India’s Largest ‘Anticipated’ Coal Mining Project: The ‘Spectre of Resistance’ Rises Again in Bengal- Srijan Dutta

The Deocha-Pachami-Harinsingha-Dewanganj coalblock in Birbhum district has been making headlinessince West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee announced amega compensation package worth Rs. 10,000 crore forthe rehabilitation of the populace residing in the projectarea. Banerjee’s announcement of the compensation package on 10 November 2021 can be regarded as the inaugural step towards initiating the project and the move has already stirred up a lot of controversy in the public domain.

‘Bengal Means Business’: The Truth behind Mamata Banerjee’s ‘Empty Rhetoric’

The government has declared that it will provide between Rs 10 lakh and 13 lakh per bigha (about one-third acre) to people owning land with a house on it within the project area and also give another Rs 5.5 lakh to cover the cost of relocation to a 600 square feet home at a government rehabilitation colony. Besides relocation, the government has also declared employment opportunities as a part of the package claiming that one member from each family losing land and/or home and families of tenant farmers associated with those land plots will be employed as a junior constable in the state police force. The government has announced this provision for a total of 4,942 persons. In addition to that, there are other provisions such as a ‘maintenance charge’ of Rs 10,000 per month for a year for about 3,000 people working in the existing stone-crushing units within the project area, Rs 50,000 as one-time compensation and 500 days of jobs under the MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) scheme for 160 agricultural workers, a shifting allowance of Rs 50,000 along with the cost of houses and land plots located within the project area of 285 crusher owners. Apart from that, the government has also decided to provide 10 metric tonnes of basalt free of cost to the owners of the crusher units for the next six months and also give 27 quarry owners the cost of their houses and plots.

Behind Banerjee’s declaration of such a grand compensation package lays hidden her multifarious compulsions. Bengal has been a witness to historic struggles against ‘development’ projects involving land acquisition by the government and very few people are as well-versed as Banerjee in this regard. The 34 year-long rule of the Left Front government in West Bengal that was analogous to the sun never setting on the British Empire finally came to an end in 2011 with Banerjee’s ascendancy to power. She had successfully capitalised on the public resentment against the parliamentary Left that culminated in the Singur and Nandigram mass movements. In the light of the upcoming Lok Sabha elections in 2024, the frenzy of political competitiveness has already filled the air and Banerjee has her eyes aimed at the PM’s chair in New Delhi. The proposed coal mining project in Birbhum is a ‘slippery terrain’ for Banerjee. While she is busy establishing herself as ‘the pro-people populist leader’ of our times, she is also determined to obtain a ‘positive character certificate’ from the corporate business groups that would provide her with investment funds based on her performance in executing a coal mining project of such huge scale. Having learnt from the mistakes of the Left Front, Banerjee has drawn a clear distinction between her and her predecessor’s tactics from the very beginning — she is trying hard not to enrage the local population residing on the coal block. Thus, Banerjee has been demonstrating extra caution in her approach towards the anticipated mining project and has been advocating the policy of ‘peaceful land acquisition’ by introducing a compensation package that seems to be very ‘lucrative’.

However, Banerjee’s ‘slow but steady’ attitude is not just a response to her political compulsions. Based on data provided by the Geological Survey of India (GSI), the execution of the Deocha-Pachami-Harinsingha-Dewanganj coal mining project is way easier to say than to achieve, owing to certain geological factors. The project area spans over 13.7 square kilometres and consists of two separate coal blocks – the Deocha-Pachami coal block with an area of 9.7 sq. km. and the Harinsingha-Dewanganj coal block with an area of 2.6 sq. km. The region has a total population of 21,000 people. Although this particular coal block is the second largest in the world and possesses 1,198 million tonne of coal, no proper ‘mine-planning’ on the project has been done till date. The reason behind this is that the distance between the coal seams located underground and the top layer of soil is very high and a thick layer of basalt is present between the two — there are regions where the layer of basalt is more than a 100 metres thick and in total 1400 million cubic metre basalt deposits are present across the project area. ‘Mine-planning’ is the fundamental pre-requisite to the initiation of the actual process of mining; it determines the process suitable for reaching the underground coal seams and their extraction in a coal field. Broadly, there are two methods of mining — creating underground mines by carving out tunnels and creating open-pit or open-cast mines (OCPs). But, in this case, the thick layer of basalt has posed to be a natural hindrance to the extraction of coal from the region. Without creating a tunnel through the hard layer of basalt or without totally removing it, one can never imagine extracting the coal deposits from this area. Central Mine Planning and Design Institute (CMPDI) has been entitled with the job of chalking out a mine-plan for the Deocha-Pachami-Harinsingha-Dewanganj coal block but till now they do not even possess the necessary data required to proceed with the planning process for carrying out mining operations. The Bengal government has been maintaining a conscious silence on the uncomfortable questions related to the technical difficulties and lack of proper planning and infrastructure that is required to conduct mining activities in the proposed project area. All these issues have made coal extraction in the proposed project area an exercise that is economically not feasible for the Indian government. Hence, soon after the discovery of the coal block, Coal India Limited had declared that it would not take responsibility of the coal block. In 2018, the West Bengal government signed an agreement with the Central government and the West Bengal Power Development Corporation Limited (WBPDCL) was put in charge of the coal block. The government website of WBPDCL reveals a crucial detail – the corporation has no infrastructure and resources required for the extraction of coal. It is currently in charge of five functioning coal mines and has been conducting mining activities in those coalfields by entering into ‘joint-venture’ business agreements with private mining companies — companies that place profit over public interest.

