Melur villagers go creative against tungsten project

Residents of Melur in Madurai district, to show their opposition against the proposed tungsten mining project in their area, drew rangolis displaying ‘Ban Tungsten Project.’ Continuing with the protests against the mining project, which were undertaken in several ways, villagers in their Pongal rangolis at their houses, along with usual cow, sugarcane and pot drawings, included ‘Save Melur,’ ‘Ban tungsten’ and ‘Protect natural resources’ among their works Further, similar wordings were also written on cows and bulls, which were considered an intrinsic part of the festival. Selvaraj, one of the organisers of the protest against tungsten mining and a resident of Arittapatti, said that though politicians assure that the project would not continue, anything not on a written form was not believable. “To show that our entire livelihood and culture is dependent on the soil, we chose different ways to emphasise that,” he said. As Pongal is one festival interlinked with the people and their soil, most of the residents of Melur taluk took up the protest in the creative way.