
300 trucks a day take their fill of sand at a mine on the Sone River in Bihar state. | Prices are up sharply as sand mining is halted for 3 months during rainy season. Sand is a lucrative commodity in India. It fuels a black market for the illegal strip-mining of waterways. Profits from India’s construction boom help keep the sand mining frontier lawless. Sand miners have killed those who oppose them.
Our modern world is built on sand: concrete, paved roads, ceramics, metallurgy, petroleum fracking, even the glass on smart phones. River sand is best: desert sand is too rounded to serve as industrial binding agents, and marine sand is corrosive. |