Between a coal mine and a hard place

On a sunny Tuesday afternoon, Kartik Tudu and his brother Charan Tudu stand across from the anganwadi centre at Mathurapahari village near the Bengal-Jharkhand border, counting the SUVs that pass their mud houses. Almost 10 every half an hour, they say, some with sirens and boards that signal the arrival of ‘very important people’.

“We spent over 60 years of our lives in this village. It used to be peaceful; no one bothered us,” they recall in unison, standing on a village path that is being paved into a cement road. “Since they inaugurated the coal block last week, we haven’t had a moment of peace. With the cars, the dust, and the overflow of visitors, our crops and livestock can hardly breathe.”

The Tudu brothers refer to February 6, when mining work started less than 5 kilometres away on the Deocha-Pachami coal mining project. The first phase of the project began near West Bengal’s eastern border, at Chanda Mouza, a group of villages in the Mohammad Bazar block of Birbhum district.

On the wall of a house right next to the anganwadi centre, the graffiti reads, both in English and Bengali, ‘Koyla khadan dur hatao’ and ‘Coal mine go back.’ Currently, seven villages and about 2,000 families are to be impacted.

Days after West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee announced the start of the mining project at the Bengal Global Business Summit on February 5, around 50 workers, four excavators, and six large dumper trucks started work on an initial 12-acre area, blowing up crimson dust to excavate soil and basalt from over the coal block.

On the day of the inauguration, about 12 villagers blocked the road to the excavation site. A youth, who does not want to be named, recalls in anger how, after facing resistance from Mathurapahari villagers on the day of the site inauguration, the mining officers and government officials came back late at night. “They snuck in like thieves to start work when we were asleep. We are also members of the Joint Forest Management Committee, and even the Forest Department did not bother informing us that mining will start here,” he says.

Worth nearly ₹35,000 crore, the Deoch-Pachami coal mining project is being touted as the largest coal block in India and the second-largest coal block in the world, with an estimated reserve of 1,240 million tonnes (MT) of coal and 2,675 MT of basalt. The West Bengal Power Development Corporation Ltd. (WBPDCL) is the executing agency.

The planned project area spans 3,540 acres in Birbhum, of which roughly 1,000 acres is government land and around 2,500 acres is private. P.B. Salim, managing director of WBPDCL, says written consent has been acquired for roughly 95% of the latter.

Villagers worry their land will be acquired forcibly, that they will be displaced, and that their livelihoods will be affected. More than 45% of the people belong to ST and SC communities.

Six days after the mining work started at the project in Birbhum, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee tried to allay any fears of forcible land acquisition related to the project.

A reassuring administration

Inside a village community hall at Mohammad Bazar on February 10 afternoon, about 80 villagers, most over 60 years, gather to hear what Birbhum District Magistrate (DM) Bidhan Ray has to say. After arriving in his SUV with a blue light on top, he says that compensation for those who surrender their lands to the project includes monetary benefits of ₹39 lakh per acre and a government job for one family member. Job nominees who passed Class 8 would be hired as junior police constables, and others as Group D staff. He adds that if the job nominee is a minor, the family would be given ₹10,000 a month as a subsistence allowance until they turn 18. The crowd whispers among each other. “All we can say for sure is that there will be no coercion at any stage. Consent is key,” the DM says, later.

There is also fear of relocation among the villagers. The DM says that in case of relocation, the families will be given around three kathas [about 0.05 acre] of land, along with the aforementioned compensation. “We aim to transfer neighbouring families together, to a nearby similar environment, and provide community utilities like a playing field, places of worship, school, in the new place,” Ray says.

Since February 5, the West Bengal government has started daily assistance camps for landowners in villages in the Mohammad Bazar block, especially those residing close to where mining has started. Officials say that in these camps, villagers can get their land ownership documents updated to reflect changes like an owner’s death or inheritance by living heirs.

After a few days, when the process is complete, camp officers give applicants a document of land ownership in Bengali, attested by the government authority in Mohammad Bazar. “This parcha [land ownership proof] will have clear, correct, and updated details of the rightful owners of each piece of land. It will make it easier for any landowning villager to volunteer to give their land to the project, sign WBPDCL’s consent form, and consequently avail the compensation package,” deputy district land and land reforms officer Rabiul Islam says.

Resistance to uncertainty

Shahjahan Sheikh, 47, who introduces himself as the father of a job aspirant and an activist of the Deocha-Pachami Coal Block Sangram Committee, summarises his demand in three simple words: “We want jobs”.

“We had submitted our land ownership documents to the WBPDCL and signed the consent forms to give our lands for the project right after the Chief Minister announced the compensation back in 2022. We had hoped to receive the jobs that were promised. But there’s no sign of a job appointment till now,” he says.

Shahjahan claims that the applications of around 3,000 families to surrender their land to the project have been stuck with WBPDCL for the past few years, with no update on their compensation so far. Government officials claim 1,500 people in the region have been given jobs already as part of the compensation.

