HOT AS HELL: A Profile of Dhanbad

Course Instructor:
Prof. Biswatosh Saha

Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the course

Corporate Social Irresponsibility (Term 5)

By
0229/53 MOHIT MANAKTALA
0296/53 RACHIT THUKRAL
1363/17 JOHANNES HUFELD
1379/17 NICHOLAS KIRILOF
1336/17 CHRISTIAN HOHL
1373/17 NICOLAS MALEXIEUS

On
November 14, 2017
Introduction
“For some, coal means diamonds and gold. For others, the coal signifies bread. They go underground
not to take out coal but to sustain their life. They put their lives at risk. They are ready to face death
at any moment. But they don’t earn much. The bulk of the profits generated by mining coal is
appropriated by the mafia. This is the main reason for poverty here.”
The above line summarizes the current situation of Jharia region of Dhanbad district, the coal capital
of India. The documentary, Hot As Hell: A Profile of Dhanbad seeks to highlight how underground
fires both literally and metaphorically have been raging for a century below the township of Jharia
and have been completely ignored by corrupt politicians and media.
Our analysis focusses on the various aspects of this humanitarian crisis in Jharia such as the social,
economic and political aspects which gave birth to this problem. It highlights how the lives of more
than 600,000 of residents of Jharia are at risk due to them living on top of a veritable inferno. It the
region, the powerful mafia organisations that rule and exploit the underprivileged –by mining
illegally, supervising organised pilferage, running extortion rackets and bagging lucrative
government contracts by bribing officials right from Coal India Limited to politicians at the Centre
and State.

The origins of coal fires of Jharia

In the Jharia region in Jharkhand, mining activities on an industrial level started by the mid-19th
century. Before that village population engaged in small-scale mining, but mining became
industrialised only with the colonial extraction efforts to connect the main trading and manufacturing
centres with the ports via railways. During this period, mining was largely unregulated and
conducted in an unscientific manner. The good quality coal present in the region became a curse as it
caught fire easily and the coal fires of Jharia began around 1916 which rage even today after over a
century.

Political Scenario and Extraction of tribute by Mafia

Independent India inherited the inefficiencies seeded during the colonial rule. Independent India
followed central plans, under which industrialization was promoted and the Congress state-party
affiliated trade union INTUC was put in high-command over the representation of the mining work-
force. The fact that the main trade unions like INTUC were offshoots of political parties resulted in
them becoming an organised and institutionalised form of violence to discipline workers and lead
illegal mining depriving the state of royalties.
During the reign of B.P. Sinha, a leader of the INTUC who is often dubbed as the first mafia of
Jharia. The nationalization of coal mines in 1970’s led to an increase in the strength of the mafia due
to their closeness with the ruling party Congress. BCCL, formed to revive the Indian coal sector, was
dominated by mafia as just before nationalization, thousands of employees were added to the
employee roll of private mines who got jobs in BCCL. These paid elements of the mafia acted as
thugs against unruly workers and also handled various transport contracts charging a "goon tax" from
buyers, a fixed fee per tonne, before loading their coal.
The process also created gaps between the departments and employees of BCCL and different groups
of workers of the emerging state-run company. The ‘mafia’ mediated between these gaps both
economically – in form of contractors or managers of illegalised mines – and politically, as part of
the trade unions and within the political bureaucracy. The ‘mafia’ emerged as a quasi-outsourced
economic and political department of the now centralised state-industry by paying off company
officials, police, politicians and bureaucrats to mine or transport coal illegally
With this, ‘the White House’ (home of B.P. Singh) became the seat of power of Dhanbad. However,
with the amount of money involved and change in leadership at centre, Surajdeo Singh rose to power
due to his close connections to PM Chandrashekhar. He won the Jharia Assembly seat on a Janta
Party ticket in 1977.
Finally, he gained complete control over the region after B.P.Sinha was murdered in his own home
in March 1979. His fortunes became directly proportional to the flowing blood in the Coal Belt. This
period saw a large number of political murders and lawlessness in the district with the mafia leaders
being more popular among the people than film stars and national politicians.
All this was possible because the mafia or gangs of strike-breaking thugs and large integrative trade
union organisations developed strong links with the political class and kept looting the region and
bribing the police, state and central leaders.

