Indian Villagers Say Lives Undermined by State’s Lust for Coal

This city in eastern India bustles because of the coal underfoot.

People flock here for jobs in the mines burrowing beneath the city. Shops and restaurants are packed with customers. Buses, cars, trucks, bicycles and rickshaws jam the narrow streets.

Now the city’s livelihood is threatening it too.

For Jharia’s 450,000 people, the sinkhole that suddenly opened a year ago and damaged more than 150 houses was the first tangible sign that warnings about the danger of undermining were real--not just a matter of government reports and bureaucratic debates.

“I heard an explosion and felt the earth splitting. Thousands of people ran from their homes in panic,” Rajendra Prasad, a local trader, recalled of that frightening day last October.

No one was killed, but Prasad said youngsters at a mosque school had a narrow escape.

Jharia, 810 miles east of New Delhi in India’s main coal region, sits atop an estimated 300 million tons of coal worth $4.8 billion. The city “is one of costliest pieces of land in the world,” said T.N. Singh, deputy director of the government’s Central Mining Research Institute.

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Coal is India’s primary energy source, fueling its factories and electricity production, and government leaders are intent on exploiting the coal fully to build the economy of one of the world’s poorest nations.

The people of Jharia accuse state-owned Bharat Coking Coal Ltd. of being blind in its pursuit of coal, digging out the city’s foundation with little thought for the safety of those living above the mines.

Bharat managers say the area under Jharia was hollowed out by private miners long before the state took over in 1972.

Canadian experts who completed a World Bank-financed study of the problem a few months before the sinkhole appeared concluded that the only answer was to move Jharia.

Collapsing tunnels are not the only threat. An underground coal fire has been burning for 80 years, and towers of flames sometimes break through the surface. The town’s eight gasoline stations add to the risk, but so far the fire has not gotten out of control on the surface.

Last year, the coal company and municipal officials announced they would tear down at least 22,000 houses. The cash-strapped company offered no compensation or help with relocation to the estimated 110,000 people affected.

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Authorities put up posters and distributed pamphlets warning residents of “the possible danger to their lives and property.” Outraged townspeople took to the streets in protest.

“The BCCL is creating a scare with a view to forcing people to leave the town. It can then mine the huge coal reserves” unhindered, said Gopal Aggarwal, a movie theater owner whose grandfather settled in Jharia in the 1920s.

The protests prompted the government to order a new study. In June, the government experts advised against mass evacuation, saying that only about 2,500 people needed to move and Jharia could be shored up by filling old mine tunnels with sand and other materials.

Contractors in the past were paid to fill the areas from which coal had been extracted, but the gaping holes researchers have found indicate the money was taken with no work done.

The government’s mining institute said the fire could be controlled in part by digging out burning coal. A major fire-fighting operation begun in the 1980s by the coal company reduced the fire area from 6 3/4 square miles to 3 1/4 square miles.

Townspeople embraced the new assessment. But it appears they were persuaded less by facts and figures than by their own determination not to be moved.

“We have invested our life savings here. Where else do we go? Our property has become worthless,” said Gopal Singh, a shop owner. “Even if the government offers compensation to leave the town, it just won’t be enough to start our lives afresh elsewhere.”