What is it?

More than forty years after the government nationalised the Indian coal industry, coal mines in India are now open to not only Indian private firms but also to global players. In his virtual address in June, the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, announced the participation of 41 coal blocks in an auction. These blocks, spread over five Indian states, are to be in a competition to be bid over by private firms, Indian and global.

The following excerpt is from a press release by the Press Information Bureau dated 12th March 2020:

With the amendments, environment and forest clearances along with other approvals and clearances shall automatically get transferred to the new owners of mineral blocks for a period of two years from the date of grant of new lease. This will allow new owners to continue with hassle free mining operations. During the period, they may apply for the fresh licence beyond the period of two years.

The Prime Minister seemed to be very confident about the potential success of this auction, despite the failure of the few coal mine auctions in the past since the reversal of the Coal Mines (Nationalisation) Act.

This announcement comes in close succession to the recently introduced campaign, Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan (Self-sufficient India Journey), another brainchild of the PM in the wake of the current Covid-19 pandemic. In fact, Modi talked about this same campaign and the values associated with it in his auction announcement, labelling the coal auction as “a major step in cutting down India’s imports and becoming self-reliant in the energy sector”.

Which brings us to — what are these imports he is talking about? India is the second-biggest producer of coal in the world, coming in after China. Logic says it should also be the second-biggest exporter. Well, it is a little more complicated than that. India’s domestic steel production has increased by 36% while coking coal (crucial to manufacture steel) imports have risen by nearly 65%. The calorific value of the average Indian coal is much lower than what most Indian industries are designed to run on. Most of this lower quality coal is used in India’s thermal plants (which is super inefficient). India burns around 750 grams of coal to generate 1 kWh of electricity, whereas the USA burns 450 grams for the same. The deficit in the metallurgical industries is filled with (you guessed it) the high amount of coal imports each year.

Let’s rewind

Ever since the origin of coal mining in India by the East India Company, both public and private firms have taken part in coal activities. Towards 1973, however, a barrage of reasons pushed private players out of favour to the government. Unscientific and dated mining methods were practised. Mineworkers were subject to extremely poor and degrading conditions. The mining situation worsened, and in 1973, the Indian government decided to put private players out of the race with the Coal Mines (Nationalisation) Act, 1973.

Domestic consumption has always been the end goal of commercial coal mining in India, even when the act of 1973 was reversed and private firms were allowed back into the game.

On the 20th February 2018, the CCEA flagged off the entry of private firms to in the commercial coal mining industry in India. Since then, a slew of reforms has led to the capstone moment of the latest announcement: the government will be inviting firms to mine coal blocks as per their discretion.

Win-win situation: for whom?

The Prime Minister called this auction a win-win situation. The question here is: for whom?

The government seems to be primarily focused on economic benefits with this new move in the coal arena. India’s coal output for 2019–20 stands at 729.10 MT, having grown 0.05%. According to Prime Minister, Indian states will earn extra revenue, and employment opportunities would increase by 2.8 lakhs with a peak production of 225 MT by 2025–2026 from these new mines. Of course, all these sound pretty idealistic.

The wins

The bill comes into play in an extremely crucial situation. The lockdown to keep the COVID-19 outbreak at bay has led to massive unemployment and has brought entire supply chains to halt. By opening up the sector, the government achieves two-fold benefits —the first being employment. Being a labour-intensive operation, coal mining is bound to increase employment opportunities by leaps and bounds. Secondly, local production. As mentioned before India’s production, exports and imports don’t match up. By privatising coal, local production would get a boost, as well as the expansion of infrastructure. As a result, India would be less dependent on the currently vulnerable supply chains that bring coal from Southeast Asia. Most importantly, reliance on China would dip, with whom trade relations are under duress at the moment.

The dark side

For every advantage, the question must be asked — at what cost? Some of the coal blocks lie in parts of dense forests and even culturally engraved localities. For the mining and production to begin, those conducting operations will have to uproot not just 25 to 30 lakh trees, but also the communities in the vicinity of these identified coal blocks, and relocate them without their consent. Almost 20,000 families will be displaced in Odisha, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, as per the official estimates by these states.

