In this Thursday, Jan. 6, 2011 photo, a young woman stumbles as she tries to carry a large basket of coal as they illegally scavenge at an open-cast mine in the village of Bokapahari in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand where a community of coal scavengers live and work. The contrast between India old and new is nowhere more vivid than among the villages of coal scavengers in eastern India, sitting on an apocalyptic landscape of smoke and fire from decades-old underground coal fires. While India grows ever more middle-class and awash in creature comforts, these villagers risk their lives scavenging coal illegally for a few dollars a day, and come back to homes that at any moment could be swallowed by a fresh fire-induced crack in the earth. (AP Photo/Kevin Frayer) PART OF A SERIES OF 22 PICTURES BY KEVIN FRAYER
In this article for Mining Journal, I examine India’s mining industry and what its past says about its future.
The article argues that India’s enormous geological potential has been crippled by regulatory confusion, state control, corruption, bureaucratic discretion, and the absence of a rational property-rights regime. India has the resources to build a major mining industry, but without deep institutional reform, its mining sector will remain trapped in dysfunction.
