Part 1 was the diagnosis — India awards mines but struggles to open them. Delay, concentration, opacity. Not isolated failures, but symptoms of something deeper: a design gap.
Part 2 explores two models proven at scale.
- Texas model: private mineral rights + deep leasing markets (property-first).
- Australia model: Crown owns minerals + clean tenement system + transparent mapping (state-owns, but clarity-first).
Both models work. They work for different reasons. India can copy either, but the implementation details matter more than ideology.
Model 1: Texas — private mineral rights and why it works
The Texas core: minerals are property, not a permission slip
Texas treats mineral rights like any other property — you can buy, sell, or lease them. And here's the key part: the mineral owner gets priority. They can use the surface if it's reasonably necessary to extract what's underneath. (Railroad Commission of Texas)
This might sound one-sided, but there's a check. Courts have developed something called the Accommodation Doctrine — if the mineral developer has other reasonable options, they can't just bulldoze the surface owner's interests. (Texas Real Estate Research Center)
So Texas has strong rights, predictable leasing, and legal doctrines that reduce “infinite negotiation.”
The Texas outcome: scale
Texas accounted for 43% of U.S. crude oil production and 28% of U.S. natural gas gross withdrawals in 2024. (EIA)
This doesn’t prove “private mineral rights alone caused it.”
But it proves the system can support extreme output scale when the rights layer is clean.
Texas narrative (how it feels to a citizen)
A rancher in Texas might “own the minerals.” He leases them. He gets:
- an upfront lease bonus,
- and ongoing royalty checks tied to production.
When locals share upside automatically, development becomes less of a “state vs citizen” war and more of a price-and-safeguards negotiation.
If India implemented the Texas model: what it would actually look like
Here’s the India version that doesn’t collapse under India’s realities.
Step 1: Create a mineral-rights title layer (separate from surface)
Every parcel in notified mineral zones gets two registries:
- Surface Title
- Mineral Title (can be owned separately)
This alone forces the country to confront sub-surface ambiguity directly.
Step 2: Default pooling (unitization) so fragmentation doesn’t paralyse production
India’s surface ownership is fragmented. If you adopt pure Texas without pooling, you get holdouts, extortion, and litigation.
So India’s version must do what high-functioning jurisdictions do in practice: pool rights at a block level once a threshold is met, so reservoirs/deposits can be developed rationally.
Step 3: Standard Surface Access Code (reduce negotiation corruption)
The most important “anti-corruption” move is to reduce discretionary bargaining.
Codify:
- notice periods,
- compensation formulas,
- rehabilitation escrow,
- damage schedules,
- and fast dispute resolution.
When everything runs on formulas, there's no margin left for delay to be monetised.
Step 4: Environmental bonds + escrow (pay before you dig)
Don’t let enforcement be “later.”
Restoration costs, damage liabilities — collect them as escrow before work begins.
Step 5: Financing and insurance layers (make it underwritable)
Once rights are legible, finance arrives. Title insurance becomes possible. Banks lend faster because risk is priceable.
Texas-in-India: the trade-offs (no sugarcoating)
Pros
- Maximum incentive alignment
- Fast private coordination
- Huge exploration encouragement
Risks
- Title ambiguity becomes explosive if you don’t fix registry quality
- Fragmentation causes holdout games without pooling rules
- If the Surface Access Code is weak, coercion risk increases
The Texas model is powerful—but in India it must be Texas + pooling + codified safeguards, not Texas raw.
Model 2: Australia — Crown minerals and why it works
The Australia core: the State owns minerals, but rights are clean and transparent
Australia largely runs the opposite doctrine: minerals are typically owned by the Crown, even under freehold land, and companies obtain exploration/mining rights via statutory regimes.
Australia works not because “government controls resources,” but because the government is unusually good at the tenure and information layer. Transparency doesn't just reduce uncertainty — it collapses it.
The Australia outcome: resource export scale
Australia’s Resources and Energy Quarterly notes exports of $385 billion in 2024–25 (forecasts to be relatively flat in 2025–26). (Industry.gov.au)
Again: not “Crown ownership caused exports.”
But it’s evidence that Crown ownership is compatible with immense output if the rights-and-approvals machinery is clean.
Australia narrative (how it feels to a landowner)
An Australian farmer with freehold land doesn’t automatically own the minerals, but they can see:
- which tenements exist,
- what’s applied for,
- what’s granted,
- and what the conditions are.
