2023: Riverbed Mining Deaths & Violence in East India

March 8, 2023March 8, 2023 SANDRPLeave a comment

(Feature Image: A sand loaded truck overturned on a passenger auto killing 5 people & injuring 5 others in Motihari, Bihar in Sept. 2022. Image Source: Dainik Jagran)

In this second part, SANDRP present summary report on riverbed minerals mining related human deaths and violent incidents in East Indian states of Bihar, West Bengal, Odisha, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and in North Eastern states of Assam and Manipur during April 2022 to February 2023. The detailed tabular report compiling all these incidents in past 11 months can be seen here. The first part of the series tracking the human death toll on account of illegal, unsustainable sand mining activities in North Indian states for the same period can be seen here.

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June July 2021 District Wise SW Monsoon Rainfall in India

July 31, 2021August 1, 2021 SANDRP2 Comments

In the just concluded month of July 2021, India received 266.1 mm rainfall, that is 6.73% below normal July rainfall of 285.3 mm, as per India Meteorological Department (IMD). This is in contrast with June 2021 rainfall, that was almost 11% surplus over Normal rainfall. Not only that surplus has been wiped out by the July 2021 deficit, the overall June July 2021 rainfall now is 449 mm, or about 0.7% below normal rainfall of 452.2 mm, as per IMD.

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Monsoon · Rainfall

June 2021: District wise rainfall in India’s SW Monsoon

June 30, 2021June 30, 2021 SANDRPLeave a comment

In the just concluded June 2021, the first month of India’s South West 2021 monsoon, India received 182.9 mm rainfall, 10.96% or about 11% more than the normal June rainfall of 166.9 mm as per India Meteorological department. In June 2020, the rainfall was 196.9 mm, or about 18% above normal and in June 2019 it was 33% below normal.

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Indian Meteorological Department · Rainfall

Pre Monsoon 2021 season – State Wise, District Wise Rainfall

June 1, 2021June 11, 2021 SANDRPLeave a comment

In the just concluded pre monsoon season (March 1 to May 31, 2021) India received 155.2 mm rainfall, 18% above the normal rainfall of 131.7 mm as per the India Meteorological Department (IMD). This is similar to the case in 2020[i] when India received 158.5 mm or 20% above normal rainfall.

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Rainfall

District wise Winter 2021 Rainfall in India

March 1, 2021 SANDRPLeave a comment

In the just concluded Winter Season (Jan 1 2021 to Feb 28 2021), as per India Meteorological Department (IMD), India received 32% below Normal Rainfall. The Normal rainfall in this two-month season is supposed to be quite low at 40.8 mm, but the actual rainfall was just 27.8 mm, which means rainfall was less than 0.5 mm per day in the season. Out of this the Rainfall in January 2021 was 20.2 mm, 17% above the normal rainfall of 17.3 mm. So in February 2021, the rainfall was 7.6 mm, against the normal rainfall of 23.5 mm, so the February rainfall was 68% below normal!

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Rainfall

Post Monsoon 2020: State wise Rainfall

January 1, 2021January 2, 2021 SANDRPLeave a comment

According to India Meteorological Department (IMD), during the just concluded Post Monsoon Rainfall for 2020, that included rainfall during Oct-Dec months, India received 124.6 mm rainfall, 0.64% above the normal rainfall of 123.8 mm during the period. As per IMD[i] definition, the rainfall was thus normal.

This three-month period from Oct 1, to Dec 31 includes the North East Monsoon that mainly affects parts of South India including Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Rayalseema, parts of Karnataka and Kerala. IMD declared on Jan 1, 2021 that the of NE Monsoon ended on Dec 31, 2020 with normal overall rainfall: TN had 6% above normal, Karnatak 13% above normal, Puducherry 32% above normal, Andhra Pradesh 33% above normal. However, Lakshadweep had 9% below normal and Kerala 26% below normal. This monsoon provides 48% of the annual rainfall of TN so it is most imp for that state.

