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Al Jazeera

Priyanka Shankar

‘They stole our jobs and life’: Anger and desperation in India’s coal belt

Coal Al Jazeera India Valeria Mongelli West Bengal Mining Narendra Modi ECL

Amar Baran Paul, a retired ECL employee, with his 29-year-old disabled son in the yard of their house in Harishpur, West Bengal [Valeria Mongelli/Al Jazeera]

West Bengal and Jharkhand, India – Amar Baran Paul can never forget how the ground below him shook and more than 25 houses around him collapsed four years ago in Harishpur town in eastern India’s West Bengal state.

Harishpur is located near the Madhabpur opencast coal mine — where coal is extracted from the surface of the ground and not by digging the ground — operated by Eastern Coalfield Limited (ECL). It is in the Asansol-Raniganj coal belt in West Bengal’s Paschim Bardhaman district, about a six-hour drive from the state capital, Kolkata.

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