It's morning in Dhanbad, Jharkhand's coal heartland, and the air is thick with coal dust. Ramdas, 42, picks coal bits with careful precision beneath the silhouettes of huge earthmovers.

"I've been here since I was fifteen," he replies, wiping his soot-soaked brow. My father mined before me. These black stones have formed cities far from here, cities I've never seen."

Jharkhand, carved out of Bihar in 2000, sits atop one of India’s richest mineral reserves; coal, iron, ore, coper, uranium, bauxite and mica. The state accounts for more than 40% of India's total mineral wealth as per IBEF. And yet, two decades later, its people remain among the poorest, its schools are underfunded, and its rivers are poisoned by unchecked industrial activity.

The human cost of mining

Reports suggest the extent of people’s sufferings. The minerals collected here range from coal, iron ore to mica which reach power companies far from the plateau. But Dhanbad remains impoverished.

In mica sorting sheds across Giridih, small hands move quickly over piles of glimmering flakes. A 14-year-old girl picks out impurities, her fingers moving faster than her words, “I know this will go into paints and makeup”, she whispers.

However, global cosmetics come at a cost. A report published in The Hindu citing a 2018 National Commission for Protection of Child Rights survey found out that over 5,000 children aged 6 to 14 in Koderma and Giridih have dropped out of school to scavenge mica scraps. Another report in The New Indian Express said more than 20,000 people have been impacted by this phenomenon, including youngsters as young as 17.

Reports published in Mongabay-India and Reuters say that many of these sites are often dangerous, unregulated where pits are open causes deaths but are rarely recorded and whispered out.

“The government talks about Digital India and Smart Cities” says Meena Kumari from Koderma, “but for our children, mica dust is the only future”.

Minerals that build nations

The journey from mine to market is multi-stepped; minerals are extracted, processed at local plants, transported by train or road to ports like Paradip or Haldia, and from there exported across the globe.

Jharkhand’s coal fuels steel plants in Jamshedpur and beyond, its mica travels in containers to cosmetic giants in Europe, its iron ore feeds the furnaces that build skyscrapers in Gulf cities.

But the miners themselves see little of this wealth. According to CEIC Data and Indian Bureau of Mines, in March 2015, Jharkhand’s mineral output value peaked at nearly Rs. 33.46 trillion, one of the highest in Indi. But state coffers remain undernourished, and welfare spendings lags far behind resource-rich neighbours like Orissa.

The toll on the environment

The Damodar River, once called the “Sorrow of Bengal” is again choking, not from the floods but from the industrial effluents. Industrial discharge from coal washeries, coke-oven plants, and thermal power plants is poisoning the Damodar River. A study done by Maity, Maiti, and Senapati confirms that dangerous levels of heavy metals like lead, mercury, arsenic, and nickel, in the river water sediment have turned its waters black.

This contamination carries significant health risks for downstream communities. According to a Firstpost report, the filthy water exacerbates respiratory ailments and tuberculosis in surrounding communities with Koderma reporting some of the highest TB rates in eastern India. As per PubMed, in many mining towns, dust levels exceed safe air-quality standards multiple times over. Water quality evaluations reveal high heavy metal levels and dangerous drinking indexes in regions such as East Bokaro.

Politics of neglect

Despite its rich mineral resources, Jharkhand's remains one of India’s underdeveloped states. It receives substantially less in mining royalties than Odisha, which many attribute to bad governance and misallocation. Each successive governments have been accused of misgovernance, underutilising, mining revenues, and failing to implement sustainable rehabilitation schemes. According to Reuters, revenue leakages and political patronage networks allow corporations to thrive while villagers remain dispossessed.

Protests have flared repeatedly, with the tribal resistance such as the Pathalgadi movement in 2017-18 rejecting state encroachment on tribal lands for mining and corporate projects. Earlier, mass agitations blocked amendments to land acquisition laws that would have stripped indigenous communities of constitutional protections. Yet, the state continues to push mining leases without adequate consent.

Glimmers of hope

Over the years, some progress has been made, with organisations such as the Bachpan Bachao Andolan working with local authorities to reduce child labour in mica mines. In July 2024, the NCPCR proclaimed Koderma's mica mines child labour-free, a hard-fought victory. Over 20,584 children were removed from mining, while 30,364 were enrolled in schools in 684 villages.

Local NGOs, self-help groups, and campaigners such as Bhuwan Ribhu took the lead in developing a transformation plan. Notable work have done by Tata Steel, launching afforestation and skill-development initiatives, but these efforts remain islands in a sea of systemic neglect.

Responsible Mica initiative found out that common people continue to struggle to earn a liveable income, estimated at roughly Rs. 15,000 per month for a rural mica-picker household, which is crucial for reducing child dependency.

As one local journalist in Ranchi voiced it, “in Jharkhand, the earth is rich but the people are poor and that is the state’s eternal contradiction”

A cycle of debt, disease and despair

Every mineral has a hidden history. The mica in your sparkly cosmetics, the steel in your TV frame, and the coal that powers your home could all have come from a child's scraped fingertips or a polluted river, and somewhere, Ramdas walks home to his dust-caked slum, clutching a stone that tells a much larger narrative than his own.

Jharkhand’s minerals build metros, smartphones and cosmetics that travel globe, but for Ramdas in Dhanbad or the 14-year-old girl in Giridih, they build nothing but debt, disease, and despair. Unless revenues are transparently reinvested into education, healthcare, and environment, the mines will keep producing wealth, but not justice.

Khwaja Md Afroz teaches Political Science at MANUU, Hyderabad and writes on governance, development paradoxes, rights, social justice and digital politics. He posts on X @khwajaafrozsidd

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