India: natural resources and their use in the economy

Natural resources are the basis for the economic development of any territory. They include water, land, forest, recreational, mineral components. All that is rich in India.

Peace-loving country

India is a country with an ancient culture. On the territory of the present state, there were various civilizations from the third millennium BC. But, that is characteristic, all of them were peace-loving. India developed not at the expense of external expansion, but at the expense of conquering the invaders with its high culture, which it was famous for a long time. The country was the source of many world geographical discoveries. The natural conditions and resources of India attracted other peoples here. The Europeans aspired to reach it both by land and sea routes.

What, besides finding these very ways, led to the discovery of the New World. India's wealth attracted invaders. At first Alexander the Great strove to expand his empire to the Indian Ocean at any cost. Then the same desires were with the Romans, the Chinese, the Mongols, the Persians, the Ottomans, the English. The Indians allowed themselves to be captured, and then assimilated their invaders. If we describe India's natural resources in short, we can say that they allow the country to practically not need imports, while exporting a lot. And in ancient times, and in the present.

Waters of India

The most famous river of the country - Indus - gave the name to the whole state - India. Natural resources of the water component besides it include the largest rivers of not only the country, but the whole of Eurasia. This is the Ganges, the Brahmaputra and their numerous tributaries. They serve as the main for artificial irrigation of agricultural land. And in India almost 60 percent of the lands are irrigated. There are practically no lakes in the country, groundwater is used faster than their replenishment by melting glaciers or sediments. At the same time, the feeding of rivers is mostly rain, which negatively affects the management of agriculture. In droughty times, the rivers are diminishing, and during the rainy season often come out of the banks, which often leads to the flooding of fields.

Land resources

If we evaluate the natural conditions and resources of India, it should be noted that, despite the existence of huge megacities in the country, it is mostly agricultural. With pronounced crop cultivation. Features of climate allow you to get two or even three crops a year. But the presence of high population density, intensive use of mineral fertilizers led to the fact that the land of India does not have high productivity.

Nearly forty percent of the territory is used for crops, which led the country to the fourth place in the world in terms of agricultural production. India is the world leader in the production of tea, pineapples and bananas. It takes second place in rice harvest, third place - tobacco, fourth - wheat and cotton. In addition, a special place in local agriculture is the production of spices - black pepper, cardamom and cloves, thanks to which many European merchants were enriched. The country has the largest number of cattle - up to fifteen percent of the world's number. In this case, the cow is a sacred animal and is used not for meat production, but as draft power.

The land allocated for pasture is very small - no more than five percent. In India, poultry farming, pig breeding, and small-livestock breeding are developed. River and sea fishing. The country is the largest producer of cotton fabric - more than twenty percent of the world's volume.

Forest tracts

Forest areas occupy more than twenty percent of the territory of a state such as India. Natural resources of this type in the country are actually scarce. After all, most of the forests are tropical and monsoon, not suitable for economic needs, and felling in the Himalayas is prohibited. But some wood derivatives, for example shellac and plywood, are harvested exclusively for export purposes. Given that the forests provide Indians with not only wood, but also a source of rosin, resin, reed, bamboo, fodder, the forest, along with agriculture, is the breadwinner of people. And wood components are used in many medical products.

Recreational components

One can not ignore the diversity of climatic conditions and cultural values that India represents. The natural resources of the recreational type of the ancient state are represented primarily by the historical and cultural direction - all sorts of numerous monuments from different eras, from the world famous Taj Mahal.

The ecological direction of these natural resources is represented by national parks and exotic natural landscapes. Rest in the most famous for its beaches the place of India - on Goa - has already become a household name. Despite the absence of the highest world peak in the country - the Chomolungma, ski and mountaineering directions are developing in the country by leaps and bounds.

