Events & Issues
New Delhi, 12 August 2013
Sand-Mining Mafia
STRANGLING INDIA’S RIVERS
By Proloy Bagchi
The yellow river-sand is turning out to be no less than
gold. There is a veritable ‘sand-rush’ and those who have been able to plunder
have become millionaires overnight. The demand for the stuff is seemingly
insatiable with construction lobby willing to go to any length to get at it.
The mostly black-money financed construction has witnessed unabated, hectic
rise all over the country and added to that are the Government infrastructure
projects. Reports are coming from the far corners of the country about the loot
that is going on of sand from river beds, their banks and coastal beaches. The
diminutive sand even assumed the role of currency and played skewed “sand for
Vote” role in Moga during the elections to the Punjab Legislative Assembly
earlier this year.
The problem is so acute that environmentalists have asked
the Government for conducting research to find an alternative for sand. Well
organised mafias under the patronage of the powerful politicians are hard at
work excavating mostly illegal sands for sand-hungry builders and construction
companies. Whosoever comes in their way is brought to harm – sometime with
fatal consequences.
The most recent example is that of now famous Durga Shakti
Nagpal, a young IAS officer functioning as Sub-Divisional Magistrate of the New
Okhla Industrial Development Area (NOIDA) of Uttar Pradesh who took on the sand
mafia operating in the flood plains of Yamuna River.
A local member of the UP Legislative Assembly having substantial interests in
the operations brazenly claimed to have had the SDM suspended within 41 minutes,
at the dead of night on the orders of Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav. A
frightful storm is blowing as a result. Not only the bureaucracy is up in arms,
the local ruling party has even taken on the Centre for its moves to intervene
in the matter.
The SDM was lucky since the mafia did not harm her physically.
Soon after her suspension a crusader against illegal sand mining in the same
district was shot dead while asleep at home. In Tamil Nadu, recently the
Tuticorin District Collector was transferred for ordering raids on the sand
mafia in the area. Earlier, in March 2012 a young and brave Indian Police
Service officer was crushed under the wheels of a tractor-trolley loaded with
illegally mined sand from River Chambal in Morena district of Madhya Pradesh. Numerous
reports have appeared in the press about illegal sand mining operations in UP,
MP, Maharashtra, Andhra, Kerala, Himachal, Uttarakhand, Meghalaya, etc. where
the mafia have displayed violent proclivities.
Two prominent environmentalists of Mumbai have written to
the Minister for Environment & Forests (MoEF) that well organised mafias
are prepared to kill public-spirited individuals if they interfered with their
illegal activities. Law enforcement authorities are helpless as the mafias have
intimate links with politicians in power as exemplified by the NOIDA incident,
where the ruling Samajwadi Party is all set to fight it out with the Centre.
Illegal sand mining is a very profitable business. In the
NOIDA, Greater NOIDA and Ghaziabad
areas the construction activity is progressing at a frenetic pace and the
realtors are always in the lookout for cheaper sand. The mafias are
concentrating on the mines of Yamuna, Hindon and Ganges Rivers.
No royalty is paid on the sand illegally excavated or dredged from the beds of
these rivers. While a dumper-full of licensed sand is worth Rs. 20000/- the
same volume of unlicensed sand is sold for half that amount to the realtors.
Besides if they have permit for one, they land ten dumpers or trucks earning
huge profits.
It is the builders who benefit most from illegal sand and
with their deep nexus with the powerful and influential politicians regardless
of their political colour are able to negate the rule of law. In UP, for
instance, the current government of SP and its predecessor Bahujan Samaj Party,
both turned a blind eye to the ongoing plunder of sand from ecologically
sensitive flood plains of the State’s major rivers. They have, over the years,
brazenly ignored the orders of the Supreme Court that mining of minor minerals
– sand being one – from even less than 5 hectares of land would require
environmental clearance.
In their hunger for power and riches the politicians and
their allies in the underworld have developed only contempt for environmental
protection. They consider it to be an obstruction in the pursuit of their
activities that are nefarious by any standard. But none can touch them as they
happen to wield power and influence. This situation obtains virtually in every
state of the Union. In Maharashtra,
illegal sand mining has been declared a crime under the tough Maharashtra
Control on Organised Crime Act and yet despite ceaseless denudation of sands
from the State’s coastline adversely impacting its morphology and bio-diversity
not one mafioso has been nabbed – such is their clout. In MP the Chief Minister’s
own brother is reportedly active in illegal mining in Narmada.
One wonders whether the Ministry at the Centre and Governments
in the States appreciate the serious damage that is being caused to the river
systems in the country by unchecked sand-mining. According to experts, reckless
mining activities can cause physical harm to the river or stream by erosion of
channel bed and banks, increase in channel slope, and change in channel
morphology. These impacts may cause: (1) the undercutting and collapse of river
banks, (2) the loss of adjacent land and/or structures, (3) upstream erosion as
a result of an increase in channel slope and changes in flow velocity, and (4)
downstream erosion due to increased carrying capacity of the stream, downstream
changes in patterns of deposition, and changes in channel bed and habitat type.
Mining with heavy equipment like dredgers for removal of
channel substrate results in re-suspension of streambed sediment, clearance of
vegetation, and stockpiling on the streambed. All these have ecological impacts
leading to direct loss of stream habitat, disturbances of species hosted by
streambed deposits, reduced light penetration and reduced feeding
opportunities, adversely impacting the native riverine biodiversity. That the
failure of men and machines in preventing oil leaks, in uncontrolled dumping or
stockpiling of overburden cause poisoning of aquatic organisms and fouling up
of the water quality need hardly be emphasised.
Excessive sand-mining from rivers is also accompanied by
plummeting ground water tables in the riparian zones. This has happened in
Kerala, Andhra and several other States and may also well happen in such zones
of Yamuna, Hindon and Ganges, rendering
agriculture a losing proposition raising the question of livelihood in the
areas.
With outright and brazen breaches of the orders of the Apex Court in
regard to licensing of mining of minor minerals in less than 5 hectares of land
only after environmental clearance, the National Green Tribunal, thankfully,
has also got into the act in reinforcing the orders. It has categorically
stated that sand mining shall be allowed from any river across the country only
if permission is taken from the State Environment Impact Assessment Authority. Hopefully,
the States will wake up and enforce the orders for the benefit of their people
or else India’s
rivers might even cease to exist.--INFA
(Copyright,
India News and Feature Alliance)
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