India is one of the countries globally that has substantial ASM activity. The importance of ASM in India is in the variety and geographical spread of mineral and material availability, quality, and production, as well as the significant number of people, both women and men, laboring in the small-scale mines and quarries.
Read more in the State of the Sector 2019 Country Profile: India
Estimates for ASM employment in India vary greatly from 500,000 to 15 million depending on which metals and minerals are counted and how the passages in the literature are interpreted. An often quoted figure is 12 million for quarrying alone but this appears to have been taken out of its original context. More clarification and better data is needed.
Data Source: Noetstaller WB (1989), Jennings ILO (1999), Chakravorty MMSD (2001), Lahiri-Dutt 2012, Seccatore et al 2014
A 2021 study by SRADHA provides the first baseline study of gold and gemstone mining communities in the region of three former districts in the Odisha state (Koraput, Balangir, Kalahandi). The research sampled 387 total respondents to understand gold and gemstone value chains, gender and social dynamics and outline demographic information for local participants. The work was funded by the Extractives Global Programmatic Support (EGPS) multi-donor trust fund under the COVID-19 Emergency Response for ASM.
Sources
Download the Dataset: Baseline Study of ASM Communities in KBK Districts, India
The data presented in this Version 1 of the Delve platform are from secondary sources and reflect data availability on the ASM sector. All data, countries and minerals are not yet represented. Data will be added on an ongoing basis as the global data gap on ASM continues to be filled. Visualizations created with Highcharts.com under a Creative Commons (CC) Attribution-NonCommercial license.
