ALMOST all the maladies afflicting the Indian mining industry have manifested themselves forcefully in the mineral-rich State of Jharkhand. Indiscriminate exploitation of natural resources, large-scale displacement of tribal people, and the rise of a mining lobby with immense political clout are only a few of these. Of course, in the last decade the State has also witnessed the rise of a number of people's resistance movements against displacement and environmental degradation...

Tripura Forest Minister Jitendra Chowdhury has expressed deep concern over degradation of forest land due to shifting cultivation (Jhum) over the years and revealed that Manipur has emerged as the worst-affected State, followed by Nagaland, Mizoram and Tripura. Addressing a National Seminar on the Great Depression of 1930s and Present Global Economic Melt Down and its Impact on Tribal Society at Shillong last week, Chowdhury said about 45 per cent of...

The government is thinking of bringing in a law that would allow the National Investigation Agency to probe cases of illegal mining. The proposal for arming the NIA with this power had come from the Prime Minister’s Office. Sources said the objective was to enable the Centre to break the “mining mafia”. If passed, the proposed legislation will also enable the government to scrap leases of companies engaged in illegal operations, like...

Is it possible to operate hundreds of illegal mines in India for years on end without being detected or prosecuted? And can their illegal operations be legitimised in one stroke and turned into "legit" business without anyone being booked for the stealthy extraction of millions of tonnes of precious ore? If the questions pertain to Orissa, the answer to both questions is yes. The Supreme Court-appointed Central Empowered Committee (CEC)...

The Supreme Court on May 7 ruled that natural resources were national assets that belonged to the people and were ideally exploited by public sector undertakings. This obviously implies that local communities, including tribals, living on mineralised land, enjoy entitlements but not prescriptive ownership rights to such national assets. This is an important reiterative clarification defining mineral rights in Fifth Schedule areas that are currently in contention. Whether PSUs should...