Before mining came to Chhattisgarh, a landlocked state in central India, Hasdeo Arand was a remote forest with a dozen tribal hamlets. Spanning more than 650 square miles, the forest is often called the “lungs of central India” and is home to endangered elephants, sloth bears, and leopards, as well as valuable water reserves ( Astha Rajvanshi, TIME). Today, the Hasdeo-Arand coal mines are a 5 million ton-per-annum (MTPA) network of mines on the Hasdeo-Arand coalfield. Coal mining activities have intensified and expanded, causing huge deforestation, land grabbing, and nature and human rights violations.
Activist claim that thousands of trees have been felled over 137 hectares of biodiversity-rich forest in Hasdeo for the Parsa East and Kanta Basan (PEKB) coal blocks of Chhattisgarh. PEKB and Parsa coal blocks have been allotted to Rajasthan Rajya Vidyut Utpadan Nigam, operated by the Adani Group. (Himanshu Nitnaware, Down to Earth).
Interviews conducted over three months in 2022 with more than 40 people—including locals who oppose the mine as well as those who support it; Adani workers at the PEKB mine; and teachers, police, and activists in the area—revealed how life in the forest has been transformed by the presence of a mining giant (Astha Rajvanshi, TIME).
When coal is extracted from PEKB, its journey has just begun. The fuel itself travels north by rail and truck to Rajasthan, while the rewards of selling it are reaped by Chattisgarh’s state capital of Raipur. There, the dizzying development of towers, malls, and hotels stands in stark contrast to life for the Adivasi forest dwellers who work the mines, 90% of whom depend on agriculture and forest produce for their livelihoods (Astha Rajvanshi, TIME).
It’s a pattern repeated across India, the world’s second-biggest importer, consumer, and producer of coal. By 2023, amid growing demand for electricity, its government plans to have extracted over a billion tons just since 2022. (Astha Rajvanshi, TIME).
The struggle to keep coal underground in Hasdeo has been a decades-long one. Despite recommendations from government research agencies that Hasdeo not be cleared for more mines, coal mining blocks continued to be allocated. By 2022, the Chhattisgarh Bachao Andolan’s efforts led the state government to pass a resolution cancelling 21 planned coal mines in Hasdeo, saving 445,000 acres of biodiversity-rich forests. Last year, the Ministry of Coal said it would cancel 40 coal blocks for mining on the recommendations of the previous Congress government (Simrin Sirur, Scroll In).
Read more:
- https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/dec/20/india-adani-coal-mine-kete-hasdeo-arand-forest-displaced-villages
- https://time.com/6318729/india-coal-mining-climate-hasdeo-arand/
- https://article-14.com/post/in-lush-ancient-chhattisgarh-forest-thousands-of-trees-cut-to-mine-coal-for-rajasthan-threatening-adivasi-homes-water-livelihoods–65d2bdd0e264a
- https://www.gem.wiki/Hasdeo-Arand_coal_mines
- https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/chhattisgarh-activist-alok-shukla-to-receive-goldman-prize-for-hasdeo-arand-movement-101714379555166.html
- https://scroll.in/article/1067326/interview-fight-to-save-hasdeo-has-shown-that-forests-belong-to-everyone