Welcome to POSCO country: India's fight for investors

For eight-year-old Rakesh Bardhan, it is protest time.

Decked out in a black T-shirt and a matching handkerchief wrapped around his head, he is off to join hundreds of farmers, labourers and fishermen standing between a generations-old way of life and India's biggest single foreign direct investment.

Local people are protesting against the planned construction of a $12 billion steel mill by South Korea's POSCO in the poor Orissa state.

"If the company wants to set up its project, let them first kill us," Bardham shouts over the speeches and slogans blaring out from loudspeakers to rows of protesters behind him. "If our land goes, everything will go. We will not get food, clothes or education."

Image: Indian women and children sit in protest against the acquisition of their land for the proposed $12 billion steel plant of South Korean conglomerate Posco, in Jagatsinghpur in this file photo.

Text: Matthias Williams, Reuters

AP Images