Soil mining swallows up Tumakuru’s grazing land

In February earlier this year, a group of school children gathered to protest ‘soil mining’ in Tumakuru’s Gubbi taluk. At least 50-60 tractors used to ply along the road the children took to get to school. The dust thrown up by the activity was affecting their health.

Their protest put an end to the problem in their village but highlighted a widespread problem in Gubbi and other taluks of Tumakuru — the commercial trade of soil.

Just outside Gulenahalli village near Gubbi, the reckless extraction of soil has left 100 acres of gomal land looking like a mini-quarry. Gomal land is common land reserved for pasture.

Bluish-green water stagnates in pits that are well over 20 feet deep. Villagers here say the soil from the gomal was carted off by a ‘huli’ (village strongman). And that the soil was used in various government projects — including the Pradhan Mantri Sadak Yojana and the four-laning of the Tumakuru-Shivamogga highway. The soil is used to pave the roads or level the land during construction.

Gomal lands catch rainwater and allow it to percolate to the ground and reach the tanks through seepage. This hydro-geological cycle is getting disrupted, so tanks will become dry. “Karnataka has the highest potential for desertification. If you remove the topsoil, no geobiological activity takes place and this accelerates desertification,” says C Yatiraju of Tumkur Science Centre.

Imitiaz, a resident of Kitadkuppe village which has seen similar destruction, says farmers around the area first started removing the valuable topsoil to use in their areca plantations. Then road contractors turned up with their JCBs, digging deeper and farther, completely destroying the gomal land.

In cases where the soil is used for commercial purposes, the people have to get permission from the tahsildar, deputy commissioner or the Department of Mines and Geology, where they have to pay a royalty.

“No permission is given. But we take action when the cases are brought to our notice,” says Arathi B, the Gubbi tahsildar.

Villagers say people have been removing soil for more than three years, but the trend has accelerated of late. In all the four villages DH visited, the commons have been completely destroyed. Farmers also sell soil from their land, which is legal.

Devaraj, a member of the Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha from Tiptur taluk, says one acre of land dug five feet deep yields in excess 2,000 tractor loads of soil. One tractor load of soil sells for anywhere between Rs 150 and Rs 300, leaving the middlemen involved with a profit running into lakhs.

All of these activities are in clear contravention of the Karnataka Land Revenue Act, 1964 which has no provision for the government to extinguish public rights over public lands.

It is not just gomal land that is affected. At Kodihalli, several private fields are freshly excavated, with three or four feet of topsoil sliced away. Local activists say that farmers here started selling their topsoil — used in areca plantations nearby — after a rumour that the land was going to be acquired by Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd to set up an ancillary unit to their factory near Gubbi.

“They thought they could profit from the soil and sell the land separately,” an activist says. Of course, the acquisition has not come to pass.

Lakshmamma, a local farmer, says she used to get some soil from the gomal near Kodihalli to use in her areca plantation of one acre. “But the others have completely destroyed the land. They completely swallowed it up.”

Soil excavated from some villages is also used in brick kilns.

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