Natural resources : bane or boon?

Oh what a blessing it is by the nature for the places which are awarded by the nature with any form of natural resource. It is the result of the million years of the tectonic movements and activities on the earth which leads to development of these natural resources in the form of fossils or in the form of ores and minerals which can be used as a fuel to fuel our economy ,energy sources, vehicles and tell not what? It was the quest for these mineral resources only which set the navigation of Europeans to search for new world and they discovered countries like Argentina,  and Peru which was full of silver (whose Latin name is itself derived from Argentum, from Argentina). These natural resources only propogated the pace of industrial revolution in European countries, which made their new discovered countries as their colonies for providing these natural resources.

But it is not only the natural resources which are important but its also their management and how you exploit it, for example take the example of Spain. Spain was the earliest European country to send its explorer for searching for new countries, earlier Portugal was also part of Spain that’s why Vasco De Gama was portuguse or Columbus was Spainish. So due to its earlier exploration it was able to conquer Argentina and Peru which were very rich in Silver ,it is believed that there was a mountain which was made of silver which Spanish totally dug. But Spanish could not manage the silver which they excavated from the American continent the excessive excavation of silver caused a great influx of silver in Spain as a result of which  the value of money felt and gradually Spainish could not develop a good trading system and slowly they started to live on debt and power of Spain declined. Although there were also many reasons like war with neighbouring countries and the war related to religion for the decline of Spainish power from the map of Europe but it was a main reason: Not managing a natural resource for fulfilling the need of a country.

Now take another case , of the most developed country of the world: America. There was a period in America about in 1850 when America made a great progress in terms of Economic growth. This growth was fueled by only the natural resources. All the biggest industrialists of the century like Andrew Carnegie, John D Rockefeller were born during this time only and they all just exploited the natural resources or say utilized the resource to create a great empire of their own. I do not know  much about Carnegie but I have read about Rockefeller, He was a man who really saved the oil industry or many claim manipulated it for his benefit.When he entered in the business of oil. Oil was used as medicine and here and there often oil used to come out from vent in area of Pennsylvania. The price of oil was highly volatile. Just for example if it was 16$/ barrel today it may be 52$/ barrel after a month. People used to come to the region where rumors of finding of oil were heard. It was like that if you drill here you ma get nothing and only a few meters away you can get a source of oil and the same source may dry up within a week or another source may pour oil for a month in such a situation came Rockefeller to Pennsylvania initially with partnership he continued in business but later became alone. He formed Standard oil company.He made secret contact with railway for getting rebate for transporting his oil and gradually either by force or by bribery or  by all the method of hook and crook he brought vertical integration and gained sole monopoly over oil and his company had no rivalry till it was broken in many subsidiaries by government.

So these two situations show how a natural resource can change the fate. Though oil still has a great importance today also, as most of the middle countries like Iran,Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Qatar are prosperous only because of petro dollar (money which they earn from the exporting of oil). But as stated above whenever a resource is find it attract a lot of people as it is easily available all is needed is power and some time this power may go to local , who most of the time try to strive for getting control over the resource and this leads to gang war, civil war dispute between local communities to gain control over the resource as in case of Nigeria and Sudan and South Sudan. Or take case in even Our country the conflict of Naxalism is only because government or industrialist want to get the land from local tribes for extracting the ores and minerals from these land. In may case like in our India or in case of the middle east countries of which i have given example, the government take control over the natural resource but still there are always local people who are always trying to get control over these resources because government cannot run directly mines. And the local mis-utilize the resource either by selling it in black market or by utilizing for their own purpose and this fight for gaining control over local politics and resource can continue for generations  as has been shown in movie-gangs of wasseypur. Or local politicians may always fill their coffer with these resources whose name often keeps popping up in media and news papers for their relationship with the scams.