Understanding Sand

We started this project by simply trying to understand: what is sand, where is it used, and why would someone steal it? We began with some quick secondary research, mapped out a few broad stakeholder groups, and reached out to people we found online—just dipping our toes in the sand.

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Our Process

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What we learned

• About Sand : We found out that even though sand is everywhere, not all of it is useful. Construction needs a specific type of sand that is coarse and angular, which mostly comes from rivers, lakes, and coastal areas. Desert sand, even though it’s abundant, is too smooth to hold materials like cement together. This explained why there’s a shortage of the right kind of sand, not sand in general.
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• About the System : There are government rules about where, how, and how much sand can be mined. Permits and royalty payments are part of the legal system. But in reality, the process is often confusing and slow. Because of this, many people choose to mine and sell sand informally. We came across the word “royalty” often, used by truck drivers and vendors, and realized it was key to understanding how sand flows through the system—both legally and informally.
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• About People : Talking to people on the ground gave us a wide mix of experiences. Some shopkeepers were cautious and didn’t trust us right away. One even asked if we were really students and refused to share his name. On the other hand, places like Narmada Sands were welcoming, thoughtful, and explained their process in detail. They even had a system to return unused sand and took steps to reduce ecological damage. These interactions showed us how different people relate to sand based on their roles and values.

Our research process was mostly exploratory. While online searches gave us starting points, many locations were inaccurate or outdated. Talking to people on the ground often led to more reliable leads. Even when visits didn’t result in clear answers, they helped us understand how information about sand is scattered and often informal. We collected sand samples throughout our fieldwork, which helped us compare and document different sources. Overall, the process required flexibility, observation, and a willingness to follow wherever the trail led.

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Unpacking Sand Mining Process

Getting leads throughout the process was quite challenging. Fortunately, our faculty mentor, Naim, connected us to the Commissioner of Geology, which opened up one valuable avenue. At the same time, Varun and Yatin had spoken to some tractor operators earlier, who shared a location where sand was being informally collected. So we had two promising leads to follow. While the overall process was scattered and unpredictable, for the sake of clarity, we’ve presented everything here in a more structured and linear way.

You can see the process in chronological order here: https://www.tumblr.com/sagasofsand

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Our Process

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Mining Operation

1. Land Allocation and Licensing

In Gujarat, as in most Indian states, sand mining is governed by a structured legal process under the state’s Geology and Mining Department. The government identifies extractable sand deposits and divides them into designated parcels of land. These parcels are then auctioned digitally through an e-auction system, where licensed contractors bid for mining rights. Successful bidders are granted a lease agreement which permits them to extract a specific quantity of sand over a fixed period, usually under strict environmental and operational guidelines.

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2. Revenue, Royalties, and Tracking

Once contractors are issued a lease, they are required to pay royalties to the state government for every tonne of sand extracted. This royalty is not a flat amount—it fluctuates based on the location, quality of sand, and prevailing market rates. To maintain oversight, each load of sand being transported must be accompanied by a digital e-challan that includes information such as the source, destination, quantity, and registered vehicle number.

These details are logged and monitored through a Vehicle Tracking System (VTS). Trucks and tractors carrying sand must be registered under this system, and any vehicle found without an active e-challan or VTS tag is treated as a violator. During your visit to the District Mineral Foundation (DMF) office in Gandhinagar, officials demonstrated how these tools are used to enforce compliance. The DMF also oversees how a portion of the royalty revenue is reinvested into local development projects such as healthcare, infrastructure, and education in mining-affected areas. These were shown to you via dashboards, receipts, and process charts.

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3. Mining Operations on the Ground (Formal)

A scheduled visit to a formally recognized sand mine, arranged through the DMF office, gave our team direct insight into how sand extraction happens on the ground. The mining site was equipped with basic infrastructure and followed a multi-step operational process.

First, extraction was carried out using excavators and loading machinery. The raw sand was then moved to a filtration setup, where it was washed, sieved, and graded. This grading process separates fine particles from construction-grade aggregates. The filtered sand was stored in holding pits before being loaded into trucks, each carrying a corresponding e-challan for legal transport.

This site represented the most structured and compliant end of the sand supply chain. It was closely tied to state systems and functioned within the boundaries of the law, providing insight into what a properly regulated mining operation is designed to look like. That said, field staff noted challenges in ensuring all subcontractors maintain compliance—especially when transporting sand over long distances to remote construction sites.

