To what end

West Bengal has decided to mine coal from a reserve so deep and unreachable that the extraction might turn out to be financially unviable, and still end up displacing 21,000 people

- TARAN DEOL

AT A time when India is trying to phase down its coal dependency, West Bengal hopes to transform its economy by undertaking an ambitious project to mine a deep coal block in its Birbhum district. The Deucha-PachamiDewanganj-Harinsingha coal block holds 1.2 billion tonnes of coal reserves and is India's largest coal block, as per West Bengal's official website. But so far India does not have experience of extracting coal at such great depth.

Probably this is the reason (see 'Unwieldy project', p23), the Coal India Limited (CIL), the government-owned coal mining and refining corporation that contributes more than 80 per cent of the total coal production in the country, has never attempted to mine it. In 2016, when the Centre invited applications for allocating the mine, the block was set to be divided among six states West Bengal, Bihar, Karnataka, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu—and a public sector power generation company, Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam. But it was awarded to West Bengal in 2019 because none of the others participated.

While the state government is promoting the coal mine as a developmental project that will generate more than 100,000 new jobs, it has sparked widespread protests due to impending displacements and environmental concerns. This has forced the state to revise its compensation package for the project twice since November 2021, when the first phase of the project was announced.

TOO BIG TO HANDLE

The Geological Survey of India, in a report published in May 2016, says it is a unique type of coal deposit which has no parallel in Indian coalfields, because of the special structural features”.