-TheWire.in While illegal mining is worrying, what is little understood is the enormous loot that is taking place legally. Mineral owners sometimes receive less than 5% of the value of minerals. The three iron ore scams in Karnataka, Goa and Odisha have some things in common. There were widespread and diverse breaches of the constitution, laws, rules and regulations. The environment was badly damaged. The minerals were being exhausted. Enormous corruption was...

-NDTV Jean Dreze's new book, a collection of essays called 'Sense and Solidarity - Jholawala Economics for Everyone', starts with a beautiful and moving description of what he sees from his office in Ranchi University at the crack of dawn: hundreds of informal sector coal-miners in Ranchi trudging miles with heavy loads of coal they have dug up, often from below the land from which they were forcibly displaced. Dreze quotes...

-The Economic Times BHUBANESWAR: The Supreme Court’s landmark order imposing an estimated Rs 25,000 crore penalty on iron ore and manganese miners in Odisha continues to rattle the sector, with serious implications for mining operations across the country and clearances obtained in the past. The 144-page order has given ammunition to green activists to seek court orders against mines in Goa and other states, and strengthened their case in ongoing matters in...

-The Indian Express Mining has the distinction of being the most dangerous profession in India. Industry insiders concede that official numbers could be much lower than the actual deaths that take place deep inside the mines. Progressive improvements in the safety standard of India’s coal mines notwithstanding, every ten days last year there was a mining fatality in the country. And every third day last year, on an average, there was...

-The Hindu Forging gram sabha resolutions clears the path to lucrative mining... Such fictions manufacture on file the legal requirement of villagers’ participation and consent. Over 12,000 villages across Odisha conserve their community forests, says a 2013 Odisha Jungle Manch study. In a visit last October to seven villages in Keonjhar district’s Gandhamardan range, Munda communities showed me their forest protection rosters. Each roster listed four villagers for every weekday to roam...