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UPSC 2019 GS-III · 10 marks · 150 words

Coastal sand mining, whether legal or illegal, poses one of the biggest threats to our environment. Analyse the impact of sand mining along the Indian coasts, citing specific examples.

What “Analyse” demands

break the issue into its constituent parts and show the relationships and causation between them.

The characteristic failure: narration in sequence rather than decomposition into causes and effects.

What a top answer must contain

These are the checkable specifics from the marking standard for this question — the actual case, committee, datum or thinker, not an instruction to “give examples”.

  • Physical impacts: beach lowering, accelerated erosion, saltwater intrusion into coastal aquifers, loss of natural storm buffers
  • Ecological: turtle nesting sites (Odisha's Rushikulya and Gahirmatha), destruction of placer-rich dune systems, benthic habitat loss
  • Named examples: Kerala's Alappuzha-Kollam coast, Tamil Nadu's Tuticorin-Kanyakumari beach mineral sands, Maharashtra's Ratnagiri
  • Regulatory frame: CRZ Notification 2019, Sustainable Sand Mining Guidelines 2016 and Enforcement Guidelines 2020, MoEFCC district survey reports
  • Governance failure: illegal mining economics, weak district monitoring, satellite-based monitoring as the proposed fix

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