Iron ore exports to China provided a short-lived boom to the state economy. The mining companies made millions but the state squandered the gains by failing to beef up local industry.
Ten years ago, getting to Koira was not easy.
Hundred kilometres to the north of the steelmaking town of Rourkela, the village was one of the main centres of iron ore mining in Odisha.
Day and night, trucks crawled along the road going downhill – some lugging ore to the railway yards at the foot of the hills, others travelling 300 kilometres to the port at Paradip, from where ore was shipped to China and beyond. With as many as 80-100 trucks moving bumper to bumper, locals struggled to cross the road. Pile-ups were common. Traffic jams took days to clear.
The road itself was a mess. A combination of heavy rains and overloaded trucks had reduced it to a rutted dirt track. And yet, given the insatiable demand for iron ore at the time, the trucks kept moving, kicking up large clouds of red dust as they lurched in and out of potholes and ruts.
Those were the boom years. As countries like China rapidly added infrastructure, ore prices were surging across the world. The price of powdered iron ore rose from around $18/tonne in 2004 to $86/ton by 2009. In India, during this period, the price of ore rose from a few hundreds to as high as Rs 8,000 a ton.
With the market giving such unequivocal signals, ore extraction went through the roof in states like Odisha. From 8.1 million tons of ore in 1994-’95, before the boom started, the production reached 70 million tons in 2008-’09. That year, exports stood at 16.3 million tons – twice the state’s total production just 15 years ago.