Mining

Sponge iron’s dirty growth

In the years to come, India's expanding steel production will be largely driven by sponge iron. Sponge iron, also known as direct reduced iron(DRI), is produced from direct reduction of iron ore (in the form of lumps, pellets or fines) by a reducing gas produced from natural gas or coal. Sponge iron gives a cheaper way of producing steel which has a high demand in the market. 

Niyamgiri: Vedanta's battleground for bauxite

And, perhaps, its Waterloo. With the Union ministry of environment and forests refusing to allow the company to mine bauxite in Orissa's Niyamgiri hill, the UK-based mining giant's troubles have multiplied. The quest to resolve all disagreements regarding the company's Lanjigarh alumina refinery project and its mining rights had brought none less than the Orissa chief minister scurrying to Delhi -- to convince the prime minister to push forward the controversial industrial project. The prime minister did not oblige.

Vedanta and lessons in conservation

The Forest Rights Act of 2006—also known as the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act—came after considerable and bitter opposition from conservation groups.

Vedanta’s Lanjigarh project (Refinery and bauxite mining)

CSE welcomes the government’s proposal to provide 26 per cent of mining profits to local communities

Critiques industry’s reported reticence in sharing its profits with project-affected people.

• New Delhi-based NGO Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) says the provision of benefit-sharing envisioned in the proposed Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act, 2010 is the “first step towards repairing and repaying the damages done to poor communities living on mineral-rich lands”

CSE's mining book releases

Date: March 7, 2009
CSE’s report on mining – Rich Lands Poor People – released in Rajasthan
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Bullets are not the answer to development

The massacre of 76 policemen in Dantewada by naxalites is reprehensible. Yet we cannot brush aside the underlying poverty, deprivation and sheer lack of justice that are breeding tension and anger in vast areas of rural, tribal India. We cannot say that these developmental issues are long term—as the Congress spokesperson has reportedly said—while the immediate task is to annihilate the Naxalites.

Mine no More

CSE Occasional Tabloid
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Degree of commerce

Vedanta gets tracts of thorium rich land along the Orissa coast for a university. Allegations fly 

by Ruhi Kandhari

Mining giant Vedanta’s proposed university in Orissa will not only be one of the few in the world with an outlay of Rs 15,000 crore and spread across 2,400 hectares, it will also sit on land rich in thorium deposits.