An important coal field burns uncontrollably in India and cannot be extinguished – children working in the area in toxic conditions

DHANBAD / JHARIA The sight is hot but conventional at the Jharia coalfield in eastern India.

At dusk, the charcoal vein glows red on the roadside. The heat radiates depressingly. Vehicles drive past the meter just meters away.

Jharia burns uncontrollably underground and the flames reach the surface of the earth in places. It is practically impossible to put out the fire.

Toxic gases are released into the air from coal fires, causing health problems for humans. A lot of methane also escapes from open pit mines into the atmosphere. It warms the climate.

The fires began more than a hundred years ago as a result of reckless mining.

Despite the constant fire, the poor people in the area are mining coal by hand because they have no better livelihood. It is illegal to collect coal from mines.

A flat tap is heard from the pit dug at the bottom of the abandoned opencast mine. Mother of five children Dhanbarti Devi mining coal from the pit wall.

Coal fires have not yet spread to this area.

– If the cops come, they’ll take our coal. That’s when we lose our day’s work, Devi says.

Working conditions are harsh. The air is dusty. The sun is reindeering. The temperature swells to about 40 degrees.

– The work is dangerous. The walls of the pit can collapse at any time, Devi notes.

When enough coal has come off, Devi and a relative Kumila collect the pieces in baskets and carry them over their heads up the slope of the open pit to flat ground.

There’s Devi’s nine-year-old daughter Sharda Kumari helps to pack the coals in sacks.

– I don’t like this job, but what can I do about it, Sharda Kumari says.

Coal drives the Indian economy and brings bread to coal collectors and millions of other Indians. The price is that burning coal in power plants warms the Earth’s climate.

India, with a population of about 1.4 billion, currently generates more than 70 percent of its electricity from coal. The energy solutions of the giant state are important for the whole world.

Last fall at the UN climate summit in Glasgow, the prime minister Narendra Modi promised that by 2030, India will produce 50 percent of its energy from renewable sources.

Despite an ambitious goal, India may have to nearly double its coal production over the next decade.

The country aims to be carbon neutral by 2070.

Dhanbarti Devi sells the coal he collects to young men on duty at the open pit. They are carbon brokers.

One of the youngsters is 20 years old Sagar Khan. He says he has worked as a carbon broker since he was 14 years old.

According to Khan, brokers pay collectors 10 to 20 rupees for a carbon bag and sell it to users for 100 to 200 rupees.

Khan transports coal bags on a motorcycle to villages where he walks around people’s front doors trading in coal.

Brokers ’profits sound relatively high, but their work involves costs and risks.

Fuel has become more expensive and it is difficult to transport heavy sacks on a motorcycle. Police may stop on the way and demand money. According to Khan, the police are forced to pay to get out of the situation.

– We have often been chased by the police, but we have escaped, Khan says.

Not everyone is always lucky. Khan says one of his co-workers once went to jail for three months when he was caught by police.

According to Khan, he has 200-250 rupees left in his hand, or about 2.5-3 euros a day. He doesn’t like his job, but he has to do it because his family is very poor.

Dhanbad, with more than one million inhabitants in the state of Jharkhand, is called the carbon capital of India. The Jharia coalfield is right next to the city.

On the edge of Dhanbad, a narrow dirt road separates a small village bad from one open pit. At the bottom and on the edges of it are the flames of coal fires. Smoke floats above the mine.

A 40-year-old mother living in the village Shuma Devi says BCCL, the mining company that operates the adjacent quarry, has ordered them to move out due to coal fires. They can’t afford it.

– Toxic gases are hovering from the mine to our home. My children have health problems, Devi says.

Some of the neighbors have received grants and moved elsewhere. For some reason, no compensation has been paid to all residents.

In Dhanbad, BCCL office, the company’s regional director Soumen Chatterjee notes that Jharia is not a safe place to live.

Carbon collectors die in accidents and the toxic gases from coal fires cause serious illness.

Chatterjee says the inhabitants of Jharia should be relocated so that coal can be dug under the villages. Thus, fires could be extinguished when they could no longer spread to new coal vessels.

According to him, after the removal of coal, the mines would be covered, the land would be leveled and new vegetation would be planted in the area. Then people could return to the area.

The mining boss estimates that the operation would take 10 to 15 years. In his view, this is the only solution that works.

– Otherwise, the fire gradually spread throughout the region within 10 to 20 years. Living will be dangerous and coal will be destroyed, Chatterjee predicts.

He says many coal vessels have already been destroyed in fires over the years.

India’s economy is modernizing and industrializing. The construction of new buildings and infrastructure will increase the need for energy enormously.

Dhanbad Professor of Energy Ram Bhattacharjee estimates that India can only reduce coal use after 2050.

– Due to the country’s growing economy, we need to almost double our current annual coal production from 700 million tonnes to about 1,300-1,400 million tonnes by 2030-2035, says Bhattacharjee.

He works as a professor of mining technology at IIT Dhanbad University, formerly known as the Indian Mining School.

Bhattacharjee is part of a group of experts that will explain to the Indian government the scenarios for coal use for the coming decades.

According to Bhattacharje, in the future, India must make mining less harmful to the environment and the climate. Coal, for example, needs to be mined from underground mines instead of opencast mines.

When methane from an opencast mine escapes into the sky, methane can be recovered from underground mines and utilized for energy production, Bhattacharjee says.

At the heart of India’s energy policy is the abundant increase in solar energy.

– There is no shortage of sunlight. A different issue is technology related to energy recovery and especially storage. That is the biggest challenge, Bhattacharjee says.

He estimates that within 10-15 years, the biggest problems with renewable energy storage technology have been resolved.

Indian energy companies also plan to use solar power to produce large amounts of green hydrogen. It can be used, for example, to produce zero-emission fuel and replace carbon in steel production.

Bhattacharjee says that while coal will play a major role for decades to come, the Indian government has already begun planning a shift from coal power to other energy sources.

The transition involves finding new livelihoods for people in coal areas like Jharia. It’s a big deal.

Dhanbarti Devi, who collects coal from an abandoned mine in Jharia, says he would not want his children to have to work as coal collectors.

Devi’s goal is for children to get a good education. She has already put her 12-year-old daughter into a tailoring school.

But educating children costs money, and that’s why he has to collect carbon.

– If there is no other option, we will go to work in the construction industry. But during the rainy season, no construction work is available. We will continue to collect as long as there is enough coal, Devi says.

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