Orissa: In this conflict-ridden district of Orissa, where the Kandha and Pano communities fight over jobs and resources, one path to peace might actually lie right under them. Literally.
Lagging behind: Labourers carry iron ore at a mine in Keonjhar, Orissa. The state has signed about 50 preliminary agreements to set up steel plants, but has not updated its mineral map for 30 years. Adam Ferguson / Bloomberg
Experts say the soil beneath the farming fields in Kandhamal is mineral-rich. The state government has received several applications for mining leases over the last 18 months—potentially leading to investment, jobs and infrastructure—but red tape has stymied progress.
“There is bauxite, graphite, iron ore, gold and coal in Kandhamal,” says G.C. Prusty, senior surveyor at the local mining and steel office in the district. “But nothing is happening. Company representatives keep coming here and ask me about the status of their application. I just tell them to wait for the state government’s approval. I am also waiting.”
Prusty has been waiting for two years. In this two-storeyed building, where spiders have spun homes in nooks of locked doors, he comes in every day, sits behind an empty desk and stares out of the window. “I don’t understand why nothing is happening,” he says.
The situation is not unusual, says P.K. Mishra, former coal secretary in the Union government and now based in Bhubaneswar. “This is the story in all other parts of the state. These things are just kept pending. Unless you are very close to the political circles or are moving a lot of money to officials, nothing will happen. It has become a culture to expect money for every application that is approved.”
It was not always this way. Until four years ago, companies say they could just ask for a lease and get it. Then, as the global iron ore boom came and prices shot up by 60% in just one year, “everyone woke up to the potential of mining. Until then, there would be heaps of iron lying about like scrap”, says Subrankant Panda, managing director of Indian Metals and Ferro Alloys Ltd (Imfa), India’s largest producer of ferrochrome, a mineral used to make stainless steel.
That was when Orissa— which has an estimated 60 billion tonnes of coal, 12 billion tonnes of ores and 70 billion tonnes of mineral reserves—discovered the importance of its mineral resources.
Panda speculates that now the state is so busy pursuing big mines of lucrative minerals such as coal, iron ore and chromite in the more obvious districts of Rayagada and Jajpur that it does not have the bandwidth or the will to explore smaller deposits in areas such as Kandhamal.