Millions of Indians have gazed in horror at videos showing 24 cheerful engineering students wading in a tranquil stretch of the Beas River in Himachal Pradesh last month and then being swept to their deaths as the waters around them surged. The water was released from a dam upstream, apparently to deposit sand on the riverbed for easy mining. That release, and the drownings it caused, have been attributed to the “sand mafia,” a nexus of corrupt officials and the sand miners they let loot a basically free natural resource. An essential ingredient in cement, sand has seen its value soar along with the fortunes of India’s equally corrupt construction industry.
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