When The Hourglass Is Empty

Considered a minor mineral, sand drives the biggest engine of growth, and life

Tehalka, 9 August, 2013

The association of sand — humanity’s most prominent symbol of ephemera — with the idea of permanence would be ironic but for the duality inherent in nature. One still can’t hold a fistful and yet modern palaces are not built as much of stone as of sand. By 2020, the construction industry is expected to swell to $12 trillion per annum or 13 percent of the global GDP.

In the past five decades, the construction industry has attracted 40 percent of the total development investment in India. The Plan panel estimated that Rs 14.5 lakh crore was the investment needed in infrastructure during the 11th Plan period. India has the world’s third largest construction industry that accounts for 9 percent of its economy and the appetite for growth continues to be big.

The world still does not have a technology to use desert sand for construction and the pressure is entirely on river banks and coasts. But sand helps permanence also in nature and is our best insurance against coastal and riverbank erosion. More importantly, sand banks act as a sponge, retaining water and making it available for us in shallow aquifers.

Without mining sand, there can be no construction. Without sand being where it belongs, there will be no water. The choice was simple but no effort was made to strike a balance because we considered sand a minor mineral found in abundance. The table was turned too soon. Singapore’s infrastructure boom, for example, came to a halt when it was refused supply by all its neighbours by 2009. In Central Asia, countries have been investing heavily in research to make use of dune sand and reduce dependence on import.

In India, the construction industry has been banking on a mafia that employs fear and favour equally to defeat every regulatory norm. On 5 August, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) ordered that nobody could mine sand without clearances until 14 August when it will hear the respondents’ reply. Coming in the context of IAS officer Durga Nagpal’s suspension apparently for taking on the sand mafia, this order is a reiteration of several Supreme Court rulings since 2012 that made environmental assessment and clearance mandatory.

Unfortunately, none of these orders have been carried out adequately. Instead, the mining interests have adopted a two-pronged strategy. Within the law, states have taken the issues to court, seeking leniency in public interest. The Maharashtra chief minister even wrote to the MoEF, seeking exemption for a year before implementing the legal framework. Outside the law, the mafia is using a few permits to mine many times the allotted area, using machinery not allowed under the permit and digging far deeper than the norms allow.

The official figure for sand mined across India in 2010-11 is not even 50 lakh tonnes. To construct a standard residential tower of 50,000 sq ft, it takes about 30,000 cubic feet of sand. So, the official supply of 50 lakh tonne or 355 lakh cubic feet of sand would have built just 1,000 such towers. Given that thousands of kilometres of roads and other infrastructure also come up every year, the actual sand consumption is probably many times the volume legally mined.

Evidently, too many pockets are being lined to facilitate this loot.

In its reply to the NGT notice, the MoEF is likely to plead that the infrastructure required for examining mining plots below 5 hectare is beyond the ministry’s scope and the states must do it. This will allow the states to break down mining clusters in many sub-5 hectare plots and avoid stricter environmental assessment mandatory for larger areas. In any case, barring rare Central inspections, the states themselves are to monitor the mines for violations.

For long, our laws and court orders have failed to have any impact since the administration itself plays truant. But business as usual will make more rivers change course, seas invade deeper inland, landslides become deadlier, and water shortage and salinity, after ruining agriculture and fishery, hit human consumption. Or we may yet tilt the hourglass over.