The system is legible enough that conflict is more about:
- compensation,
- access timing,
- and safeguards—less about “what is even happening.”
If India implemented the Australia model: what it would actually look like
Step 1: A national mineral tenure map, parcel-linked
India needs a single view that merges:
- cadastral parcel boundaries,
- tenements/leases/licenses,
- forest/environment layers,
- native/tribal protections,
- status + timelines.
Australia’s tools show what that can look like. (business.qld.gov.au)
Step 2: Timelines that are real, enforceable, and publicly visible
India is already moving toward intermediate milestone timelines to speed operationalisation. (Digital Sansad)
Under an Australia-like model, those milestones become not just rules, but a live dashboard with accountability.
Step 3: Local benefits must be automatic (India must improve here)
Crown ownership doesn’t automatically create legitimacy. If locals only get disruption and the state gets royalties, resistance stays rational.
So India-Australia must include:
- predictable payouts to affected surface owners/communities,
- and transparent local development spending.
Step 4: Break concentration by design
If tenements keep concentrating, you’ve built a clean map of an oligopoly.
So India-Australia needs explicit competition architecture:
- caps on hoarding,
- strict “use it or lose it,”
- and penalties for squatting blocks.
(India is already signalling anti-squatting intent through timeline tightening. (Press Information Bureau))
Our stance: India should copy Australia’s clarity and Texas’s incentives—and stop pretending allocation equals output
If you force a binary choice, both models can work.
But India’s bottleneck is not ideology. It’s conversion speed + legitimacy + competition.
So the best India stance is:
Build Australia-grade tenure transparency, then introduce Texas-grade local cashflow rights
- Australia-grade: national map, clean registry, enforceable timelines, public status tools. (business.qld.gov.au)
- Texas-grade: the people who bear the disruption must have a legally guaranteed economic upside (royalty-like cashflows), not just discretionary compensation.
This also directly attacks corruption surfaces:
- transparency collapses discretion,
- formula-driven payouts collapse negotiation theatre,
- and “use it or lose it” collapses squatting.
The economic upside for India (disciplined numbers, not propaganda)
Here’s the honest way to quantify impact without making up fairy-tale GDP numbers.
India's mining & quarrying sector GVA stands at about ₹5.41 lakh crore — around 2% of total GVA. (Ministry of Mines Government of India)
The upside comes from:
- faster operationalisation (more blocks producing),
- less leakage/illegal mining,
- more exploration and investment,
- and cheaper inputs for steel/cement/power.
If the reforms (registry + transparency + incentives) lift mining/quarrying value-add by:
- +10% ⇒ ~₹52,500 crore/year
- +20% ⇒ ~₹1.05 lakh crore/year
- +30% ⇒ ~₹1.58 lakh crore/year
That’s just direct value-add.
The second-order gains are often bigger:
- fewer supply shocks like the iron ore import spike tied partly to auctioned-mine delays, (Reuters)
- more downstream investment because supply is reliable,
- and lower cost of capital because rights are underwritable.
In plain terms: the country stops paying the delay tax.
What “doing it” looks like: a concrete India blueprint (regardless of which doctrine you pick)
If India wants this to stop being a seminar topic and become an economic machine, it needs five non-negotiables:
- Subsurface rights card for every parcel in mineral zones
- One click: who owns minerals, what rights exist, current status, restrictions.
- Unitization/pooling rules
- So fragmentation doesn’t block development and holdouts don’t become the business model.
- Standard Surface Access Code + mandatory escrows
- Pay for damage and rehab before you dig. Reduce negotiation discretion.
- Enforceable timelines with public dashboards
- India is already moving in this direction; it needs execution-grade transparency. (Digital Sansad)
- Competition architecture
- Concentration must be monitored and constrained; otherwise “reform” becomes “cleaner oligopoly.” (Competition Commission of India)
Closing: the underground question is an ownership question
Surface rights are how people experience property. Mineral rights are how nations convert geology into GDP.
Texas shows what happens when mineral rights are treated as property and upside is aligned. (Railroad Commission of Texas)
Australia shows what happens when the Crown owns minerals but the tenure and information layer is clean and searchable. (Industry.gov.au)
India’s current system—despite auctions—still shows the operationalisation gap, concentration dynamics, and the predictable negative externalities of opacity. (Digital Sansad)
So yes: this is impactful. It’s been recognized. It’s being worked on. But the missing piece is the same as always in India’s “big infra” stories:
Stop optimizing for allocation. Start optimizing for conversion.
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