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4. Informal and Semi-Formal Mining

In contrast to the formal site, your team also encountered more ambiguous setups during unscheduled visits guided by local leads. In one case, you observed tractor drivers collecting sand independently from a riverbed near Sabarmati. These operators claimed to have individual permits, but were not affiliated with any registered contractor. Instead, they directly sold sand to buyers in the city—often without filtration, receipts, or digital records.

The process was visibly simpler: sand was scooped, manually or with basic tools, loaded into tractors, and driven off without weighing or washing. These operators were part of a semi-formal economy—technically authorized but operating outside the monitoring systems that apply to formal contractors.

You noted that this type of practice often fills local supply gaps, particularly for small-scale construction or informal markets. While not illegal by definition, this approach bypasses systems of quality control, royalty collection, and sustainability enforcement, making it difficult for regulators to track the true volume of sand being extracted and sold.

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5. Illegal Sand Mining: What Slips Through the Cracks

Illegal sand mining is defined as any extraction activity that takes place without a valid lease, outside approved zones, or in excess of the permitted limit. It also includes transport of sand without an e-challan, use of unregistered vehicles, or nighttime extraction in ecologically sensitive areas.

Though your fieldwork in Gujarat did not uncover overt examples of such activity, vendors and officials made conflicting claims. While some insisted that “illegal mining doesn’t happen here,” the presence of unregulated operations suggests that illegality may not always be violent or hidden—it may simply blend into informal local practices.

Nationally, illegal mining has been linked to more severe consequences—riverbank erosion, infrastructure collapse, loss of biodiversity, and violent confrontations. In certain Indian states, sand mafias have gained notoriety for using coercion and bribery to operate unchecked. While Gujarat may not exhibit the same high-profile cases, your findings suggest that regulatory grey zones and weak enforcement create space for sand to be extracted outside the legal framework.

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Framing the Objective

After completing most of our primary and secondary research, we began to synthesize our findings by framing ‘How Might We’ (HMW) questions. This helped us translate complex insights into opportunity areas for intervention. We grouped these questions under broad categories based on the type of impact they aimed to create—Awareness, Assessment, Sustainability, Alternatives, Systems, Environment, Speculation, and Potential Directions.

For example, the question “How might we demystify sand?” led us to think beyond technical explanations and explore more accessible, visual ways to communicate what sand is, how it’s used, and why it matters—eventually sparking ideas like interactive games, workshop kits, and public engagement tools. Each category opened up similar paths, helping us move from problems to possibilities.

Awareness

• How might we make people aware of depleting resources like sand?
• How might we demystify what sand is and where it’s used?
• How might we improve the current education system with respect to sand as a resource?
• How might we make people aware of lesser-known alternatives to sand?

Assessment

• How might we enable easy, qualitative assessment of sand for different uses?
• How might we encourage people to view land not just as property, but as part of an ecological system?
• How might we address overmining and the current sand shortage—especially where mining has reached degraded sources like sewage beds?

Sustainability

• How might we ensure sustainable consumption of sand?
• How might we balance the use of natural resources without harming interconnected systems?
• How might we reverse man-made erosion?
• How might we increase the natural replenishment of sand?
• How might we respond to the construction industry’s dependence on sand?
• How might we extend the lifetime of buildings to reduce frequent material demand?

Alternatives and Methods

• How might we reduce the use of sand in critical processes?
• How might we acquire sand differently—without direct mining?
• How might we reuse or revalue sand/soil/mud that is currently considered waste?
• How might we modify cement so it can bind with other materials like silt or gravel?

Systemic Issues

• How might we stop illegal sand mining effectively?
• How might we digitize and streamline the process of acquiring sand legally?
• How might we improve the working conditions of miners?
• How might we increase the efficiency of sand transportation?
• How might we address the social and economic conditions that lead to the formation of sand mafias?
• How might we create a system that rewards need-based consumption rather than over-consumption?

Environment

• How might we better understand and address the ecological imbalance caused by sand mining?
• How might we mitigate the consequences of river mining on aquatic ecosystems?
• How might we assess the long-term environmental damage of sand over-extraction?

Speculative Futures

• What will happen in the future when there is no usable sand left?
  (This question helped us open up speculative design ideas around scarcity, substitution, and lifestyle shifts.)

Potential Directions We Explored

• Construction industry practices and supply chains
• Glass industry dependencies
• Use of sand in electronics and tech
• Extraction and processing systems across different industries
• Global parallels—how other countries are responding to the sand crisis
  
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After framing these questions, we began identifying any missing pieces in our research. We made a detailed list of topics where we needed more clarity or data, and reached out to experts, vendors, or practitioners in those areas. In cases where we couldn’t establish contact or find direct sources, we turned to secondary research—looking through academic papers, news reports, and government guidelines to fill in the gaps.