Brief description of mineral resources

A feature of the country is the presence on its territory of reliefs of all types: the highest world mountain range - the Himalayas, the plateau of the Dean and the Indo-Gangetic plain. This served as the basis for the fact that the minerals of India are numerous and varied. The main place of occurrence of ore rocks is the north-east of the country, where there are deposits of aluminum, titanium and iron ores, deposits of manganese, rare metals. Coalfields of the northeast, though they have a low quality of raw materials, are used as much as possible. The south of the country is rich in bauxite, gold, chromite and brown coal, the central part of the country - with coal and black metals. The coastal strip is endowed with reserves of monazite sands containing uranium ores. At the same time, the mining industry is focused on the domestic market, while the extraction of iron ore, bauxite, mica and manganese is intended for export to other countries. The presence in India of deposits of precious metals - primarily gold and silver - made this state the world leader in the production of jewelry products.

Ore Minerals

The Indian platform has become the basis of a separate metallogenic area, which contains entire basins and more than one ore deposit - iron, manganese, chrome. First of all, this concerns the explored reserves of iron ore, which number twelve billion tons. Production is at such a high pace that Indian metallurgy, although it occupies the tenth place in the world in terms of production, but does not cope with processing the entire amount.

Therefore, more than half of the iron ore is not processed in the country, but is exported abroad. The content of useful components in manganese ores and chromites mined in the central part of the country is just as high as in iron ore . Here one should add the presence of large bauxite deposits with estimated reserves of more than three billion tons. In addition, there are deposits of polymetallic ores with a high content of zinc, lead and copper and associated precious metals.

Nuclear power

Separately, we should highlight valuable deposits of ore resources contained in the coastal strip around the entire Hindustan peninsula. Monazite deposits contain radioactive thorium and uranium ores. Their active development enabled India to be included in the list of world nuclear powers. In addition to radioactive elements, monazite sands contain titanium and zirconium.

Coal mining

The main non-metallic mineral extracted from the earth's interior is coal for India. Brown coal in total production occupies an insignificant volume - less than three percent, the main emphasis is on stone. Its deposits are located mainly in the northeast of India. According to the explored reserves, the country occupies only the seventh place in the world - about eighty billion tons. But in terms of the extraction of this fossil, India holds the palm tree with more than seven percent of the world's prey.

The main uses of coal are fuel (more than eighty percent of India's electricity is generated by thermal power plants) and raw materials (in metallurgy). Brown coal is used exclusively for energy purposes.

Oil production

Until the mid-fifties of the last century, India's mineral wealth, rich in hydrocarbons, was extracted only in the extreme north-eastern lands of Assam. But with the rapid development of oil fields around the world, new oil-rich fields were discovered in Gujorat and on the shelves in the Arabian Sea, one hundred and twenty kilometers north of Mumbai. The extraction of black gold began to develop at a high rate. Now India produces more than forty million tons a year, which is about one percent of the world's production. The reserves of this product are estimated at more than eight hundred million tons, and according to this indicator the country occupies the twenty-second place in the world. It is clear that for domestic needs this is not enough, and oil is one of the import priorities.

Diamonds

What else is rich in India? Natural resources of non-metallic type, except for the coal and oil noted above, are graphite, muscovite and, of course, diamonds. For more than two millennia the country remained practically the only source of diamonds in the world. But the gradual colonization of various parts of the world map by Europeans led to the fact that India lost not what unique in this matter. Already by the eighteenth century it turned out that the sources of diamonds in the country are depleted, and the world championship in the extraction of precious stones turned out to be behind Brazil.

But the South American state did not hold the palm tree for long. Currently, the largest amount of diamonds is mined in South Africa's Botswana, South Africa and Angola, as well as in Russia and Canada. But almost all known world diamonds, which have their own names, are of their origin from Indian mines.

alternative energy

An assessment of India's natural resources makes it possible to note that the country uses existing reserves to the maximum, but it does not stop there. The state is one of the world leaders in the use of alternative energy sources. India is on the fifth place in the world in terms of wind energy production. This source occupies more than eight percent of the total capacity of the country's energy.

And the potential for using solar energy exceeds six hundred terawatts. It is the only world power in which there is an appropriate ministry. Its activities are aimed at the development of renewable (sun, wind, tides) and other alternative energy sources.