Minerals and Energy Resources: Class 10 Geography · Chapter 5

Look around your classroom. The steel frame of your bench, the glass in the window, the cement under your feet and the copper wire inside the ceiling fan all began as rock dug out of the ground. The fan itself most probably runs on electricity made by burning coal, which was also mined. Take minerals away and very little of the modern world would be left standing.

People have depended on minerals since the Stone Age. Flint made tools, copper and bronze made pots and weapons, and gold and silver became ornaments and coins. Clay still gives us the diyas we light at Diwali. Today trains, buses, aircraft, bridges and phones are built from minerals, and fuels from the earth keep them moving. Our bodies need minerals too. This chapter asks what a mineral is and how minerals lie in the earth. It then tours India's main minerals and fuels, looks at why mining is risky, and asks how we can make these limited resources last.

5.1 What is a mineral?

In everyday speech we call anything dug out of the ground a mineral. Geologists are stricter. To them a mineral (खनिज) has three features: nature made it, it is the same all the way through, and its atoms are arranged in a fixed, repeating pattern. Quartz, calcite and hematite fit this description.

Pick up a piece of granite and look closely. You will see glassy grey grains of quartz, white or pink feldspar and shiny flakes of mica. Granite is a rock: a natural mixture of minerals. A few rocks are made almost entirely of one mineral; limestone, for instance, is mostly calcite. Thousands of minerals have been named (your textbook says over 2,000), yet most rocks are built from just a handful of common ones.

Why are minerals so different from one another? The elements that come together, and the heat and pressure at the place where they crystallise, decide which mineral forms. Carbon is the best example. Squeezed deep in the earth at very high pressure it becomes diamond, the hardest natural substance. Formed under milder conditions it becomes graphite, soft enough to leave a mark on paper in your pencil. Geologists tell minerals apart by such properties: colour, hardness, crystal shape, lustre (how the surface shines) and density.

For trade and industry, minerals are sorted into three big families (Fig. 5.1). Metallic minerals give us metals. They are split again three ways. Ferrous minerals contain iron or are used mainly with it. Non-ferrous minerals have no iron. Precious minerals, such as gold and silver, are prized for their rarity. Non-metallic minerals, like mica and limestone, are used for what they are rather than for a metal inside them. Energy minerals, such as coal, petroleum and natural gas, are burnt for power.

5.2 Mode of occurrence of minerals

Miners almost never dig up a pure mineral. What they dig is an ore (अयस्क): rock in which the useful mineral is mixed with other substances. A rich ore pays for the digging; a poor one may not. The shape of the deposit matters as well. A thin crack-filling deep underground is slow and costly to follow, while a thick, flat layer near the surface can be scooped out cheaply. That is why we sort minerals by the way they occur.

1. Veins and lodes, in igneous and metamorphic rocks. Molten or gaseous material is pushed up through cracks, joints and faults in the rock. It cools and hardens on the way up. Thin fillings are veins; thick ones are lodes. Tin, copper, zinc and lead mostly come from these.
2. Beds or layers, in sedimentary rocks. Material settles and builds up in flat layers over long periods. Coal and some iron ores became concentrated this way under heat and pressure. Gypsum, potash salt and sodium salt formed as sea or lake water evaporated, especially in dry regions.
3. Leftovers of weathering. Surface rocks break down, rain carries away the parts that dissolve, and a weathered mass rich in ore stays behind. Bauxite forms like this.
4. Placer deposits in alluvium. Some minerals collect in the sands of valley floors and at the foot of hills. They are minerals that water does not corrode, such as gold, silver, tin and platinum.
5. Ocean water and the sea floor. Sea water holds huge amounts of minerals, but most are too thinly spread to be worth extracting. Common salt, magnesium and bromine are the exceptions. Manganese nodules lie scattered over parts of the ocean bed.

5.2.1 Minerals across India

India has a wide range of minerals, but they are not spread evenly. Most of the wealth sits in the old, hard rocks of the peninsular plateau: nearly all our coal and metal ores, our mica, and a long list of other non-metallic minerals. Petroleum is different. Most of it lies in younger sedimentary rocks on the two flanks of the peninsula, chiefly in Gujarat in the west and Assam in the east. Rajasthan, whose rocks belong to the same ancient system as the peninsula, has many non-ferrous minerals. Why such differences? Minerals form only in certain rocks, through certain processes, over very long spans of time, and each region's rocks have a different history. That is also why the northern plains, built of young river silt, have almost nothing worth mining.