Possibly, the strongest and much-overlooked impact will be on the environment. Air and water biomes are going to face the full force of the new mining ventures. Washeries that clean the coal and enable its use in various industries, dirty the nearby water bodies. The fly ash from burnt coal lingers in the skies. Furthermore, toxic fumes of sulphur dioxide from underground mining pollute the atmosphere and contribute to rising global temperatures. In a rapidly warming world where countries are shifting to clean energy, this move by the government to open up new coal activity definitely creates a paradox, a throwback loop of sorts. Only a significant cut on the global coal usage can make the Paris Agreement’s goal of a maximum two degrees celsius warmth a success by 2030.

It is also worth considering that not all coal processing plants are in close proximity to coal blocks. Currently, a network of rail rakes transports coal across Jharkhand, Chattisgarh and Orissa, and even across the country to power plants. Many rakes are under consideration for expansion as well. Recently CIL announced an e-auction aimed at firms who have so far relied on imports. The minimum bid quantity is 25,000 tonnes for firms using road transportation, while it is 50,000 tonnes for those using rail transportation.

The highlighted pitch for coal privatisation has the potential to absorb the countless people left unemployed during the pandemic once they get a go-ahead, but many are without any immediate employment during these critical times. Moreover, once the coal blocks are privatised, workers cannot form unions which typically ensure safety guidelines and fair wages. This is often observed with construction workers, where the pay can drop below the minimum wage. This was the reason why coal was nationalised in the first place, and many trade unions currently oppose the recent reforms. Will history repeat itself?

The politics of it

Being the dominant central political powers in India, the Congress and the BJP have made their share of questionable decisions regarding the environment, with Congress’s Coalgate and the latter’s new draft of EIA 2020. Time and again, it shows that the Indian government looks for quick fixes to the economic situation, undermining the heavy dependency on the environmental state. At this point, what we can do about the EIA 2020 draft is to email the authorities and voice our concerns.

Coal dependency could be controlled, and not privatised unless the government puts forth ethical and environmental restrictions to mitigate the abuse of power by corporations for profit.

Since 2014, the Central government has been unwinding the laws that aimed to protect the environment. Using COVID-19 situation to justify these actions without any riders, and stating that the moves will benefit the economic condition of the country sound like a quick fix that may prove to be detrimental in the long term.

In conclusion

The arguments supporting coal mining falls short with deeper explorations on the impact and alternatives. In terms of power generation, power from solar beats coal on per unit tariff and in addition, it’s more expensive to build a new coal plant compared to a wind or solar plant. Furthermore, global trends keep indicating that these “green-collar” jobs in installing and maintenance of solar and wind could employ more people than jobs in the coal industry do, with a better health and safety outlook as well. Upskilling our labour force in these avenues is far more crucial than locking them into a declining industry. If this high volume of supply is followed by price reduction, it could pose a major hurdle for the transition to renewables. Offsetting coal for power production leaves ample enough from current production for our industrial heat applications thus smoothing out the transition from a labour perspective. After all, employment is crucial, and so is dignified labour.

Illustrations by Kaushani Majumder

A canary in the coal mine was originally published in loop.climate on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

So let us set the scene for you.

It’s a warm May day in 2019. As five young designers, we were soaking in the post-final jury happiness. As the fact of being graduates slowly sank in, our thoughts slowly turned to the wonderful utopia of the future. Where anything seemed possible. Well, if you’re a fresh designer then ‘anything’ usually means one of two things: a standard desk job, eternally rendering or … unemployment?

Dreading both options, we decided to do some kite-flying. If only we could find a place that enabled exploration not dictated by the whims of a client. If only there was a fantastic, cutting-edge multidisciplinary set-up that allowed exploration, went beyond the cut-and-dried way of doing things, somewhere junior designers have a say, where people mattered. A place where climate change and sustainability were more than just buzzwords, that crop up during conceptualization only to disappear later under ‘budget constraints’.

