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Mining sector contributes to the state in the form of state exchequer and foreign exchange, employment and physical development; however, in the other hand leaves environmental and socio-economic footprints in the societies. Therefore, it is imperative to develop mine in sustainable manner with implementing an appropriate mine closure plan early in the process of mine development throughout in all mine planning stages keeping in view of the post mine closure socio-economic need of societies and bio-diversity. In this paper, the post closure sustainable alternatives in the state of Goa were explored by transforming the mining activities into the long term prospective with improved environmental conditions even after cessation of mining activities. The criteria are selected based on the ecological, socio-economic and the cultural aspects by considering sustainability and spatial planning. The desired alternatives for post-mining land use are arrived by examining the relations between criteria and alternatives with the help of mathematical tool - Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). The results show, the support to the eco-tourism and restoration of the ecology are the priority alternatives of the post-mining land use utilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mining has been observed as a high-risk industry for a long time. Accident statistics of Indian mines still shows very high rate of injuries and fatalities. The current death rate per 1000 person employed in coal and non-coal mines is 0.27 and 0.40 respectively. The serious injury rate in the current year is also very high and unacceptable. More disturbing is the fact that a few causes are repeated for fatal, non-fatal and serious accidents. Even though all the accidents are being investigated by different agencies and recommendations are made against them in each cases but still similar accidents are repeated. Therefore question mark is automatically put against the effectiveness of present-day investigation methodology. In this paper a few recent fatal accidents in Indian mines have been reviewed and identified causes and recommendations analyzed. The review highlights certain deficiencies in the current investigation methodology of India. The aim of this study is to analyse the investigation report to identify the gaps in the current investigation procedure (i.e. where are we?) and suggest for changing the focus of investigation from human error to system deficiency i.e. where do we go from here? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]