Mining's impact on Bonai's forests, people

The area’s indigenous adivasi communities are deeply dependent on forest produce, including lac, mahua, and sal for food, fuel and livelihood Photograph by: Chitrangada Choudhury Aga Read story: Illegal mining’s ground zero

Truck traffic ferrying iron ore dominates the area’s roads, edging out local pedestrians. They only halt on Sundays, after villagers agitated for this weekly break so that they could use the roads to attend church and visit markets Photograph by: Chitrangada Choudhury Aga Read story: Illegal mining’s ground zero

After a nine-hour workday in the Orissa Mining Corporation’s iron ore mine, Jaitru Giri and his family return to the shack they live in, at the mine’s outskirts. The Shah Commission criticised mining companies for not paying labourers—overwhelmingly made up of adivasi men and women—a fair wage or benefits, despite making “super normal” profits from illegal mining Photograph by: Chitrangada Choudhury Aga Read story: Illegal mining’s ground zero

Trucks jam the road leading up to the mines in the Kurmitar mountain range. The Shah Commission estimated that at current rates of extraction, quality iron ore reserves in this region could run out in 35 years—the government rejects the claim Photograph by: Chitrangada Choudhury Aga Read story: Illegal mining’s ground zero

Clouds encircle the 3,000-metre high iron-ore rich Chheliatoka range. Villages around the range, such as Phuljhar pictured here, are opposing South Korean steel giant POSCO’s plans to start a 2,500 ha mine in the area, even as the state government has recently recommended mining. Residents said their primary fear was the mine’s environmental impacts on the area’s network of mountain streams, which currently irrigate their farms, allowing them to grow crops all through the year Photograph by: Chitrangada Choudhury Aga Read story: Illegal mining’s ground zero

Prabhu Sahay Toppono, from the indigenous Pauri Bhuiyan community, walks across a dried mountain stream—the only source of water for his hillside hamlet on the edge of a mine. He says residents have seen the stream’s fish population disappear in the past seven years. During the rainy season, waste from the mine flows downhill into the stream, making it impossible to cultivate the kharif crop. “We took the red polluted water in a plastic packet to the officers and complained,” Toppono said. “They said they would act, but nothing happened” Photograph by: Chitrangada Choudhury Aga Read story: Illegal mining’s ground zero

North Odisha’s rich deciduous forests and mountain ranges hold a third of India’s haematite iron ore reserves, making it the country’s leading iron ore mining area over the past decade, as well as the site of the state’s largest corruption scam Photograph by: Chitrangada Choudhury Aga Read story: Illegal mining’s ground zero

The Chheliatoka range is home to the Khandadhar waterfall – at 800 feet, it is the state’s second highest Photograph by: Chitrangada Choudhury Aga Read story: Illegal mining’s ground zero

Remote villages, spread across large distances, ensure that the limited safeguards which adivasi communities have, such as participating in environmental public hearings or consenting to proposals to cut forests for projects, are effortlessly violated by mining companies and government officials Photograph by: Chitrangada Choudhury Aga Read story: Illegal mining’s ground zero

A mining company constructs a road through the forests around the mining town of Bonai. According to official records, iron ore and manganese are being mined over 45,000 hectares (ha) in north Odisha, of which 34,000 ha constitute forested area Photograph by: Chitrangada Choudhury Aga Read story: Illegal mining’s ground zero