{"id":18882,"date":"2016-03-15T11:28:04","date_gmt":"2016-03-15T16:28:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=18882"},"modified":"2016-03-15T11:28:04","modified_gmt":"2016-03-15T16:28:04","slug":"on-burning-ground-the-human-cost-of-indias-push-to-produce-more-coal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=18882","title":{"rendered":"On Burning Ground: The Human Cost Of India\u2019s Push to Produce More Coal"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Burning Ground: The Human Cost\u00a0Of India\u2019s Push to Produce More Coal\u00a0<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Girls scavenge coal at a dump site of an open-cast mine in the Jharia coalfield.\u00a0View gallery.<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0Daniel Berehulak\/Getty Images<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

As part of India’s modernization program, Prime Minister Narenda Modi has called for doubling the nation\u2019s coal production by 2020. For the villages in the Jharia coalfield, which is frequently shrouded in smoke from underground fires, the government\u2019s plans have only increased the pressures and dangers of living alongside huge, burning open-pit mines.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cCome,\u201d says Raju. \u201cLet me show you my house.\u201d His clean white shirt, well-brushed hair, and calm demeanor belie the almost apocalyptic landscape in which he and his family lived.<\/p>\n

We are standing on the edge of a 650-foot unfenced drop into an open-pit coal mine that is shrouded in dust. As we gingerly approach his home, a two-room brick hut just 30 feet from the precipice, we have to clamber over the rubble of collapsed houses and avoid deep fissures and spots of hot earth from which smoke is erupting. What remains of the once-rural village of Lantenganj \u2014 now deep inside India\u2019s largest coalfield in the mining state of Jharkhand \u2014 is being consumed by underground fires that burn the coal beneath. The government-owned company Bharat Coking Coal, whose mines are responsible for the fires, wants the villagers to leave \u2014 for their own safety, the company says, and so the mine can be expanded.<\/p>\n

But Raju\u2019s family and the 50 others that cling on here say they will not go without proper compensation and new homes near to their jobs in these mines. \u201cWe\u2019ve got nothing from the government,\u201d Raju tells me, as we inspect a crack that has opened up in his living room floor. \u201cWe want a better deal or we will not move.\u201d Until, presumably, their houses fall into the abyss below.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Burning Ground: The Human Cost\u00a0Of India\u2019s Push to Produce More Coal\u00a0 Girls scavenge coal at a dump site of an open-cast mine in the Jharia coalfield.\u00a0View gallery.\u00a0 \u00a0Daniel Berehulak\/Getty Images As part of India’s modernization program, Prime Minister Narenda Modi has called for doubling the nation\u2019s coal production by 2020. For the villages in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[147,148,12333,422,8506],"class_list":["post-18882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-coal","tag-coal-production","tag-fred-pearce","tag-india","tag-yale-360-environment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18882"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18883,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18882\/revisions\/18883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}