Soon after claiming there was “chaos in the Indian mining industry”, the Federation of Indian Mineral Industries (FIMI) has sought the intervention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to revive growth and job creation in the sector, which has been experiencing a decline in employment.

“With government support and much-needed reforms, the mining sector has the potential to create five-million direct jobs if the country’s rich mineral resources are sensibly explored and used for production for domestic consumption and import substitution, saving foreign exchange,” FIMI secretary-general RK Sharma said in a communication to the Prime Minister’s office.

In the letter, Sharma underlined that, with every percentage point increase in economic growth, the mining industry could generate 13 times more jobs than agriculture and six times more than the manufacturing industry, owing to the large ecosystem spanning linkages and supply chains.

“Instead of exploring and extracting the mineral wealth for self-reliance in the long term, we are heavily dependent on importing seven times more than the value of our own domestic production,” Sharma said.

Calling for more proactive intervention by the central government, Sharma said that, despite several changes to laws, regulations and policies over the past years, the domestic mining industry had been facing challenges, owing to a lack of implementation from the central and state governments, Sharma added.

FIMI’s request for intervention from the Prime Minister comes close on the heels of its publishing of a report, ‘Employment in Mining: A case of missed opportunities, prospects for future’, underlining a jobs crisis in the industry.

As reported earlier by Mining Weekly, FIMI claimed the chaos in the mining industry stemmed from a mix of lopsided government policies, poor implementation and court orders that had resulted in the loss of 200 000 direct jobs over the past few months and threats of further direct and indirect job losses of 264 000 as mining leases for 329 noncaptive mines were up for renewal and possibly facing delays in the fresh auction of such mining leases to keep the mines operational.

While government was yet to officially respond to FIMI’s plea, sources in government said the Mines Ministry was considering some amendments to the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act 2015 to tweak the definition of “illegal mining”.

Some of the proposed amendments would be based on recommendations made by a high-level committee in April, comprising the Cabinet Secretary, the vice chairperson of government policy advisory body NITI Aagyog (National Institute for Transformation of India Commission) and secretaries of allied Ministries, which favoured changes in the rules relating to the imposition of penalties for environmental and pollution violations and the extension of relief to mining companies.