Finding a mineral is not enough to open a mine. Planners weigh three things: how rich the ore is, how easy it is to dig out, and how close it lies to its market. Only when a deposit passes this test is it chosen for working, and a mineral reserve becomes a mine.

5.3 Ferrous minerals

Take a mineral that contains iron, or one used mainly to make steel from iron, and you have a ferrous mineral (लौह खनिज). Steel is the most used metal in the world, so steelworks, foundries and engineering works all stand on these minerals. By value, ferrous minerals make up about three-fourths of India's output of metallic minerals (textbook figure). India also mines more iron ore than it needs and exports a share of it.

5.3.1 Iron ore

Steel goes into rails, bridges, cars, ships, pressure cookers and tiffin boxes, so iron ore is called the backbone of industrial growth. India is lucky to have large reserves of good-quality ore. Two ores matter most.

Production is concentrated in a few states. Your textbook notes that in 2018–19 almost all of it (97 %) came from Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka and Jharkhand. In 2025–26 India mined about 312 million tonnes of iron ore. Odisha alone supplied about half of it, followed by Chhattisgarh (17 %) and Karnataka (15 %) (Indian Bureau of Mines, provisional figures, March 2026).

5.3.2 Manganese

Manganese is used mostly in making steel and ferro-manganese alloy. It removes unwanted oxygen and sulphur from molten iron and makes steel tougher. Roughly 10 kg of manganese goes into every tonne of steel. Bleaching powder, insecticides and paints need it too. Your textbook's chart for 2018–19 shows Madhya Pradesh as the top producer (33 %). In 2025–26 Maharashtra led with about 32 %, ahead of Madhya Pradesh (28 %), Odisha (16 %), Karnataka (13 %) and Andhra Pradesh (12 %) (Indian Bureau of Mines, provisional).

5.4 Non-ferrous minerals

Take the iron out of the picture and you are left with the non-ferrous minerals (अलौह खनिज): copper, bauxite (for aluminium), lead, zinc and gold. Electrical goods, engineering works and metal industries cannot do without them. Yet this is where India is weakest: its reserves are limited and its output falls short of what it needs. We look at two of them.

5.4.1 Copper

Copper can be beaten into sheets (it is malleable), drawn into thin wires (it is ductile) and it carries electricity very well. That makes it the metal of electric cables, motors, electronics and chemical industries. India is critically short of copper, both in reserves and in production, so it buys much of what it uses from abroad. The leading producing areas are:

• the Balaghat mines in Madhya Pradesh (Malanjkhand)
• the Khetri mines in Rajasthan
• Singhbhum district in Jharkhand

5.4.2 Bauxite

Look at a drinks can, a pressure cooker or the power lines along a highway: all are aluminium, and nearly all of it starts as bauxite, a reddish, clay-like ore. Bauxite is a residual deposit (see Section 5.2), left behind when rocks full of aluminium silicates weather away. Factories refine it into alumina and then extract the metal (Fig. 5.4). Aluminium has a rare mix of qualities. Its alloys can be strong enough for aircraft, yet it weighs only about a third as much as iron. It also conducts electricity well and rolls and bends easily.

Most of India's bauxite lies on plateaus in central and eastern India: the Amarkantak plateau, the Maikal hills and the Bilaspur–Katni plateau region. Odisha produces the most, and its most important deposits are at Panchpatmali in Koraput district. Odisha's lead has grown: in 2025–26 it produced about 71 % of India's bauxite, followed by Gujarat (9 %) and Jharkhand (8 %) (Indian Bureau of Mines, provisional). Your textbook's figure for 2018–19 is 65 %.

5.5 Non-metallic minerals

5.5.1 Mica

Open an old electric iron or toaster and you may find thin, glassy sheets holding the heating wire in place: that is mica. Electrical engineers prize it because it does not let current pass, it can stand very high voltages without breaking down (high dielectric strength), and it wastes very little power. That makes it one of the minerals the electrical and electronics industries can least do without. Its structure is unusual too (Fig. 5.5). Mica grows in thin plates stacked like the pages of a book, and with a fingernail you can peel off flexible, see-through sheets far thinner than paper. Its sheets come in many shades, from colourless to brown, green, red, yellow and black.

India's mica is found mainly on the northern rim of the Chota Nagpur plateau. Your textbook names three producing areas:

• the Koderma–Gaya–Hazaribagh belt of Jharkhand, the textbook's leading producer
• the area around Ajmer in Rajasthan
• the Nellore mica belt of Andhra Pradesh

Since 2015 mica has been classed as a minor mineral, so the states now look after it and national production figures are no longer collected. Andhra Pradesh holds the largest share of India's known mica resources, about 41 per cent (Indian Bureau of Mines, 2020).

