India slammed over mining controls The Indian government has been criticised for failing to enforce its own environmental safeguards in the mining industry, creating problems ranging from water pollution to human rights abuses of farmers by mining cartels in the southern states of Goa and Karnataka. Human Rights Watch slammed the "scale of lawlessness that prevails in India's mining sector" and outlined what it called glaring gaps in India's oversight regime. The concerns highlighted in the HRW report ranged from conflicts of interest caused by assessments of mining projects being carried out by the companies operating the mines to a lack of manpower with just a few dozen officials assigned to supervise several thousand mines across the country. In March, a draft report by the country's auditor general on the mining sector alleged losses to the exchequer of $210bn because coal mining licences had been sold too cheaply without auctions between 2004 and 2009. On Thursday, HRW said that an even more serious problem was a lack of will on the part of the bureaucracy in New Delhi and in provincial capitals across the country to enforce the law. "There is a complete lack of governance," said Meenakshi Ganguly, south Asia director of HRW. No one is denying there is illegal mining. There is simply no effort to contain it. The report quotes the central government's mining ministry estimate that there were almost 50,000 instances of illegal mining in the first nine months of 2011. The Congress-led provincial government in Goa was voted out of office in March because of widely reported anger over violations in the mining industry in the state while its national rival, the Bharatiya Janata Party, has been tarnished by allegations of collusion between the mining industry and the BJP provincial government in Karnataka. Ravi Rebbapragada, secretary-general of an activist group called the Mines, Mineral and People Alliance, said that several farmers he had spoken to in Goa say that the rivers and springs have been contaminated by indiscriminate dumping of mining debris from iron ore, an allegation also made by the HRW report. Mr Rebbapragada said that the government's laxity in allowing companies in the mining industry to hire consultants to conduct assessments of the environmental impact of the mines was a large part of the problem. India approved a draft mines and minerals bill last year that was criticised by mining companies for being anti-business. Under the proposed law, it would be mandatory for coal mining companies to share 26 per cent of their profits with people displaced by mining activities. But the HRW report quoted government statistics that showed that the ministry of environment and forests approved 102 new mining projects while rejecting only three between August 2009 and July 2010. Between 2006 and 2008 the ministry approved 587 new mining projects while rejecting just 10. "The government rarely comes across a mining project it does not like," said the authors of the report. Officials in the ministry of mines and ministry of environment declined to comment officially on the report. But a senior government official said that the accusations made in the report were unfair and out of proportion. "I don't think we have been lax," said the official, who works in the environment ministry. This is the mandate of our ministry, we inspect [all projects].