1. Indian Mining At Cross Roads
A. Hussain
Certified Mines manager
I stood on a hill and laughed out loud I had crossed the Narmada by boat from Jalsindhi
and climbed the headland on the opposite bank from where I could see, ranged across the
crowns of low, bald hills, the adivasi hemlets of Sikka, Surang, Neemgavan and Dom
Khedi. I could see their airy, fragile homes, I could see their fields and the forests behind
them. I could see little children with little goats scuttling across the landscape like
motorized peanuts. I knew I was looking at a civilization older than Hinduism, slated-
sanctioned (by the highest court in the land) to be drowned this monsoon when the waters
of the Sardar Sarovar reservoir will rise to submerge it.
Why did I laugh ?
Because I suddenly remembered the tender concern with which the supreme court Judges
in Delhi (before vacating the legal stay on further construction of the Sardar Sarovar
dam) had enquired whether adivasi children in the resettlement colonies would have
children’s parks to play in. The lawyers representing the government had hastened to
assure them that indeed they would, and what is more, that there were see-saws and
slides and swings in every park. I looked up at the endless sky and down at the river
rushing past and for a brief, brief moment the absurdity of it all reversed my rage and I
laughed. I meant no disrespect.
Arundhati Roy (Algebra of infinite Justice)
Are we different?
No we are not different as far as the treatment meted ont to oustees from our large,
medium or small mining projects is concerned. Of late the federation of mining industries
has shown great resentment against recent amendment in land Acquisiton Act and mining
bill 2011, expecting mining fraternity to tow the line. How the profits churned out from
the mineral industry are shared out, is a matter to be decided by the government of time
and the owners of the properties and there is hardly and role for the corps of mining
engineers. As the engineering divisions are concerned their sole aim should be to run the
industry in an efficient and enterprising spirit, complying with all the statute provisions
and generating a larger and larger surplus. Disposal of these surpluses is a privileged
discretion on the part of owners, and as far as managers or mining engineers are
concerned, they should channelise their efforts to get sufficient funds for floating the set-
up at its best efficiency and at competitive environment. Introduction of latest
technological advances have brought down overall manpower requirements and boosted
up production levels in turn demand for more and more land resulted. This situation has
further complicated the rehabilitation status of project affected persons to a large extent.
Offloading operational activities to third party contractual workings is another dimension
of the problem.
India is endowed with significant mineral resources and produce 89 minerals out of
which 4 are fuel minerals, 11 metallic, 52 non metallic and 22 minor minerals. The total
value of minerals other than petroleum during year 2000-2001 was Rs. 3,06,751 million.
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2. Today country ranks third in world’s coal production, fourth in iron ore, fifth in Bauxite
and lime stone.
Spiraling up demand of industrial minerals and coal did a radical change in the mining
operational strategy. Introduction of latest technology and large size earthmoving
equipments made it possible to adopt open surface mining technique for comparatively
high stripping ratio deposits which were so far amenable through conventional
underground mining techniques. Higher size of capital investments and higher production
levels converged into mega size operational level putting up extraordinary pressure over
neighboring resources. The other important aspect of this transformation was to share
some of the critical activities through outsourcing to third party contractual agencies.
When entire large mining operations shooted up, it was simply not possible that their
Juniors in the minor mineral mining segments remain insulated from the fruits of latest
technology up gradation. The small mines so far depended upon mannal resources,
opened their operations to latest available versatile hydraulic excavators, tippers,
hydraulic operated dumpers and drills etc. Finance and skill was not a problem, thanks to
the financers and equipment suppliers, who were readily available at door steps.
Our mineral resources are sufficiently rich and varied to provide the country with strong
industrial base. We have rich deposits of metallic minerals of ferrous group such as iron
ore, Manganese, chromites and Titanium. World’s largest reserves of Mica and Bauxite
are located in our country. The situation is more or less satisfactory in Coal, Felspar,
Fluoride, Limestone, Dolomite and Gypsum. Some of the non ferrous metallic minerals
especially Copper, Lead, Zinc, Tin, Graphite are less than adequate.
