North-Eastern Plateau mineral belt

Also called: Chota Nagpur plateau mineral belt · Topic: Mineral Resources of India: Distribution and Conservation · NCERT: Class 10, Ch 5 "Minerals and Energy Resources"; Class 10, Ch 6 "Manufacturing Industries"; Class 12, Ch 5 "Mineral and Energy Resources"

Meaning

The North-Eastern Plateau mineral belt is India's richest mineral region. It covers the Chhotanagpur plateau (Jharkhand), the Odisha plateau, West Bengal and parts of Chhattisgarh. It holds iron ore, coal, manganese, bauxite, mica, copper and uranium, all close together in old rocks.

• It is called India's "storehouse of minerals" because no other region has so many kinds of minerals in such large amounts.
• Iron ore lies close to coking coal here, so India's main cluster of iron and steel plants grew in this belt.

Explanation

Why so many minerals collect here (cause → process → result)

• The rocks are very old.
• The belt sits on Archaean–Dharwar rocks. These are very old metamorphic rocks (changed by heat and pressure) and igneous rocks (formed from cooled magma) of the Peninsular plateau.

• India's most valuable minerals are pre-Palaeozoic, which means older than about 540 million years. They formed in rocks like these.

• Long erosion brought the ores near the surface.

• These hard rocks have been worn down for a very long time.

• The wearing removed the rock on top and left the ores near the surface, where they are easier to mine.

• Coal lies in Gondwana basins inside the same region.

• Gondwana rocks are sedimentary rocks laid down about 250–300 million years ago in long, sunken river troughs.

• Plants buried in these troughs turned into coal. That is why the coal follows river valleys such as the Damodar and the Mahanadi.

• Result: metal ores from the old crystalline rocks and coal from the Gondwana troughs lie side by side. This mix is rare, and it is what makes the belt so valuable.

What the belt holds

Mineral	Main deposits
Iron ore	Noamundi and Gua (West Singhbhum, Jharkhand); Gurumahisani, Badampahar and Kiriburu–Bonai (Odisha); Bailadila (Chhattisgarh)
Coal	Jharia, Bokaro and Karanpura (Damodar valley); Raniganj (West Bengal); Talcher (Mahanadi valley); Korba (Chhattisgarh)
Manganese	Keonjhar and Sundargarh (Odisha)
Bauxite	Kalahandi and Koraput (Odisha); Chhattisgarh plateau
Mica	Koderma–Hazaribagh (Jharkhand)
Copper	Singhbhum copper belt (Jharkhand)
Uranium	Jaduguda (Jharkhand)

• Size of the reserves:
• Odisha, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal and northern Andhra Pradesh together hold about 80% of India's iron ore and about 100% of its coking coal. They also hold a large share of its chromite, bauxite and dolomite (2020) [2].
• Odisha alone has about 51% of India's bauxite, 25% of its coal, 34% of its iron ore, 96% of its chromite and 44% of its manganese resources (2020) [3].
• Coal resources on 1 April 2021 (GSI): Jharkhand 86,216.82 million tonnes, Odisha 84,878.05 million tonnes, Chhattisgarh 73,423.54 million tonnes. These were the top three states [4].
• India's total coal resource was 361,411.46 million tonnes on 1 April 2022 (GSI) [5].
• Iron ore output in 2018-19: Odisha 113,119 thousand tonnes, Chhattisgarh 34,893 thousand tonnes, Jharkhand 23,433 thousand tonnes. Odisha is the leading producer [6].

Why steel plants cluster here

• Iron ore lies close to coking coal.
• Coking coal is coal that turns into hard coke when heated.

• In a blast furnace, coke is the fuel. It also removes oxygen from the iron ore, which is why it is called the reducing agent.

• The other raw materials are nearby too. Limestone, dolomite and manganese, also needed for steel, are found in the same region.

• Steel uses heavy raw materials that lose weight during processing.
• Carrying them over long distances is costly.

• So plants are built close to the raw materials, and transport costs stay low.

• Result: a cluster of steel plants at Jamshedpur and Bokaro (Jharkhand), Durgapur (West Bengal), Rourkela (Odisha) and Bhilai (Chhattisgarh).

• Map check (superimposition): if you lay the maps of iron ore, manganese, coal and steel plants on top of each other, they overlap in the Jharkhand–Odisha–Chhattisgarh–West Bengal region.

