Govt’s coal push contradicts clean energy pledge, lays bare dark underbelly

Forty-three years ago, a baby boy was born in a poor family in the dusty lanes of coal-rich Parbelia town in West Bengal’s Purulia district.

What followed next was akin to a Bollywood movie script—a rag to riches story with a heady mix of crime and politics, the complex milieu that continues to fascinate our filmmakers about life in collieries, the dark underbelly of India’s power sector.

The boy, Anup Majhi alias Lala, grew up to become the kingpin of a coal smuggling business worth over Rs 15,000 crore. The illegal operation, now being probed by central agencies, is seen as one of the most politically sensitive scams to ever rock the state with two close relatives of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee coming under the investigation.

The probe agencies claim that Majhi, who had started off as a fish vendor, built his illegal empire with the patronage of top officials of the Eastern Coalfield Limited (ECL), senior police officials and politicians.

Just like the protagonists of 2014 Bollywood action drama, Gunday, Majhi’s first brush with crime involved stealing coal and selling them. He then went on to set up his own illegal open-pit coal mine in the forested area of Raghunathpur in Purulia and expanded his operation in the entire coal belt of the state, and beyond to Jharkhand.

During interrogation Majhi reportedly in a written confession claimed to have regularly paid kickbacks to influential politicians of the state to ensure he had a free run though he had been under police scanner since 2006.

But Majhi was neither the first nor the last to dig their heels into the ‘goldmines’ of coalfields.

“The story of Majhi is the story of India’s coal operation. Before him, there was Krishna Murari Koyal (alias Billu). After him, there will be someone else. The illegality will continue until the day coal operations are stopped,” says Khokon Mardi.

Mardi’s organisation, the Project Affected People’s Association (PAPA), is trying to cobble up a mass resistance against acquiring of land for a coal mining project at Birbhum district’s Deocha-Pachami-Harinsingha-Dewanganj—world’s second-largest coal block with an estimated reserves of 2.1 billion tonnes.

Activists like Mardi feel the Centre’s push for coal to boost the economy and reduce costly imports will worsen the situation. The Centre has recently set a target for Coal India Limited to produce one billion tonnes of coal by 2023-24 to achieve the goal of ‘Atma Nirbhar Bharat’. Last year, it opened up 40 new coalfields in some of India’s most ecologically sensitive forests for commercial mining. This, despite India embarking on a shift towards renewable energy.

Crime, exploitation and pollution

No one perhaps knows better how vicious these shady operations could be than Agnes Kharsiing. The anti-mining crusader was almost killed by alleged coal mafias in Meghalaya for objecting to their nefarious activities.

The incident happened when Kharsiing, who also heads the Civil Society Women’s Organization, had rushed to East Jaintia Hills’ Sohshrieh in Tuber village, about 80 km from Meghalaya capital Shillong following reports of illegal coal transportation.

“It was November 8. We had received information about movement of trucks carrying illegal coals in Sohshrieh. A day before, we had helped police detain some illegal coal-laden trucks parked at a petrol pump in Mawlai (a small town in East Khasi Hills district). I was accompanied by another activist, Amita Sangma. Before going to the village, we had informed the Ladrymbai police outpost about the purpose of our visit,” she recounts the events of the day.

“When we visited the village, a group of about 40 people waylaid and attacked us. Amita, I and our driver sustained severe injuries. Among the attackers, I could recognise Nidamon Chullet, a prominent mine owner from the area.”

Chullet, a member of the ruling National People’s Party in Meghalaya, was made an accused in the FIR and was subsequently named in the chargesheet filed in the case in June 2019.

Crimes apart, the coal mines areas are also synonymous with pollution and poverty.

Exploitation of miners, their poor working conditions, several environmental and health and safety issues are some of the inherent problems plaguing the sector since the coal was first mined in India in 1774.

In May this year, five miners were trapped when a dynamite blast flooded a coal mine in Meghalaya’s East Jaintia Hills district. Only three bodies could be retrieved after weeks of rescue operation.

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Accidents are common in India’s coal mines. According to a government figure 238 miners died in mine accidents between June 2016 and June 2019.

To put the death tolls in perspective, a Down To Earth report in 2007 pointed out that on an average there were around 0.3 deaths in coal mines per 1,000 employees in India. The deaths per tonne of coal produced in India are 8.64 times more than the US and 24 times more than Australia, the report said.