The latest level of coal reserves in the country is about 2,01,95,370 million tonnes. The
quality of coal is inferior and our current production level of 292 million tonnes per
annum has grown up ten times from the 32.8 million tonnes level in year 1950-51
Country has good quality iron ore reserves to the tune of 12,749 million tones, which is
almost 20 percent of world’s total iron ore reserve. The current production level of 64.1
million tonnes per annum of iron ore in country is about 20 times of 3.0 million tonnes
level of 1950-51
The reserves of some of the important minerals in the country are given as under –
Minerals Reserves in Million Tonnes
Manganese 430
Bauxite 3,290
Lime Stone 1,75,345
Dolomite 7,533
Gypsum 1,237
Mica 0.400
Uranium 0.030
Rock Phosphate 24.2
Graphite 168.77
Chromites 203
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3. As earlier stated the introduction of latest technology in mining sector has catapulted the
conventional mining to the arena of large open cast mining activities. This has multiplied
the material handling to a substantive scale at one hand and proportional rise in surface
land requirements. The new scenario depended upon a few highly skilled key persons
curtailing employment opportunities to a large extent. Another dimension of this change
has been reflected in the offloading of major activities to contractual agencies. This is
more and more acceptable trend in today’s mining industry. While the managements may
insulate themselves from the working environment created and maintained by these
contractual agencies, who are solely behind profit making motos, the overall employment
environment is nauseating.
Deployment of high capacity equipments has resulted into phenomenal change in waste
generation demanding more and more land for waste disposal. In addition to swallowing
a large chunk of prime agricultural land every year these ever expanding dumps become
the source for silting the surface drainage system and blanketing peripheral crops land
with sterilized non life supporting particulate matter. The size of these huge dumps also
affect the photosynthesis process within their shadow areas affecting crops output.
Other important change which has affected the operational side of the mining of the so
called minor minerals. The primary, manually operated mining of minor minerals have
become a star mining with quantum leap into mechanized or semimechanized operational
levels. Mining of building stones, marble, sand stone etc. and running crushers have
become mechanized operations with the old conventional management thinking to milk
the cows for the last drop without putting forward any fodder. This change over has
created multiple problems including environmental disasters.
The owners of these quarries want to enjoy the benefits of erstwhile small level
operations at one hand and expanded the activities with no restriction through
mechanization, over loading and commersurating heavy blasts. They do not want to share
the responsibilities associated with increased level of operational activities. Inflow of
large profits, unethical practices have supported extensive illegal mining, where payment
of royalty and other govt. taxes are also siphoned out conveniently. Since these practices
have scanty regard for the law of land, the waste generated in the process is dumped out
on govt. lands, pasture lands or cheaply purchased agricultural lands. There are multiple
cases where the waste is dumped into life line streams, perennial water holes or rivers.
indiscreetly.
