmental democracy in India.”
1
LIFE, or Legal Initiative for Forest and Environment, is among four winners of the Right Livelihood Awards, 2021. The others are Marthe Wandou, a gender activist working in the Lake Chad region of Cameroon; Vladimir Slivyak, an environmental activist in Russia; and Freda Huson, an advocate for indigenous communities in Canada.
2
LIFE was co-founded by Ritwick Dutta and his former college mate Rahul Choudhary, and registered as a trust in 2008.
3
One of their biggest cases involved representing the 8,000-member Dongria Kondh tribe, against a bauxite proposed mine in the Niyamgiri hills of Odisha. After 10 years of hearings, verdicts and appeals, the Supreme Court ordered the Odisha government to seek the consent of the villages set to be impacted.
4 Following the judgement, in 2013, India’s first-ever environmental referendum was held. The Dongria Kondh tribals voted, unanimously, against the project and the proposal was scrapped.