Ferrous minerals contain iron, like the hematite they rip from our Bellary hills; non-ferrous do not, like the bauxite they also covet. The four major iron ore belts here are in Odisha-Jharkhand, Durg-Bastar, Bellary-Chitradurga-Chikkamagaluru-Tumakuru, and Maharashtra-Goa. But maps naming belts mean nothing when the red dust from the mines coats our mango trees and the groundwater turns bitter. I know this because my father’s farmland is now a cracked, barren pit at the edge of the Bellary belt, a testament to what this "ore" truly takes.
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