Assuming their primitive level activities no discretion is paid at the time of lease
allotments, and most of them become very close to small residential villages or towns. At
their initial stage no body is alarmed, but in course of time profit hunting makes them
larger units availing mechanization, heavy blasts and all the time screaming crushers
spreading highly dusty atmosphere all around. The conflict between the residents and
mine operators become a routine affair where the guardians of law are found to be
standing with mine owners. Gold rush into this sector has ultimately invited local and
state level politicians to bake their cakes, and this has slackened the feeble grip retained
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4. by the state govt. officials, so far. These political intrusions made all the unethical
practices simple including overloading of tractors, trucks, spilling the activities beyond
the earmarked areas, theft of royalty and other govt. taxes, by passing environmental and
mine regulations. They developed strange trade mark practices to by pass the
environmental and safe mining practices, for example in Rajasthan the lease area for
minor minerals was brought down from earlier 5.0 Ha. so that the quarry owners can be
saved from environmental obligations. I do not have any hesitation to state that the state
govt officials were made silent spectators to watch this nexus growing into mafia
fiefdoms. The interests are so deep and strong that these owners had courage to attack
senior police officials and other govt. enforcing agencies. These mechanized operations
do not want to appoint statutory officials, a possible point of leakage in their frame of
thinking. This sector is definitely bringing a bad name for mining as a whole. There is a
recent case which was prominently reported in national media – A marble quarry mined
out the mineral beneath an important railway line without notice of any authority. Does it
not make us laughing stock to any Tom, Dick and Harry. (I came across a news and
photograph in a Hindi newspaper, where a local mine in Sikar district has dumped waste
into a village school building and closed it from all sides)
Nature has great power of resilience and adopts with the changes forced upon it from
time to time. However it needs time to accommodate these changes for a new changed
version of equilibrium. Increased speed of land transformations do not leave it margin to
follow the fast advancing human actions and the widening gape results into failures of
serious nature releasing unadjusted energy. Fast land transformation activities should
have sound planning and a closely monitoring strategy. Unfortunately this monitoring
part in our high fast progressing land transformation projects lack much in comparasion
to similar projects in advanced countries. For example in US steel mines a constant watch
on accumulated stresses, vibration levels at the time of blasting with the help of geo-
phones is maintained and analysed for possible anamolies and their possible resultant
actions forecasting.
Capital intensive activities depend upon a few highly skilled professionals and artisans
paid luxuriantly, while the erstwhile land owners over whose acquired properties the
edifice of these activities have been built up get paltry wages and menial jobs in
exchange. It is a classic example of mushroom type development structure, where a tall
glamorous building stands surrounded all around by the unlivable slums. Some of these
erstwhile land owners compromised with the transformations as god willing dictate, but
the greater group failed to reconciles leading into socio-cultural never ending depressive
traps. Excessive dependence on alcohol was a common remedy for the desolates to dilute
their isolation and to come out of draconian nightmares. They were masters of their fate,
transformed into slaves to sing other’s songs.
Barring a few names most of the surface mining projects paid little attention and value to
conserve and preserve soil and sub soil scattered over the mining property. It is needless
to say about the value of the top soil. Nature takes a great length of time in manufacturing
the soil, blending its constituents like organic matter, humous and rock particulates in
right proportions; which reflects upon its value. Introduction of contractual workings and
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5. medium to small mining sector operations hardly realize the importance and adopted
practices to mine the soils along with other waste profiles and dumped in mixed
formations.
Mining and its subsequent activities have found to degrade the land to a significant
extent. Overburden removal from mining areas results in a very significant loss of rich
top soil which retains physical, chemical and biological forms to sustain life. The bigger
the scale of mining operation, greater is the quantum of waste generation. As per one
estimate an area of 13,546 Ha land was brought under actual mining during 2005-06, the
total area affected was far much more (see table)
Mineral Production, Waste generation and land affected in 2005-06
S.No. Mineral Production M.T. Overburden MT Estimated Land
affected Ha.
1 Coal 407 1,493 10,175
2 Lime Stone 170.38 178.30 1,704
3 Bauxite 12.34 7.5 123
4 Iron 154.40 143.90 1,544
5 Other 9.44 18.61 ---
Surface mining industry is farmers nightmare primarily affecting water flow in local area.
It changes hydrological profile of an area by degrading catchments, affecting both
quantity and quality of water. It increases run-offs during monsoons and pollutes rivers
and streams. The irrigation dams loose their capacity due to fast silting.
Soil is lost in two ways i.e. part removed in the process of mining and casted away along
with overburden in the waste dumps. The other part is buried alive under the waste
dumps, not to appear again. Both are permanent losses. However these losses can be
reduced if not eliminated totally with certain regulatory mechanism equipped with
effective monitoring systems.
