Indian Coal Mines

The current Channel 4 series Unreported World is proving a useful (but depressing) source of development economics material.

Last night’s episode looked in detailed at the social and geographical consequences of coal mining in North East India. To fuel Indian economic growth traditional agricultural communities have been destroyed as the hunt for coal has taken hold. Villagers have tried to adapt to these changing economic conditions (moving from agriculture to raw material extraction) with limited success and there are some shocking scenes where families have dug their own mine shafts in order to provide sufficient income to live off.

State-owned Bharat Coking Coal Limited (BCCL) is the company that is charged with extracting the valuable resource from the area but the negative externalities of their extraction process is clear for all to see- pollution, health problems, villages destroyed to name but a few.

As with last week’s episode their are video clips available on the website.