Vedanta's smelting plant in Tamil Nadu feels the heat of protesters again

The smelter in Tamil Nadu accounts for nearly half of the country's copper output

What started nearly two months ago in Kumarettiyapuram, a village 600 km off Chennai, has now spread to other regions in the neighbourhood. Every day people from these villages gather on the streets to protest against the $11.5-billion Vedanta Group’s copper smelting plant, and demand an immediate halt to all expansion activity being carried out by the group. The villagers see the smelting plant, which has been running for two decades, as nothing more than a health hazard.

“Our kids are suffering from wheezing. At night the factory releases noxious gas that suffocates us, and our water is not drinkable