6.2.1 Intangible impacts
The visible (tangible) impacts of mining are already known and in most of the cases are attempted to care. This study tries to highlight the INTANGIBLE impacts so that these get recognition and care which they deserve, because these may be minor for a small time span but aquires a serious volume over years as they get compounded and acumulated.

Some confirmation to the existence of such intangible impacts can be made from the observations as listed below.

* Nearly 22% of global green land have been degraded in the last 50 years (GLASOD in Anon 2000, pp.3).
* There are instances of subsidence of ground supporting vegetation due to clay mines of Pali district in Rajasthan (Anon, 2000, pp.4).
* Mining of sandstone in Bijola area, Western India has effected the hydrogeological regime, blocking the channels and lowering of water table. This has stagnated water bodies in the mine pits and labour colonies (Anon, 2000, pp.4).
* 2/3rd of the world's sediment transport to ocean is from southeast Asia (Mohanty, 2001).
* Among the five rivers in the would carrying maximum amount of sediment load to ocean, three are pass through India (Agarwal & Narain, 1991).
* India is heading towards severe water scarcity (Mohanty, 2001).
* In spite of serious effort to grow more greenery in coal mining areas of India, green cover on these is decreasing significantly (Ghosh & Rani, 1999).
*Jharia coalfield (JCF) originally a forest-cum-agricultural land is not having any real forest now.
* In JCF, length of tributaries to the river Damodar was 365 km in 1925, which decreased to 143 km in 1993. (Ghosh, et al., 1997).
* Inspite of being a sedimentary terrain the JCF does not have any continuity of water table. (Ghosh, 1993)
* Areas adjoining to coal mining areas of West Bengal (Birbhum-Bankura region) which were originally having natural lush green vegetation, now suffer from water scarcity in every summer.
In the previous chapter strategies have been suggested for
* preserving and reusing topsoil
* growing green cover without using topsoil
* preventing lowering of water table
* regeneration of aquifer lost by mining.

6.2.2 Assessment of intangible impacts of mining on land
It has been clarified that impacts of some damages to land are "intangible", and can be assessed only through parallel observations or case studies. For such assessment mention may be made of the following facts.
* India is loosing about 600M tons of topsoil/year. In terms of NPK only it costs Rs.70 crores/year (Sharma 1982) at 1972 price. (it must have gone much high now)
* Present cost of greening such lands is about Rs.3 lakhs/ha.

The suggested techniques if followed,
* will negate all the above costs. Further, an experimental plot could earn Rs. 14,000/ha in 1st year and showed provisions for earning more in later years table 6.2 (Ghosh, 1999a).
* a properly reclaimed land can be sold at higher cost than in premining days.

Thus the cost benefit analysis of the total set of land reclamation technologies suggested can be summarised as in table 6.3.
Table 6.2: Cost-benefit analysis of greening barren lands (without topsoil)

Item	Expenditure incurred	Production obtained	Amount could be earned (approximately)	Net calculated benefit
Labour	Rs.6250/ha/yr. (125 man days)	-	-	-
Straw and compost	Rs.400/ha/year	-	-	-
Cowpea seeds	Rs.100/ha/year	4 kg/ha/year for 90 days/year, i.e. 360 kg/ha/ year	@Rs.20/kg- Rs.7200/ha/ year	Rs.450/ha/year
Grass seeds	Rs.200/ha/2 years	2 big sackfulls of grass/ha/day for 10 months, i.e. 600 sackfulls/year	@rs.5/sack- Rs.3000/year	Rs.2900/ha/ year
Cactus and agave bulbs, babul and jalebi seeds	Rs.100/ha one time expenditure, i.e. Rs.50/ha/year	Will form a living hedge, that will negate the need for fencing. Further, agave will provide erosion protection.Agave can produce threads to be used in door-mattressCactus has decorative value	Will avoid the expenditure of Rs.10000/ha/ year Benefit is intangible (Figure 1) Cost could not be calculated Cost could not be calculated	Rs.9950/ha/ year Intangible Will accrue in future Will accrue in future
Other seeds	Rs.100/ha one time expenditure, i.e. Rs.50/ha/year	Would produce fruits after some years	Rs.700/ha/year (approximately)	Rs.650/ha/year
Total	Rs.6950/ha/ year	.	Rs.20900/ha/ year	Rs.13950/ha/ year= Rs.14000/ha/ year + intangibles approximately

After Ghosh, 1999a

Table 6.3: Cost-benefit analysis of suggested reclamation techniques

Cost being spent now	Benefit of following the suggested technologies
1. Tangibles * Cost of land being aquired (case specific) * Cost of reclamation, @ about Rs.3.00 lakhs/ha (present cost) * Cost of topsoil lost in India/y in terms of NPK only Rs.700 crores/yr (Sharma, 1982)	* Cost of land reclaimed (considering price escalation through the life of the mine) is the amount which can be earned by selling it. Note: Legal provision for selling the land is required as an incentive. * Income accrued out of the reclaimed land, e.g. @Rs.14,000/ha in a tested area (Ghosh, 1999a).
2. Intangibles * Loss of topsoil * Loss of surface water resources * Loss of aquifers *Loss of greeneries * Damage to ecosystem Note: The country is heading towards severe water scarcity and towards desertification (in the long run) (Mohanty, 2001).	* Saving topsoil with biolife. *Generation of substitute of topsoil. * Protection of surface water resources. * Regeneration of aquifers. * Protection and regeneration of greeneries * Protection of ecosystem. * A habitable earth for the future generations.

6.3 Conclusions
If legal provision be made for selling reclaimed lands, the earning may motivate the mining management to use dozers and scrappers, to separate topsoil, to follow "continuous and concurrent reclamation mining" (Ghosh & Ghosh 1990), "strategies for growing greenery without topsoil" Ghosh, 1999a), "techniques of aquifer regeneration" (Ghosh 2000c) during backfilling of quarries and "water resource management in mining areas" (Ghosh 2000a, and Saxena, 1999) as per case suitability.