Social Impact of presence of Coal and Coal fires

The coal present in Jharia attracted people from all over North India in the early part of the 20 th
century. This was marked by a rapid shift in the landscape with new mines coming up and heavy
pollution caused by it turning farmlands unproductive.
The move by BCCL of moving towards productivity and operating only large open-cast mines has
had a negative impact not just on the environment in terms of increase in pollution with the whole
area is covered with fine coal dust, causing epidemic respiratory suffering but also a large reduction
in workforce employed by it forcing the local population to indulge in illegal mining and sell coal
through the mafia while earning a fraction of minimum wages. Another important factor shaping the
landscape is the lack of safety equipment with illegal miners implying a higher risk for these people,
e.g. due to inflammable gases. Like at other sites many people already have been killed. Because the
mined illegally, there is no incentive by local authorities to recover their bodies.
The local villagers are thus only seen cheap labour force by the mafia. The underground fire, thus
has two several side effects. The first is that it the fires spread quickly and are difficult to locate once
it’s burning. Therefore already a huge amount of coal has been destroyed which again reduces the
potential output for local miners. Furthermore the fire affects the air quality with dangerous gases,
such as sulphur, nitrogen or carbon oxides. The other problems are the obvious health issues. In the
movie it was reported that the people in this region mostly suffer from respiratory illnesses due to the
coal dust and the gases. In most cases this develops to lung cancer. Because they don’t have a large
income and no insurance this leads to reduction of live expectancy.
It’s not that the Indian government is completely ignoring the situation but has made an elaborate
plan to relocate the people of the city. BCCL is also engaged in to relocate the people in the affected
areas, primary BCCL-workers, and to provide government jobs to a certain extent. However, there is
a lack of will among both the inhabitants and local government to move forward with the plan. For
the local people, this is just see this as a placebo effect and are yet not willing to relocate in a far
outside town die to attachment with the place. Land acquisition problems enhance the difficulty of
relocating. Even after closing a mine, people are involved in illegal mining making progress on
renaturation projects fall far behind authorities’ expectations.

Resource Curse and Economic Impact of Coal fires

Despite being endowed with coal reserves worth over a trillion dollar, the region ranks the among the
lowest in various indicators of human development. The economic situation of the people living in
the region is dire with most dependent on the mafia and illegal mining for livelihood.
The nationalization of mines in India which was supposed to drive efficiencies and bring economies
of scales actually created a large illegal mining sector due to the focus of BCCL on the same with
the economics of the illegal mining industry are extremely obvious. It is run by a well-coordinated
mafia which is deeply entrenched into politics. The mafia buys coal from illegal miners for a pittance
and makes a huge profit on its sale to small industrial units. This has resulted in not only the
exploitation of poor miners but also having negative impact on the overall economy by making large
companies like Tata Steel and SAIL unproductive due to them engaging in ethical sourcing.
The mafia also raises the cost of extraction for BCCL(now CIL), by causing work disruptions,
pilfering coal and demanding tribute for coal to be shipped to private buyers thereby often forcing
companies to source coal from outside India. This raises the trade deficit of the country and results in
reducing the competitiveness of the companies globally.
Another indicator of economic exploitation of the area is the cost-cutting done by the mafia who
have the exclusive control over various contracts. The mines which are to be decommissioned are
supposed to be filled by sand and mafia is paid to do so. However, the mines are not re-filled with
sand, once the coal is extracted. This results in gas accumulation, underground explosions,
underground fires and caving in of whole areas.
Finally, the last metric to view is the cost of relocating people from Jharia which has not been
evaluated by the Government and just half-hearted plans have been put in place. Relocating 600,00
people is not just a huge operation from a logistics point of view but also from an economic point of
view. Till now, the economic costs of relocation have never been estimated and the plans are made in
thin air with little will to implement them.

Conclusion

The Jharia Coal Field is unfortunately a great example of the marginalization and environmental
injustice that occurs in areas rich with natural resources. Trade Unions and nationalization of mines
aimed at improving efficiencies and protecting the people employed in mining have created a
monster in the form of the mafia. Today, the mafia has become the de-facto political leader of the
region exploiting the socially weaker sections of the society economically as well looting CIL and
depriving the government of revenues.

So, in a nutshell, the economic opportunity in effect had attracted the exploitation of the area spoiling
the social life of the people as had it not been the economic attractiveness of the area, we could have
expected Dhanbad to be an agricultural trade hub with significantly less crime.
Also, even if we had a strong government initially, the area could have seen some development with
the miners getting fair compensation and the fires been stopped. This would not only have improved
the living conditions of the people in the region, but also had an positive impact on the overall
growth of India.

Thus we see that that either of the 3 effects (i.e. social, economic and political) could not exist
independently of each other and to an extend reinforced each other . Though it can be thought that it
would be difficult for such a scenario to exist post nationalization with India being a welfare state of
sorts, the opposite is true in the case of Jharia as the situation has only worsened. The vicious circle
of Economic parameters impacting Political effects and social impacts worsened the situation .

The exploited social impact in itself further attracted and motivated the political class to exploit
further. One of the means to escape this vicious circle could have been fair elections but the existing
situation and mafia would not have allowed a fair election. Also, any relocation efforts are expected
to meet resistance as it would put an end to illegal mining as without miners there cannot be any
mining. This would mean an end to the endless supply of ill-gotten money for the politicians and
bureaucrats of the country and hence the lack of action.

So, One would also ponder what it needs to break the circle and to us it appears the nod on political
would impact the most i.e. a good political part has the capacity to improve upon the situation and in
our view the situation did improve in previous few years

Political
Impact

Social Economic
Impact Impact