This part of the process helped us ground our design directions in real-world systems, while also giving us the freedom to explore both micro-level interventions and macro-level speculations.

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Looking at Different Perspectives

After understanding the mining process and framing our objectives through How Might We questions, we continued reaching out to people across industries. These conversations helped us test our early assumptions, explore potential solutions, and gather new perspectives—sometimes on very specific topics, and sometimes on the broader picture.

Our goal was to engage at both the micro and macro levels—understanding how sand functions in individual practices, institutional systems, and industrial scales. These discussions often led us to ideas we hadn’t considered before and helped shape our direction. Wherever needed, we followed up with additional secondary research to fill in the gaps and back up what we heard.

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Ceramics and Alternative Material Thinking

Swagata Naidu

• Shared insights on how materials are often undervalued and treated only as utility.
• Emphasized that material choice in design should go beyond performance and consider origin, energy use, and afterlife.
• Sand can be viewed as “design residue”—what we discard and overlook, rather than what we actively shape.

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Shashank Nimkar

• Focused on embodied energy in materials and how ceramics often reveal hidden ecological costs.
• Encouraged thinking in terms of material circularity and understanding waste as a starting point for innovation.
• Sparked discussions around “what happens when sand is not considered disposable?”

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Construction Industry Dynamics

Pankaj Bansal (Pahal)

• Talked about how sand demand fluctuates with urban growth, especially in Tier 1 and 2 cities.
• Stressed the limitations of government monitoring systems and highlighted the trust gap in procurement.

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Vivek Sinha (CEPT)

• Highlighted how construction practices often don’t reflect sustainability concerns due to site pressures and timelines.
• Emphasized that architects are often disconnected from sourcing, which is usually driven by cost, not impact.

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Bhargav Tewar (CEPT, Planning)

• Shared how sand is viewed as a low-visibility material in urban development and policy.
• Pointed to a need for integrating sand into land-use planning and zoning systems.

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Ashish Garg (Contractor/Practitioner)

• Provided a contractor’s view: timelines and costs override ethical sourcing.
• Confirmed that most builders don’t know—or don’t care—where their sand comes from as long as it arrives on time.

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Alternate Construction Methods

Dr. Shailesh Kr. Agrawal (Building Materials and Technology Promotion Council)

• Spoke about alternatives to sand-intensive construction—like compressed stabilized earth blocks, modular housing, and fly ash composites.
• Discussed institutional resistance to alternative methods: lack of incentives, outdated codes, and risk aversion in the building sector.
• Highlighted gaps in training and awareness among engineers and developers that hinder adoption.

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Ecological and Policy View

Dr. Mansee Bal Bhargava (Environmentalist + Urban Ecologist)

• Though not initially listed in the thematic groupings, Mansee gave important ecological and systems-level insights.
• She critiqued river mining practices and questioned how we normalize resource exploitation under the banner of development.
• Encouraged us to ask deeper ethical and ecological questions—"Not just where the sand comes from, but why we think we need so much of it."
• Helped us reflect on whether our solutions were simply making sand more efficient, or truly questioning its necessity.

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Infrastructure and Scale

Sumanth Nuthigattu (DCI – Dredging Corporation of India)

• Offered insights on marine dredging and how sand can be collected as a by-product.
• Shared technical limitations and environmental regulations that govern how dredged material is repurposed.
• Stressed how marine sand isn’t always suitable for construction without treatment.

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Ravishankar Srinivasan (Wind Turbines)

• Explained how infrastructure projects (like wind farms) have large-scale sand needs.
• Shared trade-offs between sourcing from riverbeds vs. coastal zones, depending on project location.
• Highlighted how sand shortages sometimes delay projects or require long-distance transportation, raising emissions.

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Filling in the Gaps

Based on the insights we gathered from expert conversations—and further guidance from Praveen and Sahil—we found ourselves with a wide range of topics to explore. There were a lot of directions to consider, so we divided the research areas among ourselves to make it manageable. Each of us focused on different themes, and at the end of each day, we came together to share what we had learned, discuss overlaps, and refine our understanding collectively.

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Global Parallels in Resource Exploitation

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Understanding Embodied Energy and Material Impact

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Alternative Construction Methods: A Catalogue

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Systems Thinking: Construction, Recycling, and Infrastructure

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Tech and Sand

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Cultural and Vernacular Architecture

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Making the Gigamap

After weeks of field visits, expert interviews, and research deep-dives, our findings were sprawling and multi-layered. To make sense of it all, we created a systems map, or what we called our “Gigamap.”