The Manoeuvre of ‘the Carrot and the Stick’:

On 28 December 2020, the Bengal CM had claimed that once the Deocha-Pachami-Harinsingha-Dewanganj coal mining project is fully operational, it would generate 1 lakh jobs for the people of her state. In this growing market of unemployment, such claims often give hope to those who are dreaming to get employed or securing better employment opportunities, especially the youth. But, a year has passed since Mamata Banerjee had made her claim and her ‘model’ project still remains mired in speculation and controversy.

The situation has indeed escalated; instead of being able to win over the local population by the recent announcement of the compensation package, it has made them raise an eyebrow in both concern and disapproval. The local populace, comprising mostly Adivasis, is under the apprehension of getting evicted from their home and losing all their lands. It is estimated that the proposed project requires about 11,222 acres of land and out of that more than 9,100 acres of land belonging to Adivasis. Besides fearing displacement, questions regarding the loss/ deterioration of livelihood have also been started to be raised. Currently, a large number of people living inside the project area are employed at the existing stone-crusher units where they earn a sum of Rs 600 per day on an average. Apart from that, many people engage in agriculture during one specific season and work as construction labourers during the rest of the year. Majority of people residing within the project area have raised concerns related to the quality of employment that is being/will be offered by the government once the mining project gets operational.

In this age of neo-liberalism, profit-hungry big corporate groups are incessantly pushing for the ‘informalisation of the economy’ and ‘contractualisation of the workforce’. Hence, majority of the families residing in the coal block area are in fear that their economic situation would worsen even if they manage to secure a job in the coal mining sector after getting relocated by the government. Other than the aforementioned issues that are being voiced by the local population, concerns regarding the severe environmental destruction of the region due to mining are also being started to be raised.

At present, the fate of both CM Mamata Banerjee’s ‘dream project’ and the growing resistance of the people whose lives are going to be directly affected by it are shrouded in uncertainty. Banerjee’s government and her party are making efforts to convince the common people to willfully accept the compensation package and give up their lands. The declaration of such a huge compensation package is just another manifestation of her calculative ‘pro-people’ approach – a bunch of ‘hollow promises’ aimed at establishing herself as the ‘matriarch’ or the ‘big sister’, who is compassionate towards her subjects.

The local people of the villages lying within the Deocha-Pachami-Harinsingha-Dewanganj coal block area have started organising themselves in protest against the proposed mining project. The majority of the populace is unwilling give up their lands. The tribal groups living within the project area, especially, the women have been organising anti-government protest demonstrations and rallies for months. For the time being, the state government has decided to start mining at the vast tracts of government-owned forest land (about 1,000 acres) that are located within the project area as a measure to avoid further enragement of the protesting population. The first phase of the mining project is supposed to begin at the smaller Harinsingha-Dewanganj coal block, where the coal seams are in close proximity to the top layer of the soilin comparison to the Deocha-Pachami coal block. Currently, the villagers at Dewanganj have organised themselves and started a sit-in protest demonstration against the coal mining project and their sit-in demonstration is steadily gaining a lot of momentum. The word of resistance has quickly spread to the cities and towns of West Bengal and the civil society has been responsive enough to organise protest demonstrations in different parts of the state to express solidarity for the protesting masses residing within the project area.

Baffled and paranoid with these political developments, Mamata Banerjee has started to use the state machinery to suppress the democratic voices protesting against the proposed coal mining project. In order to execute her ‘dream project’, she too, has started to imitate her counterparts in New Delhi and other states. The common repressive measures that the people at the apex of political power inside this sham called ‘parliamentary democracy’ use to crush mass movements are being deployed by Banerjee to weaken the growing people’s resistance against the proposed coal mining project. The ‘lathicharge’ on women protesters at Dewanganj and the recent incident of undemocratic arrests of local activists and members of the civil society, who were visiting the area, are attempts to instill fear in the minds of the protesters.

On the one hand, the TMC government is trying to sell a cooked-up story through the corporate-owned media houses by showing that most villagers are contented with the declared compensation package and are willing to give away their lands. But, this is just a mirage — the handful of villagers, who have given away their land, do not represent the voice of the majority (the marginalised tribal groups. scheduled castes and Muslims). On the other hand, the state government is resorting to threats, use of muscle power, undemocratic arrests, fabrication of cases against protestors and the constant propagation of the ‘outsider rhetoric’ through the media as efforts to isolate the Deocha-Pachami-Harinsingha-Dewanganj region from the outside world and displace its populace with minimum resistance.

Whether or not the growing resistance against land acquisition for the coal mining project is going to obtain the character of a mass movement similar to the likes of the ones that took place in Singur and Nandigram will unfold with time. But, it definitely possesses the potential for becoming a turning point in Bengal politics. It can put Mamata Banerjee in a very difficult situation if she takes up a ‘paradoxical stance’ and follows the path of her predecessors.