The rainfall revived only towards the end of November, mainly due to two consecutive cyclones — Nivar and Burevi — both of which developed in the Bay of Bengal. While Cyclone Nivar crossed the coast close to Karaikal near Puducherry and brought heavy showers for the east and coastal districts of Tamil Nadu, Cyclone Burevi weakened before it reached land.

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Rivers · Sand Mining

East Zone River Sand Mining Dialogue: How can we ensure implementation of court orders?

November 23, 2020November 23, 2020 SANDRPLeave a comment

Higher Courts and NGT has been giving numerous orders and judgments, but the state is happily getting away with non implementation in most cases. How can we ensure that court orders get implemented? Why is the judiciary not concerned about non implementation of its orders? This was one of the central message of the East Zone River Sand Mining Dialogue on Nov 21, 2020 (4-6.30 pm) as part of the India Rivers Week 2020[i] theme “Is Sand Mining Killing our Rivers?” Additional Director R B Lal from Union Ministry of Environment and Forests in his presentation agreed that the sustainable sand mining guidelines have not been implemented. One would have liked to hear how we can achieve their implementation and that MoEF also values participation of people at the grass roots in sand mining governance. He did not mention the local people even once, while praising MoEF’s emphasis on technology in the sand mining guidelines.

The Dialogue was very ably moderated by Dr Malavika Chauhan of Tata Trusts and Dr Debashish Sen of People’s Science Institute (Dehra Dun). This was Fourth in a series of Zonal River Sand Mining dialogues being held after North Zone[ii], South Zone[iii] and West Zone[iv] Dialogues held earlier.

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Sand Mining

Odisha River Sand Overview 2020: Another mining ravaged state

October 29, 2020October 30, 2020 SANDRPLeave a comment

The overview presents picture of river sand mining in Odisha based on available information in public domain from past 18 months.

Illegal Sand Mining Incidents

May 2019 Brick kilns spur illegal mining Scores of illegal brick kilns operating in Samana and Habaleswar panchayats under Hatadihi block in Keonjhar district had spurred illegal mining from riverbeds. As a result, the state government was losing crores of rupees revenue. The miners had encroached upon government and pastureland and set up brick kilns without sanction of the Odisha State Pollution Control Board.

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Monsoon · Rainfall

SW Monsoon 2020: District Wise Rainfall

September 30, 2020January 20, 2022 SANDRPLeave a comment

India received 957.6 mm rainfall in Just concluded South West Monsoon 2020, during the scheduled 4 month monsoon from June 1 to Sept 30, 2020. This is 8.74% above normal monsoon rainfall of 880.6 as per India Meteorological Department (IMD). This is considered ABOVE NORMAL rainfall, since rainfall is in the range 4-10% above Normal rainfall. This sounds good at national level, but the situation on ground could be very different, if we see the rainfall across the country.

It is noteworthy as per even IMD, monsoon has not yet withdrawn from most parts of the country. But IMD closes its monsoon rainfall account at 0830 hours on Sept 30, so all rainfall after that hour has to be counted in “Post Monsoon” rainfall book, even though the rainfall is very much part of monsoon as per IMD.

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Indian Meteorological Department · Monsoon · Rainfall

District wise rainfall in June-Aug 2020 in India

August 31, 2020August 31, 2020 SANDRPLeave a comment

In the ongoing South West Monsoon, India received 44 year old high surplus rainfall of 327 mm in just concluded Aug 2020, 26.6% above normal rainfall of 258.2 mm. This helped the total June-Aug 2020 rainfall to achieve 10% surplus, with actual rainfall 780.3 mm, 69.9 mm higher than normal rainfall of 710.4 mm. In June the country received 18% above normal rainfall and in July it received 9.9% below normal rainfall, the rainfall at the end of June was just 1.1 mm above normal. Thus almost the entire surplus rainfall is thanks to the rainfall during Aug 2020. The rainfall distribution has however, been far from normal that these figures suggest, as we can see from the state wise and district wise figures below.

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