Mining projects at large have adopted afforestation technique as the back stay for mined
out area reclamation. While large mining projects adopt tree plantation over the waste –
dumps, small and medium size activities hardly care about this aspect. A stable forestry
depends upon its compatibility with local climatic factors, presence of inter – related
species and regeneration capabilities. Nature favours establishment of climatic climax
species and in course of setting it show preferences towards the allied species closely
related to principals climax species. It is a bread and butter relationship for growth. The
litter coming from allied species become the relished food for main species and vice –
versa. Any man made forestry can not be assumed to be a stable and mature forestry until
and unless it starts regeneration on its own and honors intergeneration and honors its
capabilities on sustained considerations. The exotice and fast growing species normaly
adopted in the plantation programmes can not be said stable as they will survive till
human care is extended. They lack regenerative capabilities. Some of the central Indian
mines adopted fast growing species like Gravellia Pterdifolia, Gravellia Robusta, Acacia.
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6. Auricul-formis for their reclamation programmes in eighties. The mined out areas
remained completely green during the operational cycle of the mines but become total
denuded and deserted landscapes, once the operations ceased off. It is not sufficient to
plant some trees but important is to ensure the mind out areas into vibrating self
generating forestry.
When we discuss afforestation, we should also think of wild life affected due to mining
operations. We should not skip over the fact that every eco-zone is built up with a chain
interlinked with a number of species, loss of any link causes severe trophic losses, though
nature provides some initial cushioning. I would like to give a living example. Wild
Tuskers in Chhatisgarh state had a harmonic movement from Palamau in Jharkhand state
to Surguja in Chhatisgarh (In fact all the animal kingdome and primitive men move in a
simple harmonic cycle- all through their life examples are Monarch Butterflies, Solomon
and Herd people moving from plateu tops to the banks of rivers flowing in the valley and
back to the plateu tops as per seasonal variations) Some of them or their earlier were born
in the zangels of Sarguja and the compatible forest corridors permitted their movement
up to Palamau without any external interruption. These wild elephants enjoyed the
harmonical movement within this corridor without any interruption, till vedanta’s
appeared on the scene.
To facilitate transportation of bauxite ore from their Mainpat mine to Korba plant, they
heavily depended upon truck transportation – As a result less trafficked road joining
Ambikapur town to Korba via Pathal gaon and Dharamjaigarh became highly populated
road all of sudden accommodating movement of loaded or empty truck in every 10 to 15
minutes frequency. To curtail lead, some important alterations were also made in the
route. This transformation it self was enough to provoke tuskers, who killed seventy two
tribals in a number of encounters, till they were injected anaesthetic drugs and cowed
down and packed as prisoners to Bandhavgarh wild life sanctuary to carry tourists on
their backs. This is not the end of this story. This men and animal conflict is not coming
to closure and human intervention in the animal realm is taking lives of poor tribals every
year.
There is an unanimous thinking that the mining brings all those activities that are against
the interests of protecting wild life. Waste is dumped, roads are cut opening up fragile
eco systems for human intrusion. Large scale human settlements are set up in forests for
labour force and other staff, which fragments and degrades habitats. Pipe line and electric
lines are imperative to break continuous tree canopies for several Kilometers restricting
tree dwelling species and fragments the ecosystems further. Marble mining in and around
Sariska wild life sanctuary has eliminated tiger population in totality. Salt mining in Rann
of Katch has put the only remaining population of wild life in peril. Diamond mining in
Panna has removed Tigers from Panna National Park. Lime stone mining in Gir Zangles
have threatened the only habitat of Asiatic lion. This is an unending story.
Mining industry did not stay at the threshold forests and wild life but furthered its pangs
to suffocate voiceless tribals in Orrisa. Our activities in Lanjigarh has decided the future
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7. course of this industry in the specific areas of ecological balancing, respect of the forestry
and wild life.
It is a fact that today disruptive movements like Naxilitic were originally centered on the
agricultural land distribution policies, and became feeble in course of time. Its revival and
further nourishment came from the mining industry and forestry. Today these movements
are successfully operated in the dense zangles surrounding mining theaters. It is not a
simple co-incidence. The discriminating gulf between haves owning mining progects and
have nots on whose land, soil and water the large edifice of such projects are built,
ultimately worked as a catalyst in this smoldering fire.
