CSR as development

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empowerment through education was the focus. This vision of empowerment, locates the problem at the level of individual responsibility, constructing the ideal subject of empowerment as one who can ‘help oneself’ and exploit opportunities given by companies. In the relationship between the giver and the recipient, this reinforces “the denial of obligation” so that those who do not respond to the gift of CSR, can only be blamed (Rajak 2011a, 217).

As well as constructing the mining industry as leaders of a particular kind of

development, mining proponents constructed a particular history of development. At the start of all my interviews with mining proponents, the history of mining and its role in development was proclaimed. Jason said, “first comes mining, then comes the village.

The village is not here and then mining comes and interrupts, no, mining brings settlers and they [the village] are all dependent”. The significance of this statement is that Jason’s development story prioritises the needs of the mining industry over the needs of the community. He uses the history mining to give rights to the mining industry, in a similar fashion to the EIA reports. The statement also illustrates how mining proponents rationalise CSR by constructing communities unanimously as dependents.

The CSR discourse, as a ‘gift’ that reduces economic dependency, also promoted its contribution to sustainable development. This manifested in a language of

self-sufficiency. CSR projects were represented as self-supporting. Jason stressed all CSR projects were meant to be ‘independent and self-sufficient’ because “CSR is not charity, I don’t want charity”. Prakesh was also careful to emphasise that the MFG provided very little extra support to their tourism cooperative project and that with all projects

“we just keep a track”. Self-help groups, micro-credit and small-scale income

generation activities were all ‘helping people to help themselves’. Mining proponents projected these self-help projects as self-sustaining and alluded to the sustainability of the industry based on this. Self-help and self-sufficiency is also a way of instilling ownership with the community rather than company (Gardner 2012, 173). These projects were also described as soft, skills-based schemes, rather than hard,

infrastructure oriented projects. Again, the emphasis on the self-sufficient program, managed by the community themselves, was promoted as the ideal kind of CSR to do.

In this way, CSR’s contribution to sustainable development eluded any reference to the environment, to social and political relationships but instead replicated the unspoken

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norms of neoliberal capitalism: self-management, self-reliance and entrepreneurship (Gardner 2012, 177). Gardner argues that this emphasis on ‘independent’ development is also convenient for companies because they can disconnect easily from the project under the name of sustainability (ibid., 165).

To promote the industry as leaders in development, mining proponents also mobilised the corporate oxymoron ‘sustainable mining’ (Benson and Kirsch 2010). Twisting its original meaning, these informants made sustainability refer to the efficiency of the mining process, what they called ‘no-waste mining’. As Jason stated, “sustainable mining means no waste, use everything. If there is non-profitable ore, it is stacked and over time it can be used. What is waste today can be a resource tomorrow”. A small mine owner expressed a similar argument; that more minor minerals exist in the ground and if these were mined and sold too, this would be sustainable mining. Hari said, there is no research going on and this research could multiply our revenue. Imagine what we could do if we could isolate those rare earths, the nickel. Nickel today is 5000 rupees per kilo. Better revenues would mean more distributed wealth and there would be zero-dumping so your environmental footprint becomes very small.

These examples show how, in a twist on sustainability, the CSR discourse could promote mining companies as leaders of sustainable development. In many of these interviews, sustainability was used to refer not to environmental sustainability, but to corporate profits and economic development that would outlast the mining project (Benson and Kirsch 2010).

In defence of the ‘sustainable mining’ argument, mining proponents compared mining in Goa to mining in other Indian states. They argued that because Goa was small and people live close to the mining leases, mining could not be done in an environmentally damaging way. In other words, best practices had to be followed in Goa because of the proximity of villages to mines. This contradicts the EIAs which represent people very far away from the mines and is based on the same argument that all environmental impacts can be managed. It was also claimed by mining proponents that mining could only have existed for so many years because of its ‘sustainability’ and benefits to local people. Prakesh stated, “without it being sustainable and beneficial to the locals it would not have sustained for this long”. It was agreed amongst pro-mining informants, that the oldest players in the industry had always had “an understanding about

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sustainability” that meant that they worked in environmentally sound ways. This resonates with claims of moral purpose: around the history of mining, corporate citizenship, and the idea that the mining industry is the most responsible industry in Goa. Not only were long standing Goan miners the most altruistic but they were also the most conscientious about sustainability. As Kirsch identifies, the oxymoron of

‘sustainable mining’ work to reassure the public that the industry shares their environmental values (Kirsch 2014, 167) in an attempt to create a social license to operate.

In summary, the CSR discourse as a manifestation of the pro-mining discourse justifies the mining industry as a leader of development. Development is of a particular kind, reducing economic dependency through schemes that promote self-help. Encompassing a commitment to sustainability co-opts the anti-mining discourse but twists the meaning to reinforce resource-led growth. Therefore, whilst CSR and EIAs appear to be very different, the former a corporate ‘gift’ and the latter a government regulatory process, they operate on similar argumentation, working towards the same end.