The earth lies ravaged, the man on the street is frustrated and, at least some of the perpetrators are behind bars. Even as the story develops in Bellary, Karnataka, find out how things got so bad through Paranjoy Guha Thakur's documentary, Blood And Iron

It's difficult keeping pace with the mining scam rooted in Bellary. For the first time, the country is witnessing a convergence of business, politics and crime that has wrecked havoc on an entire eco-system. When the controversy first broke, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, an independent educator, journalist and filmmaker based in Delhi, headed to Bellary to record the facts of the matter, resulting in the documentary film Blood & Iron. An interview:


A still from Blood & Iron shows the extent of damage done to the
environment there

Justice Hegde has called Bellary the Wild West and adds that miners are the law there. Was it difficult shooting the documentary in such conditions?
When we made this film in March 2010, the first rushes were shown in Bengaluru in December that year and all through this period the Gali Reddy brothers were in power, and BS Yedyurappa was the Chief Minister. But it was relatively easy to speak to people off the record. To some extent, this was because I was an outsider and parachuted myself in and out of the place. But yes, we were shooting without taking permissions. We'd never stay overnight in any one location. Importantly, we got a lot of support from locals even though they were hesitant because there were extremely powerful people intimidating them. There was no dearth of people who'd tell me, 'Don't tangle with the mining lobby, they're extremely dangerous.' But over the years one has learnt to keep important people informed about one's activities while shooting in sensitive areas. We were essentially following George Bush's policy of shoot and scoot.