If only…

The more we talked about this, the more it seemed like a distant, idealistic dream. The common agreement we all had was the importance of keeping climate and people at the core of our process, and not proceed with an intent to make profits right off the bat. Looking around the room, we realised this was an assembly of two product designers, one communication designer, one animator, and one exhibition designer — at least, that’s what we graduated as.

Today, we like to introduce ourselves as LOOP, League of Ordinary People, which just goes to show that these divisions of design ‘streams’ don’t really have to mean much. The coming together of supposed different inlets of design, with a common concern for climate change happened over the course of a year and endless cups of coffee.

Along the lines of this short exchange between Rocket and Star Lord, our interest in the climate space is driven by a simple belief: we are responsible for the state of the planet. Our fresh-out-of-college idealism helped distill the conversation into an action plan, or rather a conversation plan. Don’t be mistaken, the starry-eyed visions eventually gave way. This isn’t our full-time job, but it does take double the amount of thinking and planning.

LOOP believes in the power of art and design to start and sustain conversations related to climate change and searches for ways to channel those conversations into actions.

As a design collective, we are in search of people-sized solutions for planet-sized problems. One of the major anchors for LOOP is weaving these conversations into everyday life, not just engaging with them as shrill morning news headlines and forgetting about them by lunch.

The problem at hand

It’s understandable that there is a lack of motivation to sustain public attention towards a 2-degree rise in temperature when there are far more immediate issues that crop up on a daily basis (shout out to 2020 for…well, getting to August). It seems so distant, doesn’t it? However, study after study has linked many of these immediate calamities to climate change. It’s been proven many times that the effects of these changing patterns are going to be long term, and do not impact every stratum of society the same way. What makes this even more demotivating is that issues related to the environment and climate crisis are often framed as if it is the responsibility for individuals to take care of it all — but that’s simply not true. We could bombard you with evidence that lists the 100 largest polluters, or direct you to the hundreds of ways that firms (with squeaky-clean CSR campaigns) are contributing to the problem.

The apocalypse seems unthinkable in terms of time and space. If you’re far enough from the problem, there isn’t enough bandwidth in your daily schedule to think about the melting polar icecaps or the burning forests. Although, if you’ve been paying attention, now the problem lies just around the corner, and you will soon hear it ring your doorbell. Within the last decade, we have seen all our metropolitan cities getting adversely affected. Be it the rising air pollution in Delhi, the droughts in Chennai, floods in Kerala or the cyclones in Kolkata and Maharashtra (this is just the tip of the iceberg…which is also melting). This doesn’t even begin to address the situation in areas that aren’t as heavily covered by the media. This blindspot magically evades any attention from the daily yammering of breaking ‘news’ stories.

Light at the end of the tunnel (?)

We won’t pretend we have a solution — and that’s the point. There is no single solution to this. All of this — the causes, effects and the opinions are stuck in a loop. That’s why we believe it is extremely important to step out of our individual bubbles and recognize these loops. If we are to go one step at a time and aim to be a little better today than we were yesterday, we need to sustain our efforts over time. Sign that petition, read that (boring?) article, investigate till you find questions that nobody seems to be asking — and get more people involved.

What is LOOP doing?

TBH, anything we can (cough, cough multidisciplinary). One of many first-attempts is to de-jargonize the conversation by breaking down the anthropogenic-climate-emergency-xyz into smaller chunks that will be freshly delivered to your inbox as soon as we have a semi-coherent idea of what’s going on.

As long as it keeps the conversation going, and involves more voices to participate, we’re game. We have been treating every initiative as an experiment, learning as we go. We’re here to surprise you and ourselves.

We sincerely hope that our post-graduation pipe-dream evolves, and we need you to join us. Or we’ll join you. We’re flexible that way — from conversations to collaborations about things you think should gain traction.

Meanwhile, here are some links to get started:

• Bloomberg Global Warming Simulator
• NASA Climate Time Machine
• What is India’s climate challenge?
• Climate Crash Course by the NY Times

Every loop has a beginning was originally published in loop.climate on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.