Booming construction industry strains India’s natural resources

Thanks to the booming real estate industry in India, the country’s mountain ranges is under threat from the illegal stone-mining mafia. It’s become a daily sight for the residents of Biharipur on the Dabla mountain in Rajasthan, as more than 100 trucks wroom past the village carrying loads of crushed stones quarried from the nearby mountain. If this not enough, villagers have to bear the brunt of increasing air pollution and deafening blasts occurring on the mountain every now and then.

"We have more than 100 trucks coming through our village every day. It is like a living hell," Gulla Ram, a 70-year-old farmer in the village, says, adding, life has become stressful for the villagers.

When it is not trucks, it is explosions, often dozens at a time. They can come at any moment of the day or night, another villager quips, while showing the cracks that appeared on the walls of her home over the past two years, online portal thenational, said in a report.

The villages on the mountain are the worst hit due to the illegal mining by what the locals refer to as the "mining mafia". Accusing the local politicians and police of conspiring with quarry owners to ignore regulations, villagers allege that local officials conniving with miners allow indiscriminate mining activity in the area.

The Aravalli mountain range, which includes Dabla, stretches deep into central India passing through Rajasthan. But these days, the mountains have become valuable for more than their natural beauty as India's booming construction industry is in a desperate need for marble and elements, such as clay and sand, to make cement and aggregates for laying pathways and roads.

Dabla is one of the last parts of the Aravalli Range still open to mining after the Supreme Court, concerned about reports of environmental devastation, banned miners from operating in the neighbouring state of Haryana in 2009.

Miners flocked instead to Rajasthan, where local officials have allowed the mushrooming of quarries and stone-crushing units through the hills and valleys.

The mining activities are severely polluting air which will affect the health of the local community in the long run. "These mines and crushers are destroying rivers, destroying crops, destroying villages," says Kailash Meena, the local representative of the People's Union for Civil Liberties, who has been spearheading the anti-mining campaign.

"Every government officer knows these mines are illegal but no one is taking any action," he says. Villagers complain the quarries are encroaching on communal grazing land and protected forest reserves, and drying up water supplies they need for crops and animals.

Government documents obtained by activists last summer showed that 49 mining leases had already been granted for Dabla mountain alone, of which a third were already in operation, along with 22 sand-silting operations and five stone-crushing sites.

The government justifies the presence of quarries and stone crushers by saying they have brought significant revenue and employment to an impoverished area. The locals counter that very few of them have received jobs working for the mining companies.

Khandelwal did admit that regulations were regularly flouted by mining operations and that many operated illegally. He blamed ambiguous rules and the lack of local supervising authorities for the lapses, and denied taking any bribes from mining companies.

Though construction industry in developed countries are using Recycled Concrete Aggregate for construction of new buildings and Recycled Asphalt Pavement for re-laying of roads thereby saving considerable amount of virgin material apart from saving labour, money and fuel, India is yet to wake up to the reality that natural resources would be depleted if such unmindful activities are not stopped immediately.

“We can save up to 50 per cent of expense when we use recycled asphalt material. More than the money, we can save natural resources from getting eroded. Hills are getting reduced due to indiscriminate mining for gravels or chips which will lead to ecological degradation,” says Dr R Vasudevan of Thiagarajar College of Engineering, Madurai, who has developed and patented ‘Plastic Tar Road Technology.’ Even plastic bags are being recycled as binders to lay roads, thereby saving a good portion of virgin bitumen, which eventually save money and lessen the corbon emission.

By using the recycled construction material, considerable amount of aggregate can be saved from getting extracted from mountains.Is anyone listening?