The Supreme Court and Intergenerational Equity: The Goa Mining Case

This new book on the historic Goa mining case is written by Claude Alvares and Rahul Basu. It chronicles the amazing story of how a small, publicly funded environmental monitoring group called the Goa Foundation successfully fought a ten year battle to bring Goa’s entire privately held mining industry to account. The Foundation’s legal initiatives and petitions led to the closure of the nearly 100-year old mining industry. Except for a brief 2 year interlude, mining in Goa has remained shut for more than ten years. At the time of closure, more than half of India’s mineral ore exports originated from Goa – India’s smallest state.

 

The Goa mining case led to three consecutive judgments of the Supreme Court, with the Court each time refusing any concessions to former lease holders. These judgments also led to wide-ranging changes in mining laws and regulations, including the requirement that all future alienation of minerals would only be done through the process of public auction, thus generating maximum revenues to public exchequers.

 

The case also heralded the beginnings of the first judicially instigated Permanent Fund for the State of Goa which would receive monies from every sale invoice dealing with minerals and sequester them for the benefit and use of future generations of Goans.

 

The Supreme Court of India and Intergenerational Equity will be useful to all persons – especially social activists – keenly interested in regulation of the extractives industry, issues of ownership of natural resources, the manner of their alienation, and the apex court’s cumulative and consistent judgments furthering the implementation of the principle of intergenerational equity. The book contains a day-to-day record of the court proceedings, arguments on behalf of the Goa Foundation led by Prashant Bhushan, the counter arguments of more than a dozen legal luminaries from Rohtagi to K.K. Venugopal. The authors have also included the full text of the unprecedented judgment that declared five years of mining illegal as it was carried out with a valid lease. A final section gathers together current legal thinking surrounding alienation of natural resources, the need for permanent funds to protect the interests of coming generations, and the Supreme Court’s various judgments on intergenerational equity and the doctrine of Public Trust.