Illegal mining is a lucrative business in Kerala, where political masters and administrators and officials vie for a share of the pie. Norms are flouted and laws bent to allow unscrupulous miners to carry on with the ruthless exploitation of natural resources. Nobody is complaining until nature hits back.

The mining and geology department - responsible for issuing quarrying licence and monitoring their functioning -  is in an enviable position. Its officials are not held accountable for their actions.

The department is neck-deep in corruption. Its staff accept bribes regularly from illegal quarry operators. Officials who refuse to accept bribes will see their position vulnerable.

The extent of the rot was laid bare for all to see when the Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau raided the district mining and geology office in Alappuzha in 2001. The anti-corruption sleuths, who had laid a trap for a particular staff, returned after catching all seven employees red-handed. The initial suspect had promptly, and unwittingly, distributed the chemical-smeared bribe money among his colleagues as was the practice.

A geologist in Pathanamthitta was nabbed with lakhs of rupees from a hotel room near his office.

Three-member syndicate

Quarry business has assumed mafia proportions in Thiruvananthapuram, where a cabal of three men controls the underground operations that span top government offices. A staffer in a minister's office, a prominent leader of the ruling party and an employee of the geology department are the go-to team to get things rolling for an illegal quarry operator.

The political leader is comfortably placed. He hails from an area with the largest concentration of quarries in Thiruvananthapuram district. He has his hands on the pulses of the geology department thanks to his associate in the department. Nothing happens without the politician's knowledge or consent.

The irritating influence had prompted the department honchos to identify the mole and transferring him out. That is where the minister's employee came into the picture. He alerted the cabal about the file with the transfer order and helped the department staff obtain a stay order. This happened twice.

When a ministerial employee's relative got married in Thiruvananthapuram recently, the reception was attended by many quarry owners. Insiders joked that the event was a reunion for geologists and quarry owners.

Quarry owners have come up with imaginative means to maximise their profits without being caught. Take the case of a quarry owner in Thrissur who also runs a chit fund. Almost 90 per cent of his investors is government officers from the geology, pollution control and revenue departments.

The chit fund doubles up as a safe haven for the bundles of bribe money. As far as the quarry owner is concerned, he gets to take back the bribe he had paid. The chit fund in Thrissur is a favourite investment destination for government employees from other districts as well.

Advisers for hire

After the deadly landslides in Kavalappara in Malappuram district and Puthumala in Wayanad district in August, a meeting held in Kozhikode to discuss the disasters came up with interesting suggestions. The speakers included a retired officer of the Geological Survey of India from Malappuram, a former assistant geologist in Kozhikode district and a former divisional forest officer from Kozhikode.

The meeting concluded that argument that quarries contributed to the landslides were nothing but desperate attempts by vested interests!

The Geological Survey officer with a salary slip of Rs 1.10 lakh took up voluntary retirement in 2017. Since then he has found a career as a lobbyist for the quarry owners. He can be heard proclaiming in public venues that quarries had nothing to do with landslides as Kerala was always prone to the debris flow even when there were no quarries.

The quarry business offers a post-retirement job for many geologists. Quarry owners need people with a degree in geology or mining and with at least 12 years of experience in related fields to prepare quarry mining plans. They offer the job as bait for government geologists looking for occupation after retirement. A bit of wayward favours will go a long way in a successful resume.

More shocking is the case of an assistant sub-inspector with the Kerala Police who has taken leave of absence to work as a manager for a quarry in Thiruvananthapuram for four years.

Undermining authority

Kerala has set up a State Environmental Impact Assessment Authority to grant clearance for new quarries. Now the chief minister has received a complaint from three employees to look into the irregularities in the authority. The complaint has been forwarded to the Central Bureau of Investigation as well.

The target of the allegations is a former administrator who returned to the original posting in the state secretariat a month ago. The official is accused of giving nod to a 9-hectare quarry in Chittar in the Pathanamthitta district by considering it as a “special case”. Such considerations even without examining the site is unusual in the authority.