5.5.2 Rock minerals: limestone

Every bag of cement begins as limestone, so this rock is the basic raw material of the cement industry. Steelworks need it too: in a blast furnace it joins with the sand and clay in iron ore to form slag, which floats off and leaves cleaner iron. Chemically, limestone is calcium carbonate, sometimes mixed with magnesium carbonate. It is a sedimentary rock and is common in rock formations of almost every geological age. Your textbook's chart for 2018–19 shows Rajasthan as the largest producer.

5.6 Hazards of mining and conservation of minerals

5.6.1 Hazards of mining

Every truckload of coal or ore has a cost that someone pays (Fig. 5.6). The first to pay are the miners. Year after year they breathe in dust and harmful fumes, and many develop lung diseases such as silicosis. They also work under the threat of a tunnel roof caving in, a sudden flood or, in coal mines, a fire. The next to pay are the people who live nearby. Waste rock is piled in heaps and slurry is dumped in ponds, ruining land and soil. Wells and other water sources get contaminated, and run-off carries the pollution into streams and rivers.

5.6.2 Conservation of minerals

Think of India's minerals as a savings account. Nature adds a few paise over millions of years, while we withdraw large sums every day. Farms depend on fertilisers and machines and factories on metals and fuels, so the withdrawals keep growing. Yet workable deposits are a tiny fraction of the crust, only about 1 per cent of it, and new ones form far too slowly to matter. Within any human time-span, then, the stock is fixed: minerals are finite and non-renewable. Costs rise as we go, too: once the rich, shallow ore is gone, miners must dig deeper for poorer ore.

5.7 Energy resources

Count the ways your family used energy today. Gas or wood cooked breakfast, a bulb lit your study table, a bus or scooter brought you to school, and machines made your clothes. All of it came from fuel minerals such as coal, petroleum, natural gas and uranium, or from electricity. Energy sources are grouped into two kinds: conventional and non-conventional.

Walk into many village kitchens and you will still see a stack of firewood and a pile of dried dung cakes. Your textbook cites one estimate that these two fuels meet more than 70 per cent of the energy needs of rural homes. Both are becoming hard to rely on. With forests shrinking, firewood is scarcer every year. And every dung cake burnt is manure the fields lose, so burning dung as fuel is being discouraged.

How does India make its electricity today? On 31 August 2026 India's power stations had an installed capacity of about 555 gigawatts (GW) (Fig. 5.7). Coal and lignite plants still formed the biggest single group, about 231 GW. Yet non-fossil sources (solar, wind, hydro, nuclear and bio-power) together made up more than half of the capacity (Central Electricity Authority). Capacity is not the same as output, though. Solar panels make nothing at night, so coal still generates most of the electricity India actually uses.

5.8 Conventional sources of energy

5.8.1 Coal

Switch on a light in India and, more often than not, the electricity came from burning coal. No other fossil fuel is as plentiful in the country. Power stations burn most of it; steel plants, cement kilns and brick kilns use much of the rest, and some homes still cook with it. India's commercial energy rests heavily on coal. In 2025–26 India mined about 1,041 million tonnes of coal, slightly less than the 1,048 million tonnes of 2024–25, plus about 41 million tonnes of lignite (Ministry of Coal, provisional). In 2024–25 Odisha, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh together produced about two-thirds of the country's coal.

Coal is made from plants. In ancient swamps, dead plants were buried under layers of sediment and squeezed for millions of years. The deeper and longer the burial, and the higher the heat, the more water and gas were driven out and the richer in carbon the coal became (Fig. 5.8).

• Peat: partly decayed swamp plants. It is wet and holds little carbon, so it gives little heat.
• Lignite: brown coal, still soft and damp, so it is low-grade. Neyveli in Tamil Nadu has India's biggest lignite deposits, mined to feed power stations on the spot.
• Bituminous coal: the result of deeper burial and more heat. Most coal used commercially in India is of this kind. Its best grades, called metallurgical or coking coal, are turned into coke to smelt iron in blast furnaces.
• Anthracite: the hardest, highest-grade coal, richest in carbon; it burns hot with little smoke.

Indian coal comes from rocks of two geological ages (Table 5.4).

Coal is bulky, and much of its weight is left behind as ash when it burns. It is cheaper to build a plant beside the coal than to haul millions of tonnes of it across the country. So steel plants, other heavy industries and coal-fired power stations tend to be built on or beside the coalfields.

