On the main road to billionaire Gautam Adani's planned mega port of Vizhinjam on India's southern tip, a shelter built by the coastal region's Christian fishing community blocks the entrance, preventing further construction.
The simple 1,200-square-foot structure with a corrugated iron roof has been on the way since August as it sought the country's first container transshipment port — a $900 million project that attracted a lucrative shipping trade that flowed among juggernaut manufacturers. and the affluent consumer market in the West.
Decorated with banners announcing "protest day and night indefinite", the shelter provides cover for around 100 plastic chairs, although the number of protesters who take part in the sit-in on any one day is much more. usually less.
Across the street, supporters of the port, including members of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling party and Hindu groups, have set up their own shelters.
Even when the number of protesters is small, around 300 police officers with batteries nearby will gather to carefully monitor the situation. Despite repeated orders from the Kerala state supreme court that the construction work should continue unhindered, the police are unwilling to act against the protesters, fearing that this would increase social and religious tensions at the port.
For Adani, the world's third-richest man according to Forbes, it's a high-stakes impasse with no easy solution.
Reuters interviewed more than a dozen protesters as well as port supporters, police officers and reviewed hundreds of pages of legal action brought by the Adani group against the Catholic priests who led the protests and against the state government. They all point to an insurmountable divide.
Leaders of the protests allege that construction of the port since December 2015 has caused significant coastal erosion and further construction promises to harm the livelihoods of a fishermen community, which they say numbers 56,000.
They want the government to stop construction and conduct independent studies on the impact of port development on the marine ecosystem.
The Adani group plans to send heavy vehicles to the port on Friday after a court this week ruled that vehicular movement should not be blocked. Vehicles trying to leave the port in October had to be turned back.
The vicar general of the archdiocese, who led the protesters, Eugene H. Pereira, said they would not be relieved of the shelter despite a court order.
"If necessary we are ready to arrest a large number of people," he told Reuters.
The Adani Group said in a statement that the project fully complies with all laws and that allegations of the project's responsibility for coastal erosion have been examined in several studies conducted by the Indian Institute of Technology and other institutions in recent years. .
"Looking at these findings from experts and independent institutions, we feel that the ongoing protests are motivated and against the interests of the state and the development of the port," he said.
The state government of Kerala, which has been in talks with the protesters and insists the erosion was caused by cyclones and other natural calamities, did not respond to a request for comment.
Graphic: Adani's transshipment hub in South India
