The Karnataka mining scandal provides a useful case study of the broader problems affecting India’s mining sector as it juxtaposes astonishingly serious regulatory failures with a relatively high level of capacity on the part of state governments.
The assertion has been made in a 70-page damning report - Out of Control: Mining, Regulatory Failure, and Human Rights in India, released by New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Thursday.
It said, “The mining scandals in Karnataka reveal the mutually reinforcing impacts of an out-of-control mining industry and pervasive rot and corruption in public institutions. These problems are two sides of one coin, each reinforcing the other.” The problem, till this day, is adequate documentation. HRW admitted, “The human and environmental toll of Karnataka’s illegal mining boom has not been objectively measured. But activists and members of some affected communities allege that many have suffered real harm that went on unabated and unaddressed for several years during Karnataka’s illegal mining boom. Their complaints mirror the human rights impacts of irresponsible mining operations in Goa and elsewhere in India.”
HRW interviewed residents in Sandur town who alleged that rampant illegal mining had destroyed groundwater supplies and contaminated surface water. The collapse of government oversight of mining in Karnataka helped ensure that such practices continued unabated, the report argued.
The greatest impact of Karnataka’s illegal mining binge lay in the valuable resources that were plundered without doing anything to help realise the basic rights of the people. Under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, governments are obligated to use all available resources to achieve progressively the full realisation of the rights to health and education along with other economic, social and cultural rights. “Allowing badly needed resources to be siphoned off through corruption can prevent public institutions from doing that,” the HRW report said.
“A loss to the state of its deserved income has a big impact on the delivery of social services,” former Karnataka Lokayukta Justice Santosh Hegde told HRW. “That’s also a human rights issue.” That’s where hope lies, the report insinuated.
“But the scandal in Karnataka,” it continued, “showed how it was possible to end the very impunity it exemplified. Thanks to government investigators and rising public pressure, Karnataka’s scandal offered lessons on how some level of accountability in the mining sector can be restored.”
