This November, there were angry VOICES of protest at the World Mining Expo held in New Delhi’s Pragati Maidan (field of progress) — "We are here to fight for our land and our forests that is being traded in the expo." The World Watch Paper ‘Mining the EARTH’ reminds us, "Few would dream that the waste left by mining measures in the billions of tons. It is estimated that more materials are now stripped from the earth by mining than by all the natural erosion of the earth’s rivers." In the 19th and 20th centuries, the industrial revolution in Europe and later the growth of America demanded vast amounts of precious metals and minerals. Not only did the colonialists discover vast quantities of this ‘GOLD’ in far away Africa, Asia and Latin America, but they also exploited the HANDS of the natives as cheap labour to extract it and let their lands suffer the ecological devastation. So where and how will developing economies like India and China find their pots of gold in the 21st century?

Mined it,
– Pandit Gobar Ganesh
E-mail: panditji@cseindia.org