Sushil Murmu, 27, an activist and president of the Paschim Banga Gram Sabha Samannay Hul Committee, which looks into local matters, however, believes that the coal project spells doom for all the villagers, with or without compensation. He is a resident of Kendrapara, one of the villages on the farther fringes of the Deocha-Pachami coal block.

“The helpless, poor people of the region are being fooled in the name of these camps, just for their lands to be taken away for the coal project. If the government cared about our progress, they would be building schools, improving our roads, and improving our quality of life. Instead, they are trying to evict us,” he alleges.

Murmu who has emerged as a face of local resistance against the project, says that if the coal project does not come to a halt, he and his fellow activists would be ‘forced to mobilise and protest’. “Today the Trinamool Congress government will give our people jobs. Tomorrow, if the government changes, they will declare all these job appointments null and void. Then what will happen to us?” Murmu says.

According to economist and activist Prasenjit Bose, a proposal to mine coal in the Deocha-Pachami-Dewanganj-Harinsingha region was floated around three decades ago during the Left Front regime. “Coal India had assessed back then that mining would not be economically viable because of the sheer depth of the coal beds,” he says, adding that the project was revived in 2021 by the current CM.

He says that there is no transparency. “The new report of the CMPDI (Central Mine Planning & Design Institute Limited) has not been made available to stakeholders. The local people have been kept in the dark,” Bose says. He alleges that this project is in reality centred around mining basalt — “a valuable commodity in itself” — under the garb of a coal mining project.

A mistrusting public

The camp at the anganwadi centre at Mathurapahari is brimming with locals gathered to submit and collect land ownership documents. Shibnath Tudu, 61, has been running from one camp to the other. On February 10, Shibnath was present at the Mohammad Bazar community hall, and the following day at the camp at Mathurapahari’s anganwadi centre. He breaks down when he is told the corrected paperwork for his land has not yet arrived.

“This is the third time I have come to the camp. I applied for the updated papers on February 5, but I got the paperwork for only one piece of land. I don’t know what will happen to the other two pieces, and I don’t know if my son will get that job they promised,” he says. Carrying an old white polythene packet, Tudu dressed in a blue checked lungi and a white vest, laments that his son is unemployed, and he is too old to work.

“They are trying to snatch our plate of food away from us. The government started mining here in full swing without formally letting us know. But what about our work? What about the jobs they promised us? They are supposed to serve the public but they only seem to serve themselves,” Shibnath says. He will not leave his home, he says, and if such a proposal is made, he is sure the Adivasi community will band together and bring the project to a halt.

A few steps away from the white-taped 12-acre project area at Chanda Mouza, two workers are engrossed in painting numbers on trees. In a 1-km radius, Mahua and Arjun trees stand tall, their trunks numbered with white and yellow paint. The District Magistrate of Birbhum says that the administration has started work on translocating and replanting 980 local trees from around the project area to a different piece of land nearby.

There are also plans to shift the State-run primary school at Mathurapahari village to a new venue on account of being too close to the project site. Teachers are worried because students have stopped coming to class since the mining started on February 6.

“We have a student strength of 98 between pre-primary and class 5. Usually, we record a daily attendance of 85%. Now, hardly 10 students are showing up in a day. Parents feel scared to send them to school with so many forces deployed in the area,” one of the teachers says.

The balancing act

“Deocha-Pachami is a very challenging coal mine. Firstly, the coal is at a considerable depth of 300 to 1,000 metres underground. Secondly, there is a layer of basalt about 80 metres to 250 metres thick over the entire block area,” says Salim.

He explains that the WBPDCL has taken a multi-pronged approach to the project — open-cast mining for the usual depth of 300 to 350 metres to extract the basalt, and underground mining and underground coal gasification to extract the coal. “We are taking tenders for both the underground mining work and coal gasification. March 3 this year is the deadline for submission of tenders for the underground coal mining,” Salim says.

At Chanda Mouza, where the first phase of the project has begun, 10 large construction vehicles are working from morning to evening, to dig out the top layer of soil. The site is guarded by at least 100 police and paramilitary personnel, while a handful of tea and chaat vendors roam amongst them, looking for hungry customers.

“Currently, we are working on removing the overburden, which is a roughly 30-metre-deep top layer of soil and clay. After that, we will excavate the basalt layer, then eventually the coal,” Sandeep Jaya, the mine manager says.

Speaking to journalists in the State Assembly after the presentation of the 2025-26 State Budget on February 12, the Chief Minister said that while the work at Deocha-Pachami has started on government land, locals who wish to surrender their land for the project can do so.

“So many local youths have already started working as home guards… We will make sure to provide lands, houses, schools, colleges, transport, and everything else to the people there,” she said, adding that everyone would receive the monetary compensation and job as promised.

The Trinamool Congress chairperson repeatedly said no forcible land acquisition would take place for the coal project.

The party, led by Banerjee, rose to power in West Bengal over the movements against what they claimed was forcible land acquisition at Singur and Nandigram in the noughties, during the Left Front regime.

“This project will put an end to the power cut crisis for the next 100 years. Electricity will become accessible and affordable. This project and ancillary projects will collectively generate around 1 lakh jobs,” she said.