5.8.2 Petroleum

After coal, India's biggest energy source is petroleum, or mineral oil. Think of what leaves a refinery: petrol and diesel for vehicles, kerosene and LPG for lamps and stoves, lubricating oils for machines, and raw materials for factories. Synthetic fibres, fertilisers and countless chemicals all start from refinery products, so a refinery is called a nodal industry: many other industries grow around it. India produces far less crude oil than it uses: in 2025–26 nearly 89 per cent of the crude oil it consumed was imported (Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell).

Oil is lighter than water, so over time it creeps upward through any rock with tiny pores in it. It stops only where a layer without pores blocks the way. Such places are called traps (Fig. 5.9), and in India most of them are in rocks of the Tertiary age. The commonest is an anticline (अपनति), where the rock layers have been folded into an upward arch. Oil collects at the crest of the arch, inside a porous layer of sandstone or limestone, sealed in by non-porous rock. A fault, where layers have cracked and slipped, can also bring a porous layer up against a non-porous one and trap the oil. Within a trap, the lighter gas floats on top of the oil.

• Mumbai High, offshore in the Arabian Sea, is the largest producing area.
• Gujarat: Ankleshwar is the state's most important field.
• Assam, India's oldest oil-producing state: Digboi, Naharkatiya and Moran–Hugrijan.

5.8.3 Natural gas

Natural gas is usually found together with petroleum; it bubbles out of the crude oil as soon as the oil is pumped up. It is a clean fuel for homes and industries. Power stations burn it to make electricity, factories use it for heating, and chemical, petrochemical and fertiliser plants use it as a raw material. As city gas distribution networks spread, more vehicles run on compressed natural gas (CNG) and more kitchens get piped natural gas (PNG).

Where is it found? On the west coast, at Mumbai High and the fields around it, with more in the Cambay basin of Gujarat. On the east coast, newer finds in the Krishna–Godavari basin have added to supply.

GAIL (India) built the country's first long-distance gas pipeline, the Hazira–Vijaipur–Jagdishpur (HVJ) line, about 1,700 km long. It took gas from the offshore fields of Mumbai High and Bassein to fertiliser factories, power stations and industries across western and northern India. In doing so it gave birth to a national market for gas. Your textbook gives 18,500 km of trunk pipelines and a planned grid of over 34,000 km. By June 2026 about 28,200 km were working and about 8,300 km more were being built (Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board). The aim, often called One Nation One Gas Grid, is to link every gas source with every market, including the North-east.

5.8.4 Electricity

How much electricity does an average person use in a year? Economists treat this number as a sign of how developed a country is, because electricity touches almost every activity. India's consumption per person reached 1,460 kilowatt-hours (units) a year in 2024–25 (Ministry of Power). Power stations make it in two main ways (Fig. 5.10). In hydroelectricity, fast-flowing water spins the turbines; water is a renewable resource. In thermal power, coal, petroleum or natural gas is burnt to raise steam that spins them; these fuels are non-renewable. Whatever the source, the current that reaches your home is identical.

India has several multipurpose river projects that generate hydroelectricity, such as Bhakra Nangal on the Satluj, the Damodar Valley Corporation projects and the Kopili hydel project in Assam. You studied dams and their benefits and costs in Chapter 3, Water Resources.

5.9 Non-conventional sources of energy

Three worries push India towards new sources of energy. First, as energy use grows, the country leans harder on coal, oil and gas, and it imports most of its oil. Second, oil and gas prices keep rising and supplies could run short, which puts energy security, and with it economic growth, at risk. Third, burning fossil fuels pollutes the air and warms the climate. The answer is non-conventional energy: sunlight, wind, tides, biomass and energy from waste, which are mostly renewable. India has plenty of sun, water, wind and biomass, and it runs some of the world's largest programmes to use them. By 30 September 2026 India's installed renewable capacity, counting large hydro, was about 299 gigawatts (GW). Solar alone accounted for about 171 GW and wind for about 59 GW (Ministry of New and Renewable Energy). The national target is 500 GW of non-fossil capacity by 2030.

5.9.1 Nuclear or atomic energy

Inside a nuclear reactor, the nuclei of heavy atoms such as uranium are split. A little fuel releases a huge amount of heat, which boils water into steam for turbines, just as in a thermal plant. This is nuclear energy (परमाणु ऊर्जा). India's nuclear fuels come from its own rocks: uranium and thorium from Jharkhand and the Aravalli ranges of Rajasthan, and thorium above all from the monazite sands of the Kerala coast. In 2026 India had 24 nuclear reactors in operation, with a total capacity of 8,780 MW (Nuclear Power Corporation of India). That is still a small slice of the country's electricity.

