National Mineral Policy 2006 - Department of Mines

the ore (raw or processed) is mainly the road and/or railhead from where the mineral is to betransported to the site of the processing unit, e.g. refinery or smelter. If the ore is to beexported, then the infrastructure includes road or rail connection to the port and the port itselfwhere adequate handling and shipping (berthing, loading, draught, etc.) capacity is needed.Other utilities, such as a water source, would be specific to the project. It is, therefore,essential that adequate infrastructure facilities, viz. roads and railways, power, port facilities,and water and other utilities are available to the miner. Without these the resources cannot beaccessed, extracted, and marketed.4.3 Roads and utilities within the mining areas are generally constructed and maintainedby the mining companies themselves, even in the SME sector. Road and rail links for thetransportation of minerals from the mined areas to the nearest railhead, national highway(NH), or state highway (SH) are the primary infrastructure requirement before a mine can beoperated. In the absence of such links the growth potential of the mining sector in the countryis seriously handicapped. The infrastructure issue has to be seen in two different contexts,viz. needs of the mining majors, on the one hand, and the needs of the SME sector mines, onthe other. Mining majors or large-scale stand alone mines tend to construct their own linkinginfrastructure. Publicly funded infrastructure is needed mainly for the SME sector minessince their ability to build linking infrastructure is limited by the scale of their operations.4.4 While in most parts of the world there is not much mining in the SME sector, themining operations in India are largely confined to the SME sector. This is because the Indianlaws and procedures have so far been somewhat biased against large stand alone mines thatrequire concessions over a large area for economies of scale. The Indian large mines aremainly of iron ore, bauxite, copper, zinc, manganese, gold, and limestone (bulks) and aremostly in the captive segment. There are 11 relatively large stand alone iron ore mines (seeAnnexure 11), two copper mines with Hindustan Copper, one zinc mine cluster withHindustan Zinc, one manganese ore mine with Manganese Ore (India) Limited (MOIL), anda gold mine with Hutti Gold. There is no kimberlite (deep) diamond mining in India nor arethere any beach sand mineral (BSM) mines in the large-scale sector. Since mining proper inmost parts of the world is mainly a large-scale non-captive activity the mining world tends toregard India as a country without a developed mining sector. The only exception is dimensionstone (granite, marble) which is an activity both in the large-scale as well as in the SMEsector and is located in coastal areas and is primarily export-driven.95