Where it occurs

• Jharkhand (Chhotanagpur plateau):
• Iron ore at Noamundi and Gua (West Singhbhum)
• Coal at Jharia, Bokaro and Karanpura (Damodar valley)
• Mica at Koderma–Hazaribagh
• Copper in the Singhbhum copper belt
• Uranium at Jaduguda

• Steel plants at Jamshedpur and Bokaro

• Odisha plateau:

• Iron ore at Gurumahisani, Badampahar and Kiriburu–Bonai
• Manganese at Keonjhar and Sundargarh
• Bauxite at Kalahandi and Koraput
• Coal at Talcher (Mahanadi valley)

• Steel plant at Rourkela

• West Bengal: coal at Raniganj; steel plant at Durgapur.

• Chhattisgarh:
• Iron ore at Bailadila
• Coal at Korba
• Bauxite on the Chhattisgarh plateau

• Steel plant at Bhilai

• Larger setting: the whole belt lies east of the Mangaluru–Kanpur line, the imaginary line from Mangaluru (Karnataka coast) to Kanpur (Uttar Pradesh). Most of India's major minerals lie east of this line.

Don't confuse with

• South-Western Plateau belt (Karnataka, Goa, Tamil Nadu uplands, Kerala): it has high-grade iron ore, but no coal except Neyveli lignite (a low-grade brown coal). The North-Eastern belt has both iron ore and coking coal.
• North-Western belt (Aravallis of Rajasthan, part of Gujarat): it lies in Dharwar rocks and is known for non-ferrous minerals such as Khetri copper and Zawar zinc–lead. It has few ferrous minerals (iron-group minerals).
• Gondwana coal basins vs Archaean–Dharwar rocks: both are found in this belt, but they hold different things. The Gondwana troughs hold the coal. The older Archaean–Dharwar rocks hold the metal ores and mica.
• Coastal steel plants such as Visakhapatnam: they are not built on local raw materials. They use imported coking coal or ore brought in by sea.

Prelims Hooks

• Mineral–place pairs (all in this belt): Jaduguda – uranium (Jharkhand); Koderma – mica (Jharkhand); Bailadila – iron ore (Chhattisgarh); Noamundi – iron ore (Jharkhand); Talcher – coal (Odisha); Korba – coal (Chhattisgarh).
• Coal resource ranking on 1 April 2021 (GSI): Jharkhand > Odisha > Chhattisgarh [4]. But Odisha leads iron ore production (2018-19) [6].
• Odisha holds about 96% of India's chromite and about 51% of its bauxite resources (2020) [3].
• The eastern states hold about 80% of iron ore and about 100% of coking coal reserves [2].
• Steel plant–state pairs: Rourkela – Odisha; Bhilai – Chhattisgarh; Durgapur – West Bengal; Bokaro and Jamshedpur – Jharkhand.
• Trap: Kalahandi and Koraput (Odisha) are known for bauxite, not iron ore. Keonjhar and Sundargarh are known for manganese.

Mains Points

• Geology shaped industry (GS-I):
• Old Archaean–Dharwar rocks hold the metal ores, and Gondwana troughs hold the coal, both in the same region.
• This put iron ore, coking coal, limestone and manganese close together, and India's steel belt (Jamshedpur, Bokaro, Durgapur, Rourkela, Bhilai) grew around them.

• The eastern states hold about 80% of iron ore and about 100% of coking coal [2], which makes them central to the "Purvodaya" plan for an integrated steel hub in eastern India.

• The "resource curse" (GS-III):

• Odisha, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh hold most of India's coal, iron ore and bauxite [3][4].
• Yet the same states face tribal displacement, forest loss and lower human development.

• A good answer should argue for benefit-sharing with local people and for sustainable mining.

• Deposit vs mine (GS-III): a deposit becomes a working mine only if three things are right:

• the ore grade is good enough;
• the ore is easy to dig out;
• the market is near enough that transport does not eat up the profit.

The belt's success comes from meeting all three, especially nearness to steel plants. This also explains why some known deposits elsewhere stay unmined.

Related concepts

• Distribution of minerals in India
• Mangaluru-Kanpur line
• Mineral belts of India
• South-Western Plateau mineral belt
• North-Western mineral belt

Read more

• Distribution of minerals and the mineral belts