DELVE state of the artisanal and small-scale mining sector - India

With a long history of artisanal mining dating back to 400 B.C., India is one of the countries globally that has substantial ASM activity. The importance of ASM in India is in the variety and geographical spread of mineral and material availability, quality, and production, as well as the significant number of people, both women and men, laboring in the small-scale mines and quarries. Depending on the exact definition used, for example an absence of regular blasting and use of heavy earth moving equipment, and a labor force limited to 150 persons underground and 400 overall, it is suggested that over 95% of mines in India fall into the small-scale mining category. A wide range of minerals are mined in India (Figure 10). As many as 36 of the 64 different fuel, metallic, and nonmetallic industrial metals are mined exclusively by the smallscale sector and another 14 are mined partly by small-scale and partly by medium-scale operations.262 Yet, data that disaggregate specifically and exactly between ASM and large-scale operations remain scarce, and the sector remains largely informal and poorly supported.