Quarry clearances are often given without abiding by the norms and without sufficient examinations, suggested a letter from Dr P S Easa, a member of the State Expert Appraisal Committee. The committee seldom received the applications in time and it could hardly ascertain if the proposed site was near already existing quarries, Easa wrote to the committee chief on June 8.

Easa was forced to send out the letter amid charges related to the granting of clearance to a quarry in the Oorngattiri village in the Nilambur North forest division, which also included Kavalappara, where at least 46 people perished in a devastating landslide in August. Easa was among the committee members to visit the Oorngattiri quarry.

Extended rot

The problem pointed out by Easa is also present in district-level authorities tasked with approving quarries that do not exceed 5 hectares. The Kozhikode district authority has 12 members but only three of them turned up to examine a proposed quarry at Chengodumala. Two of them said that they were in favour of granting approval for the quarry. Some string-pulling ensured that the approval was on its way but stiff resistance at the grass-roots foiled the plans. A subsequent examination by the expert authority found the area was not fit for mining.

Findings and evidence aside, the unholy alliance of quarry owners, bureaucrats and politicians find ways to overcome all regulatory mechanism. They end up making a killing. They also end up in mass burials.

Mounting public losses

The unrestrained abuse of nature has also burned a hole in the state's revenue. The Comptroller and Auditor General reported in 2017 that the state has lost revenue of crores of rupees thanks to the non-implementation of a government order that public land could be used for mining only after considering competitive bids.

The Kerala State Pollution Control Board or the State Environmental Impact Assessment Authority is not equipped to oversee the working of the quarries or to check for any rule violations. The mining and geology department has failed to conduct routine checks on quarries. The zonal squads of the department were non-existent in many areas.

The CAG also said that the district-level committees meant to bar the functioning of illegal quarries were not functioning in many places.

The business of bribe

This lackadaisical attitude can be explained by the clockwork corruption machine that has pervaded all levels of government. Mid-sized quarries earmark Rs 25 lakh to Rs 50 lakh every month to grease palms. Larger quarries are supposed to spend more in exchange for the official silence.

Significant shares from these amounts reach ministers' offices and the honchos in the ruling parties. In fact, quarry owners have become the biggest source of bribes, relegating bar owners to the second spot. After all, quarries made a larger profit that bars.

Our team of reporters got a quarry owner to list out the details of bribes paid to the politicians and government officials. Of course, he would not reveal his identity for fear of retribution.

A mid-size quarry's owner pays the local panchayat, the village office, the tehsildar's office, the district collector's office and the pollution control board office anywhere between Rs 10,000 and Rs 25,000 whenever a document is required from them.

The explosives department of the police draws blood when they are approached by quarry owners for licences to blast the rocks. The bribe ranges from Rs 10,000 to Rs 25,000. Since most of the quarry operators store more than the number of allowed explosives, the police officers raise their “fee” accordingly.

Local police stations, as well as the circle offices, deputy superintendents' offices and superintendents' offices, also demand Rs 10,000 to Rs 25,000 per month as “protection money”. Quarry owners are also expected to bear sundry expenses in the station and even fill up the cops' vehicles.

Similar amounts go out to the special squads of the motor vehicles department. Many motor vehicle inspectors love to ambush the lorries laden with granite and gravel. They are assured of a large fine or a bribe that would only cost the quarry owners half of the fine.

The officials in the geology department expect a bribe not less than Rs 10,000 for getting anything done.

Local political leaders also join the party often. The quarry owners have to keep them in humour to avoid agitations against their business. The smallest operator may have to pay Rs 10,000 and the big sharks in lakhs. Even for a street-corner meeting by a marginal outfit, quarry owners cough up at least Rs 10,000.

(Reporting by G Vinod, K Jayaprakash Babu, S V Rajesh, A S Ullas, K P Safeena, Jithin Jose and S P Sarath; compiled by Nidheesh Chandran)