India's Mining Industry - A Recent History

Digging Deeper into India’s Recent Mining History

India’s mining industry is an increasingly important part of the economy – it employs hundreds of thousands of people and provides the material necessary for the country’s economic growth and expansion. Exploitation of a country’s natural resources is par for the course, but must it also come with a price too steep to pay? Mining is a difficult, harmful, and often destructive enterprise. Add to it poor policies, weak institutions, weaker implementation, and rampant corruption, and what you get is India’s mining industry, an industry where government oversight and regulation, as described by Human Rights Watch, are “largely ineffectual.” In the wake of the recent Thoothukudi episode, this is what we propose to dig deep into today on Moneycontrol – India’s recent mining history. What happened in Thoothukudi? Why were there protests in the first place? How big a problem is illegal mining in India? How much do mining companies adhere to the standards? What are the human rights violations and public health hazards that come with mining? And are there solutions for responsible mining? These are some of the questions we hope to answer on today’s instalment of Digging Deeper with Moneycontrol.