5.9.2 Solar energy

A solar panel on a village school roof has no moving parts and burns no fuel: its photovoltaic cells turn sunlight straight into electricity. India, lying largely in the tropics, gets strong sunshine on most days of the year, so it can tap a vast amount of solar energy. Solar power is spreading fastest in villages and remote areas, where it runs irrigation pumps, lanterns and rooftop lights, and large solar parks are coming up as well. Each family that switches to solar burns less firewood and fewer dung cakes. That saves trees and keeps manure for the fields. By 30 September 2026 India had about 171 GW of solar capacity, led by Rajasthan (about 45 GW) and Gujarat (about 36 GW) (MNRE). The Bhadla Solar Park in Rajasthan, with 2,245 MW installed, is one of the country's largest. Small uses matter as much as big parks: your textbook shows a village dairy testing milk with solar-powered equipment.

5.9.3 Wind power

Strong, steady winds blow across parts of India, especially near the southern and western coasts and in the Thar desert. The biggest belt of wind farms named in your textbook runs through southern Tamil Nadu, from Nagercoil to Madurai. Other important wind farms lie in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and even the Lakshadweep islands. Nagercoil in Tamil Nadu and Jaisalmer in Rajasthan are famous examples of wind energy put to good use. Today Gujarat has overtaken Tamil Nadu: on 30 September 2026 Gujarat had about 17 GW of wind capacity and Tamil Nadu about 12 GW, out of India's 59 GW (MNRE).

5.9.4 Biogas

In a village with cattle there is never a shortage of dung, and farms produce plenty of crop waste and shrubs. Fed into a closed tank, these wastes rot without air, and bacteria give off a fuel gas, mainly methane: biogas (Fig. 5.11). Burnt in a stove, it gives more useful heat than kerosene, dung cakes or charcoal. A plant may serve a single family, a cooperative or a whole town; those that run on cattle dung are called gobar gas plants.

For a farm family the gain is double. They get clean cooking fuel, and the slurry left in the tank is a richer manure than the dung they started with. No other use of cattle dung is as efficient. Since the family no longer burns firewood or dung cakes, trees are spared and the manure goes back to the soil.

5.9.5 Tidal energy

The sea rises and falls twice a day, and a tidal power station turns that motion into electricity (Fig. 5.12). Engineers wall off a narrow inlet with a dam fitted with floodgates. As the tide comes in, the sea pours through the open gates and fills the inlet; then the gates close and hold that water back. Once the tide outside has gone down, the stored water is released towards the sea through a pipe, turning a turbine on the way. Three stretches of India's coast suit tidal energy best. Two are in Gujarat on the west coast, the Gulf of Khambhat and the Gulf of Kachchh; the third is the Gangetic delta of the Sundarbans in West Bengal. India has no commercial tidal power station yet: the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy describes ocean energy as still at the research stage and not yet economical.

5.9.6 Geothermal energy

Dig a deep well and the rock gets warmer the further down you go. In most places really hot rock lies far too deep to reach. In some, though, the temperature climbs quickly with depth (a steep geothermal gradient), so very hot rock lies close to the surface. Rainwater seeping down meets this rock and is heated, sometimes until it bursts out as hot springs or steam (Fig. 5.13). That steam can spin a turbine. Heat and electricity obtained in this way are called geothermal energy.

Hundreds of hot springs bubble up across India, from the Himalaya to the west coast, and each is a hint of usable heat. Experimental projects to tap it were set up at two places: Manikaran, in the Parvati valley of Himachal Pradesh, and the Puga valley of Ladakh. No geothermal power station runs in India yet. In July 2026 ONGC commissioned two 1,000-metre wells at Puga for what is planned as India's first 1-megawatt geothermal demonstration plant (PIB, September 2026).

5.10 Conservation of energy resources

India's energy use has climbed steadily since Independence, and it is easy to see why. Each development plan built more factories, irrigated more fields, laid more roads and railways and wired more homes, and every one of these runs on energy. Farming, industry, transport, shops and offices, and our homes all need it.

To keep growing without running out, India needs a sustainable way forward. It rests on two supports: saving energy wherever we can, and using more renewable energy. Your textbook points out that India has been among the less energy-efficient countries, so there is a lot of room to save. We can all help:

• Take a bus, the metro or a shared ride, or cycle and walk, instead of using a private vehicle for every trip.
• Switch off lights, fans and chargers when no one is using them.
• Choose power-saving appliances, such as LED bulbs and appliances with more stars on the energy label.
• Use non-conventional energy, such as a solar water heater or rooftop panels, where you can.