India: The Battle for Orissa

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The last time I was in Orissa was a decade ago to cover the story of U.S. power company AES (AES), which had been trying to set up a power operation in the state. The World Bank was working with Orissa's state electricity board to trifurcate the power operations into generation, distribution, and transmission, instead of having the board do everything. The story was about Enron in Bombay and AES in Orissa.

The Environmental and Social Costs of Mining

Neither company was successful in its endeavor, but India benefited greatly. Indians, which had for decades relied on badly managed state power boards that provided power when they could and sometimes on whim, learned about their power rights, their power needs, and that quaint unit called the megawatt, and how much it cost to produce and sell.

Now Orissa's tribals, and their fellow Indian citizens, are witness to a bitter battle over the nature of India's mineral wealth and its true cost to both industry and society. Like the power story, this one too will take many, many years to play itself out. If all goes well, India will learn about the price of each ton of steel, not just its cost in monetary terms, but also its environmental and social costs. Luckily, Orissa's resources are so plentiful that it will take 50 years before they begin to be depleted. Hopefully, the right battles will have been fought and won by then, and the right lessons learned.

And here's a charming story on Orissa that few know. The former longtime chief minister of Orissa was a giant of a man, a personality, and a force of nature called Biju Patnaik. He dominated Orissa politics for decades. But he also had other interests, and one of them was flying. During World War II, he helped evacuate British families from Rangoon when the Japanese invaded, and he also helped Indonesian rebel leaders fight for their independence from the Dutch, and flew them, under gravely dangerous circumstances, to Delhi to meet former Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

A Daughter of Orissa

For his trouble, Patnaik was later awarded the highest civilian honor in Indonesia, and Indonesian President Sukarno gave him the honor of naming Sukarno's newborn daughter. Patnaik, the romantic hero, called her Megawati, or "Goddess of the Clouds." Megawati went on to become president of Indonesia from 2001 to 2004. So longstanding was her gratitude to India that Megawati named her own daughter Orissaputri, or "Daughter of Orissa."

Hopefully Orissa's fortunes will blossom and its troubles soon will be behind it, so more daughters are called Orissa, the daughters of fortune.

Kripalani is BusinessWeek's India bureau chief .