There is an uneasy calm in Kuradiphasa village at the foothills of the Gandhamardhan Hills. “It is the calm before the storm,” says Himanjali Das, who belongs to the indigenous Kondh tribe.

Wearing a t-shirt and trousers, a watch strapped to her wrist, the youth leader in her 20s leans on her steel-blue two-wheeler on which she rides to the various villages of the Paikamal block in Odisha’s Bargarh district.

Das is a young woman with a cause. “If our sacred Gandhamardhan Hills have to be protected from mining, then youth from local Adivasi communities have to come forward. I am one such youth and there are hundreds like me from villages that depend on Gandhamardhan for their livelihoods,” she told IndiaSpend.

“There are reports that mining is likely to return to our hills, and we a

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