Mining and the trail of destruction in Bellary

With the arrest of Janardhana Reddy and his associate, the saga of political high-handedness and profiteering has come to a pause in Bellary. People of Bellary tell DNA what extensive mining has done to their area and their lives.

The craters that the mining lords have left behind are a fearsome sight. The craters, though far from public view, are an aberration to the landscape of the district, opine the environmentalists of Bellary district. The ravage has been extensive.

Earlier these lands were full of greenfields and were an undeclared Gomala, although the government records identified them as dryland. As one travels from Bellary towards Hospet and Sandur, one can spot huge craters and narrow truck paths winding down to the abyss.

“They are as deep as Reddys’ greed,” says Shezad Ali of Yeshwanthnagar, a mute spectator of the dead struggle to save environment. He told DNA that when illegal mining began in Hospet, Sandur and Bellary, there were several voices expressing concern about its impact on environment. “They [those behind illegal mining] saw to it through their goons that every green activist was silenced, gagged or even bought... Soon all the voices died.”

Ali adds that the Reddy brothers knew that illegal mining could not go on forever and thus they decided to loot as much ore as possible without any regard to either environment or business ethics.

Side effects
Mines are not the only areas that have seen destruction. Consider this: The road between Hospet and Sandur on which the trucks carrying ore used to travel has sunk so much that it cannot be used unless its surface level is increased by four-five feet. Consumer activist N Narayana Naik told this to DNA, quoting a public works department official.

The mining lords had taken over 22 km of road between Hospet and Sandur for exclusive movement of their trucks, forcing people to take a detour that increased the distance by 70 km. The citizens complain about how it resulted in wastage of time, money and fuel.

Further, the railway line between Hassan and Mangalore had been reserved for ore transportation for more than three years.

More side effects
A forest department official who is in charge of the medicinal plant hotspot in Yeshwantnagar told DNA, on condition of anonymity, how the environmental impact of mining affected their ambitious project.

He said all these years the medicinal plants garden was covered with a thick blanket of brown dust as the route of the trucks carrying ore was just metres away from the garden.

He said the garden was trying to preserve medicinal plants found across Karnataka and in neighbouring states.

Winds of change, after 50 years
“For the first time in 50 years, the people in Yeshwanthnagar valley, which is thickly populated, have breathed fresh air after the mining stopped,” says Samad Kottur, a teacher and a keen bio-scientific enquirer. He said after the mining was stopped, he and a few of his friends wanted to find what had happened to the few endemic species of environmentally sensitive plants. He said they particularly went in search of hemp Crotalaira sandoorensis, which is endemic, but found nothing but brown dust.

Hope is sprouting
With two of the mining kingpins in the dock now, people of Bellary have started shedding their fear and speaking about the oppressive environment they had in Bellary. A senior civic leader in Bellary City Corporation told DNA he was sure people would resume living normal lives. He said there were plans to bring greenery to the erstwhile mining area that comes under the corporation’s jurisdiction.

And what about Bellary’s abandoned mines? Minister for environment and ecology Krishna Palemar told DNA that there were strict directions from the Centre to restore greenery in the areas that have bore the brunt of mining. He said maybe Bellary mines would see a restoration programme similar to the one that had been carried out in Kudremukh in Western Ghats.