The expanding influence of the ideology of violence being perpetrated by Naxilitic
groups in various parts of the country is being traced to a variety of socioeconomic
factors and illegal mining. It has been realized that the illegal mining has not only created
environmental havoc but has been a major factor behind the alienation of tribals. Naxal
groups took advantage of this situation and recruited ideologically motivated youth and
illiterate and poverty stricken tribals who became their main stay in course of time.
It will be very much relevant to discuss a few points raised by the international labour
organization in their recent report “India and the Rights of Indigenous people”. ILO states
that the minerals found in tribal areas contribute to more than half of national mining
production. Yet mining policies in India has overlooked the existence of tribal
communities and constitutional provisions for the protection of their land and resources,
report notes. (In 1991 out of total 4175 mines in country 3500 mines were in tribal areas)
Naxilites in their charter has been raising the issues of tribals and Justified their actions
against the continued isolation and exploitation of tribals and their homelands, failure to
implement the 5th and 6th schedules under article 244 of the Indian Constitution.
Now listen from horse mouth –
“How much of a nightmare we have to become to the reactionary ruling classes of India.
On the name of development. On the name of development, Industrializaiton and mining
tribals have been displaced left to die slow death.”
M. Ganapathis General Secretary
C.P.I. (Maoist) reported in media.
Another important area where our contribution is significant. Jack hammer drilling or
even medium size drilling carried out in quarries and mines is dry drilling releasing
enormous quantity of dust in the atmosphere. Drillers prefer because dry drilling
facilitates & high percolation rate reducing his time to complete the given assignment at
the same time management saves the cost of additional accessories and increase bit lite.
This is the sketch of the responsible mining establishments.
While the so called minor minerals mining does not have faith in wet drilling or any dust
suppression techniques. Crushers attached with stone quarries are discharging silica laden
dust in the atmosphere affecting the workers as well as people residing in the nearby
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8. areas. It proper medical survey is conducted, a large section of miners will be found
suffering from occupational diseases of different levels. A recent report appeared in the
national media indicating alarmingly high incidences of silicosis in the mining areas. The
report has been brought up by the National human rights commission. This picture is
only for the workers working in the quarries, people at large living close by to these
crushers or mining areas have to live with the dusty atmosphere without any inclusion in
the survey modalities. Incidently tuberculosis developed due to silicosis is TRD (Total
Drug Resistant) and happy go marry rounds of recruitments in critical Drilling and
crushing type mining works are overtime running factory for tuberculosis and related
nondurable diseases.
The huge blasts taken to cater the ever increasing demand of industries affect recharging
of ground aquifers, as the aquaducts transmitting water from surface are distorted.
Surface water drainage pattern is changed, the nallas and streams draining clean water
flow earlier, now carry slime and toxicants. Agricultural fields surrounding mining areas
are losing their fertility and productivity.
At our best side we are better known as throat cutters of poor tribals and on the lower side
as mining mafia people. When this industry is so dependent on the people and affecting
covertly or overtly their land, water, air, their food and health, why they are pained so
much as to extend a small portion of their surplus to the people who make their
foundation pillars. This loot of natural resources in our country is so cheap and
manageable that all the foreign interests and non resident Indians are camping through
out blowing hot and cold. No where in the world, the open robbery of national assets and
natural resources is so cheap and easy as it is in our country, that is the reason the
successful industrialists from all over the world are keeping constant eyes on our mineral
deposits.
According to a report between 1950 and 1991 at least 26,00,000 people were displaced
by mining projects, out of which only 25 percent received any resettlement. Among
displaced 52 percent belonged to tribal status. As stated earlier the tribal areas are rich in
minerals, it is the tribal people who are most affected. Industrialization of such areas has
badly shattered their economy, values and life style. In one of the important ruling of the
country’s apex court, it was made clear that natural resources are national assets and local
communities enjoy entitlements. If not full, a part ownership on them.
Should we not pay for this part ownership.
A. Hussain
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