Two months after the Indian government identified 30 critical minerals, it has proposed to amend the key mining legislation, Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2023, allowing private players to…
For a decade, the uranium tailings pond near Tummalapalle and other villages in the YSR Kadapa district of Andhra Pradesh have led to protests by local communities affected due to…
Every vehicle on the road you can hear outside, the rechargeable battery in your headphones, and the phone or computer you’re reading this article on right now — they all…
Dumbarpath is a tribal village in Gumla district of Jharkhand, a primary area of bauxite mining in India. Mining activities have been ongoing in the region for the past 30…
In the vast saffron-growing land of Pampore, a national highway (NH44) cuts through the middle. Ishfaq Ahmad, a saffron grower, is pondering the future of this land. His eyes are…
N. S. Jodha’s pioneering work on Commons in 1986 alerted us to the poor’s dependency on these resources. When the commons degrade, the poor suffers the most. However, we knew…
The G7 countries recently announced a partnership with Indonesia to accelerate a just energy transition, away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy. Next in line, is likely to be…
In April 2021, Cdr. Gopakumar K. and his colleagues from the National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) reached the central Indian Ocean with Varaha-1, a deep-sea mining machine. The 9.5-tonne…
There is an increasing demand for sand from Bangladesh’s construction industry that has led to an escalation in sand mining. An illegal industry has spread that now overshadows the legal…
Local folklore of the Mising people (an indigenous community) has facilitated a reverence for rivers and their wild inhabitants over the centuries. The story features a Mising woman named Yakashi,…
Illegal and unscientific sand mining from rivers is generally seen as a threat to the environment, especially aquatic life. But there is another dark side to this that is neither…
The historic rise in temperatures this year has affected the lives of many in India. This has also renewed focus on the impacts of climate change. Even as people are…
Bermo, a small town in the Bokaro district, is part of the East Bokaro Coalfield in Jharkhand. As one leaves the Ranchi-Giridih highway to reach these coal mines, hundreds of…
This summer it will be thirty years since the Rio Earth Summit. Unlike the earlier decadal anniversaries, this year the United Nations is not celebrating an event to mark the…
India is yet to fully explore over 80 percent of its reserves of bauxite (an aluminium ore), notes a committee of India’s parliament, while emphasising that issues related to land…
Land is unarguably at the heart of India’s energy transition, but a clear policy for scientific closure and repurposing of land involved in coal mining and power projects can be…
Panchanan Mandal is a resident of Chalkari village in Petarwar Block in Bokaro district in Jharkhand. He has been waiting for a job at Central Coal Limited (CCL) since 1984…
In January 2022, five people were killed in a landslide at Tosham’s Dadam mining zone in the Bhiwani district of Haryana, a northern Indian state. The incident put the spotlight…
In the run-up to the 2022 state elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Pramod Sawant-led state government has made a slew of announcements towards resuming iron ore mining in…
When Abhijit Kavalekar was in third grade, he used to walk to school with a group of friends. “My school was about 15 minutes away. We walked in a cloud…
