from the dingy bylanes of patnas goriatoli and humble miller high school to his office in londons exclusive mayfair district anil agarwal s journey covers the entire gamut of ragstoriches stories but more than his achievements the billionaire boss of vedanta resources a 28billion global mines and minerals empire these days makes more news for his latest moves catching the wrong end of the governments stick from the bauxite mining project in orissas niyamgiri hills to a foray into oil by acquiring a controlling stake in cairn india for 96 billion vedantas plans in india seem to be stalling but that is a small price to pay for democracy and development agarwal a staunch believer in the india story tells sanjay dutta over lunch at his mumbai officeq why is there so much negative news about vedantas ventures particularly over environmental issues pertaining to the niyamgiri projecta it is wrong to say there is negative news orissa is a specific subject people say that we are mining in niyamgiri i can tell you not a single blade of grass has moved there i am buying bauxite for running the kalahandi aluminium plant and will continue to do so till the issue is resolved i am optimistic it will work out mr rahul gandhi himself said he was not against development in a democracy there are processes to be followed if there are complaints the government must look into them it is doing just that and we must be patient what happened in niyamgiri is small you have to look at india as a whole in tuticorin the high court took a view and we went to the supreme court the matter is subjudice and i cannot say much but i can say it is a worldclass facility and 50000 people of tuticorin are depending on ita perception is building that vedanta is a carpetbagger and does not care about local peopleit is wrong to say we are against tribals we are also for tribals when we decided on kalahandi aluminium plant the place was inaccessible we built 13 bridges an airport power plant aluminium is a green metal basic requirement for growth we have built up capacity which promotes factories down the line for fabricating doors and window frames automotive body to utensils that means jobs and growthq what made you look at oila i grew up listening to announcements on radio that we will become selfsufficient in oil there would be a target which would always be extended even today we produce only 25 of our needs i dont believe there is hardly any oil or gas to be found in india its like if you keep saying you are poor you will never have money we have to create more ongcs the government is opening up the sector things are happening cairn has done a great job in rajasthan its a good opportunity for us vedanta will take it higher like it has done with sesa goa hindustan