This visual tool helped us connect the dots between actors, policies, materials, behaviors, and environmental consequences. We began mapping everything from sand’s journey across the legal and illegal spectrum, to how demand flows through construction practices, to what alternative systems could look like.

By laying it all out, we uncovered relationships that weren’t immediately obvious—like how procurement behavior influences illegal mining, or how material perceptions feed into unsustainable choices. The Gigamap became a live document of our learnings, with constant revisions and stickies being added as new insights emerged.

The Gigamap is the visual centerpiece of our project—an illustrated systems map that brings together all our insights, actors, and connections into one coherent (yet complex) landscape. But it’s not just a flowchart. Our gigamap is designed like a medieval card game, combining metaphor, logic, and visual storytelling to help viewers navigate the murky, multi-layered world of sand.

The map is divided into four main sections, and we recommend reading them in order to fully understand the journey:

1. Introduction
2. Actor cards
3. Main map
4. Institutional structure

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Introduction: Setting the Context

This section gives a short overview of the project, its premise, and what you're about to witness.
There’s also a “How to Read the Map” guide—which you’re reading now. You can skip it if you're familiar with systems maps, but we suggest going through it to understand the map’s logic, metaphors, and visual language.

Think of this as your rulebook before entering the game.

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Actor Cards: Who’s in the System?

The sand ecosystem involves a dizzying number of stakeholders, materials, and invisible processes. To simplify this, we designed illustrated actor cards—each one represents a person, process, or material in the sand economy.

Each card includes:

• A visual illustration
• A one-line description
• Color-coding for category:
  • 🔵 Blue for Stakeholders
  • 🟤 Brown for Processes
  • ⚪ White for Materials
• Icons to denote subgroups (e.g., government, local transporters, industrial consumers)

These cards act like characters in a board game—each with its own motives, role, and influence. They’re not static; many reappear in the main map to show how they move through the system.

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The Main Map: The Sand System as a Medieval Journey

Here’s where everything comes together. The main gigamap is designed like a fantasy board game, set in a medieval-inspired visual world. This was intentional: we wanted the viewer to feel like they were traversing through the sand system—from the mountains to the market, encountering all the players along the way.

The flow is roughly chronological:

1. Formation of sand – from geological processes in the mountains to sediment settling in rivers.
2. Extraction – formal, informal, and illegal actors take different paths to mine sand.
3. Processing and Transport – some sand gets filtered and quality-checked; others bypass this.
4. Distribution – sand reaches the market and flows into industries, especially construction.
5. Impacts and Alternatives – we showcase the environmental cost, and then shift into global alternatives and sustainable solutions.

The three main stakeholder paths are shown using colored dots, each following a different logic:

• 🟢 Truckers: Royalty paid → Sand processed → Legal documents → Market
• 🟠 Tractors: Royalty paid → No processing → Market
• 🔴 Illegal Mafias: No royalty → No processing → Market

At the top of the map, the Government and Policy Layer oversees the system—often removed from ground realities.

The construction sector is the main lens through which we explore sand consumption. This is where the system branches out into builders, contractors, designers—and ultimately, the impact on the planet.

The aesthetic of the map—resembling a board game or trading card arena—was deliberate. It hints at the gamification of natural resources, where power, profit, and access often determine how the “game” is played, regardless of fairness or sustainability.

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Institutional Structure

This final section focuses on the institutional structure behind sand mining in Gujarat—especially the flow of permissions, royalties, and regulation. To make this legible, we created two detailed sub-maps: one for the royalty slip and transport system, and another for the governmental structure and oversight bodies.

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Behind the Scenes: Making the Map

• The map was created iteratively: built from field data, secondary research, and stakeholder conversations.
• Every card and connection was debated, clustered, and refined before visual translation.
• We tested the layout with peers to ensure it was navigable, not overwhelming.
• The visual style was meant to balance whimsy with seriousness—symbolic, yet grounded in real-world systems.

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Figuring Out Solutions

After completing most of our primary and secondary research, we began synthesizing insights using sticky notes—highlighting key themes, contradictions, and gaps. With research boards surrounding us from all sides, we began ideating. Each session was time-bound, followed by open discussions to build on each other’s thoughts. Over time, we generated over 60 concepts.

To prioritize and organize these ideas, we plotted them on a 2x2 quadrant map based on impact vs. time required for execution (both in terms of personal feasibility and real-world scalability). This helped us identify high-impact, actionable concepts and cluster similar ones for intervention.

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Workshops

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Design Proposals & Interventions

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Policy

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