Besides fatal accidents, coal miners face several health complications because of working long hours in toxic and unhealthy environments.

To plug loopholes in ensuring safety, better health and welfare of persons employed in the coal mines, a Lok Sabha panel earlier this year recommended that a “pragmatic safety management” system should be put in place at the “right earnest”.

“The Committee, therefore, recommends that the Coal Mines (Special Provisions) Act 2015 and Coal Mines (Special Provisions) Rules 2014, should be amended accordingly so as to include safety, health and welfare provisions,” the panel on petitions, ministry of coal, said in its report submitted in February this year.

It made the observation after examining some issues raised through a representation submitted to its chairperson Virendra Kumar over the “dilapidated” conditions of coal mines in West Bengal and Jharkhand.

Besides, the coal sector is causing much environmental damage. This is exactly why Mardi and others feel the government is being highly insensitive to the issue.

Rising toxicity, disappearing forests

“Just look around you. The thick cover of dust will blur your vision. But even a couple of decades ago, this entire swathe was covered by green trees,” says Bijoy Viswakarma, who resides in Bazari village near Sonpur-Bazari open-cast coal mine in West Bengal’s West Bardwan district.

United Nations Secretary General António Guterres recently said to achieve the world’s climate goals, all the coal plants across the globe should be closed in phased manner by 2040.

“Wherever there are coal mines, the local population is doomed. First their land is acquired without giving them proper rehabilitation to set up mines. Then they are left with dust and diseases. Villages within two to three kilometres radius of a mine suffer a lot due to pollution,” says Rupesh Kumar Singh, a Jharkhand-based social activist.

Land acquisition is another contentious issue plaguing the sector that furthermore calls for transition to clean energy.

From West Bengal to Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, acquisition of land for expansion of coal exploration is facing stiff resistance. This is mainly because, activists say, instead of ushering in economic prosperity for the locals, mining destroys the ecology of the area, denuding forest cover and polluting the water bodies.

The collieries are mostly located in areas inhabited by adivasis for whom forests are also a source of sustenance.

The Gond community is up in arms against a central government’s notification to acquire over 700 hectares of land in Korba district in Chhattisgarh for extracting coal. Over 500 hectares of the proposed land for coal mining fall under the core area of the Hasdeo Arand forest, a biodiversity hotspot.

The central government, in a notice issued in December last year, earmarked the area for prospective fossil fuel mining under the Coal Bearing Act of 1957.

The Gond tribe is strongly opposing the move as they are heavily dependent on forest produce.

“We are forest dwelling people. We sustain on mahua, tendu patta, and tree branches we collect from the forest. We cannot allow the destruction of the forest,” says Shyamlal Ekka, a member of the Hasdeo Aranya Sangharsh Samiti.

Similar resistances against mining have also been witnessed elsewhere. In West Bengal, residents of around 30 villages in Deocha-Pachami-Harinsingha-Dewanganj coal block, under the banner of PAPA, are objecting to proposed mining activities in the area.

About 82 villages are staring at the prospect of eviction following the recent allocation of a coal block in Shikaripara in Dumka district of Jharkhand, Singh says. “The villagers are putting up resistance against the project.”

The energy divide

Unfortunately, despite embarking on a shift towards renewable energy, the government continues to push for enhancing coal production, further expanding the regional disparity in India’s energy map.

“While 85 percent of coal production is concentrated in the relatively poor eastern and central states of Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh, over 60 percent of renewable energy potential (and 80 percent of current capacity) is concentrated in relatively wealthy southern and western states – Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Telangana,” writes Chandra Bhushan, the CEO of the International Forum for Environment, Sustainability and Technology (iFOREST) in a recent article in The Times of India.

Currently, India produces about 729 million tonnes of coal as against the demand of 955.26 metric tonnes. A new target has been set now for Coal India Limited to produce one billion tonnes of coal by 2023-24.

Coal contributes more than 53 per cent of India’s installed power capacity of 371 gigawatts (as of June last year). Next is hydropower with 12.31 per cent contribution.

As India’s energy mix is heavily tipped towards coal-based thermal power, coal producing eastern and central states would continue to stick to the so-called dirty energy.

Consequently, this means these coal belts are not going to get rid of the vicious cycle of crime, poverty and pollution, at least not anytime soon.

This is a never-ending cycle, says an exasperated Mardi. “But the more they dig for coal, the more crimes and pollution there will be. And more dirty politics.”