
Rich Lands, Poor People: Is Sustainable Mining Possible?
This is the sixth Citizens’ Report of the State of India’s Environment. It focuses on mining and the consequences for the people living on land coveted by industry for the mineral wealth that lies beneath. Enamoured by the mining industry’s promises of progress, Indian lawmakers have permitted forests to be razed, waterways polluted, farmlands transformed into wasted tracts and clean air converted to dust bearing winds. As for the people, they are either summarily evicted with little prospect of compensation or rehabilitation or left to live out their lives in situ with all their resources and means of livelihood taken away. A searing indictment of decades of the mining industry’s performance in states across the country and an assessment of this lopsided practice of ‘development’. With photographs, charts, graphs, statistics and plenty of other data painstakingly assembled.