Coal criminality: ‘Pilfering’, extortion and corruption for national energy security

Abstract

India’s central-eastern coal region is often depicted as lawless; large numbers of poor people ‘pilfer’ coal from unguarded locations as a livelihood; court judgements and media depictions highlight the role of coal in widespread national corruption; and Bollywood depicts the area as dominated by violent gangs who use hired guns to extort profit. In light of narratives of the coal sector as dominated by criminality, this paper draws on long-term ethnographic research at one major coalfield in eastern India to unpack seemingly oppositional depictions. The picture which emerges is of a key national energy resource where a fluid set of actors collaborate, but also fight for control, in carefully calibrated forms of rent extraction over coal. While most people in the area access illicit coal as part of daily struggles to get by, key actors are able to ensure significant profiteering from coal extraction, trade and transport, while allowing overall coal extraction to continue to expand. It is by analysing the interlinkages, overlaps and forms of competition in coalfield rent extraction, that the fraught politics of the region including its neglect of local livelihoods and environments become understandable. This uneasy expansion of coal provision for national energy security appears preferred to rule-based governance of the coal region. Recent changes indicate, however, a closer top-down collaboration between the state and its preferred business partners in monopolising coal profits.