The dark heart of India’s economic rise

Richard Orange investigates endemic corruption, from pilfering and kickbacks to mafia rackets, in the state-owned coal mines that provide almost half of India’s energy needs

The first sign of illicit industry in the West Bengal district of Raniganj is the number of bicycles wobbling precariously down its village tracks, their panniers piled to an improbable height with coal. Then there are bullock carts and the occasional truck, all carrying the same cargo.

At New Kenda Colliery, one of the underground mines owned by Coal India, the state coal monopoly, it becomes obvious where it’s all coming from. A couple of dozen blackened villagers squat over a coal stockpile the size of a football pitch, filling sack after sack by hand as a guard gazes on, his belly poking from his shabby uniform. When the coal thieves see a visitor they scatter, their faces peering out from behind a rusting, broken conveyor belt. But soon they’re back to work. ‘They give money to the guard so he looks away,’ explains Ranjit, an unemployed youth who is showing me around. ‘The ones here who are selling the coal become rich.’

The machinery at New Kenda is so ramshackle that if it wasn’t for the occasional miner trudging past, you would never believe the mine was still operating. Uday Singh, who is supposed to weigh the coal before it leaves the site, has been out of work for a year waiting for the mine’s rail system to be fixed. In what seems like a bad joke, someone has clumsily daubed ‘Regular Maintenance Prevents Accidents’ on a crumbling wall by the main shaft.

Just three hours away by Indian Railways’ air-conditioned Coalfield Express is the office of the man ultimately responsible for New Kenda. Coal India’s chairman, Partha Bhattacharyya, inhabits a very different world — the world of Kolkata’s upmarket Alipore district, where he and his banker wife live; the exclusive world of the Calcutta Club and the Tollyganj Club.