







































Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal 8(2): 109-112, July 2025 

 

BOOK REVIEW 
 

Extractive economics and ecological rights 

 

Arpita Bisht  
 
S Mohammed Irshad. 2024. Economics of Mineral Mining in India. Singapore: 
Palgrave Macmillan. xvii + 220. ISBN 978-981-97-9418-8  

 
Large-scale mineral mining in 
India frequently leads to 
severe harm to local 
communities. This harm 
includes but is not limited to 
land dispossession and 
subversion of their 
constitutional rights, 
ecosystem degradation and 
the destruction of their 
environmental inheritances, 
and their displacement from 
spaces of sociocultural 
reproduction and means of 
livelihood sustenance. The 
dynamics of India’s mining 
frontiers follow similar 
historical precedents from 
across the rest of the world. 

Contemporary mining finds 
its historical precedents in the 

long sixteenth century. Since then, waves of colonial expansion have been 

 
 Beatriu de Pinós Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals, 
Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona (ICTA–UAB), 08193 Cerdanyola del Vallès, Barcelona, 
Spain; arpitabisht1990@gmail.com  

Copyright © Bisht 2025. Released under Creative Commons Attribution © NonCommercial 
4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0) by the author.  

Published by Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE), c/o Institute of  Economic 

Growth, University Enclave, North Campus, Delhi 110007.  

ISSN: 2581–6152 (print); 2581–6101 (web).  

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v8i8.1712  

mailto:arpitabisht1990@gmail.com
https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v8i8.1712


 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [110] 

 

founded on similar principles—ensuring the extraction of massive 
quantities of ecosystems, trade of raw materials across geospatially distant 
locations, transfers of resources to colonial centres, and the distribution of 
the accumulated wealth within a small group of people. In the late 1980s (in 
the post–independence era of the Global South), the “Washington 
Consensus” launched an era of new resource extraction dynamics—through 
strategies of neoimperialism and neocolonialism. The structural reforms of 
the early 1990s and the resultant globalization of neoliberalism ushered in 
the most recent phase of resource and wealth transfers—this time from the 
“underdeveloped” or “developing” world to the industrial core of 
capitalism: the Global North. Across this time period, much theoretical 
work has been done to understand the links between colonialism, 
capitalism, and natural resources. 

Drawing on these theories, S Mohammed Irshad offers us this important 
book on mineral extraction in India. In this book, he deftly combines an 
analysis of political, economic, legislative, governance, and human and civil 
rights aspects with the ecological aspects of the mining industry in India. 
The book makes critical contributions by including the historical precedents 
to mining in India, e.g., current policy and governance dimensions (which 
continue to be founded on the legacy of British colonial governance), and 
sociocultural dimensions particular to India (the “primitive accumulation” 
of land and resources founded on the ever-present caste system of India). It 
also comprehensively covers the wide range of minerals found in India—
for instance, it includes discussions on coal and bulk metals (iron ore, 
copper, bauxite, etc.), but also on critical minerals, aggregate minerals (sand 
and cobbles), rare minerals (heavy sands mining), and atomic minerals. 

S. Mohammed Irshad presents an analysis of the mining landscape in India 
that is grounded in the realities of the people residing at the frontiers of 
resource extraction. He does an excellent job of covering the multiple layers 
of legislative, administrative, and bureaucratic issues involved in mining, 
particularly as they apply to people at mining frontiers. In addition to the 
national policy dimension, the book covers a range of court decisions and 
presents important information regarding the bureaucratic processes 
involved in dispute resolution regarding land acquisition, land 
dispossession, and land rights (including forest rights, cultural/religious 
rights, and the civil rights of local residents where the mining occurs). Based 
on extensive research in Odisha, the book demonstrates how industrial 
capitalism and the state have been instrumental in ensuring that mining 
operations continue regardless of the will of local communities by 
transferring operations to national capital, in cases of failure to ensure 
operations of foreign capital. 



[111] Bisht 

 
 

There are three major discussions in the book. First, it examines various 
theories of resource accumulation and resource rights as applicable to the 
Indian case.  The book explores the capitalist relations surrounding land 
use, distribution, and acquisition in India—as they emerged more and more 
strongly over the history of independent India. Second, it discusses the 
increasing privatization of land by private capital from within India, as well 
as the flow of foreign capital into the mining industry over the last 75 years. 
In addition, the book includes discussions on the regulatory state and the 
mining economy, as well as the royalties and income from mining, which 
are fundamental to understanding how the state supports industrial 
capitalism in India. Thirdly, it critically discusses changes in legislative 
frameworks that have guided the mining industry in India and presents us 
with important perspectives on how the state—through the institutional 
support it provides—has created conditions where governance, 
bureaucracy, and economics are all oriented towards benefiting the mining 
industry. Finally, the book features a serious discussion on the politics of 
anti-mining movements, uncovering both people’s politics as well as 
mainstream politics. Here, the author also delves into very important but 
often neglected aspects of people’s political movements—the dimensions 
of gender, caste, human rights violations, and indigenous rights violations 
under industrial capitalism. A much-needed analysis of social movements 
against mining and extractivism active in other parts of the world is an 
important section. The concluding chapter provides a broad picture of 
similar movements in Latin America—which have occurred and are 
occurring in different political, economic, and historical contexts—but are 
similar in that the state enables the capital needed to (violently if need be) 
dispossess and disenfranchise local, often marginalized, and indigenous 
communities from the spaces of their life, culture, society, and livelihood 
generation.  

The book could have benefited from Immanuel Wallerstein’s work (1974), 
which demonstrates how the core is dependent on and draws from the 
periphery, and from Jason Moore’s work on resource “frontiers” (2000), 
which demonstrates the structural basis for dynamics of exploitation—both 
of people and nature—through the agencies of capital, technology, and the 
state. In India, the phenomenon of “internal colonialism” is an important 
lens to understand the oppression of Adivasi communities, which is missing 
in this book. Besides this, the book presents fresh and multifaceted 
perspectives on India’s mining sector. The book can prove useful for 
academic audiences—both students as well as teachers, since it provides a 
succinct summary of mining in India. Given its coverage of court cases and 



 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [112] 

 

the hurdles faced by mining–affected people, it may also be useful for 
members of the legal community, journalists, and members of civil society.  

Data Availability statement: The data used in this paper is not provided 
in a repository. This is a book review, which does not have any original 
primary data included in the work 

Conflict of Interest Statement: No potential conflict of interest was 
reported by the author. 

REFERENCES 

Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1974. The Modern World System I: Capitalist Agriculture 
and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. 
Academic Press. 

Moore, Jason W. 2000. “Sugar and the Expansion of the Early Modern World-
Economy: Commodity Frontiers, Ecological Transformation, and 
Industrialization.” Review (Fernand Braudel Center) 23(3): 409–33. 

 


