Deocha-Pachami Coal Mine: How ‘Development' Displaces Adivasis and Undermines Forest Rights in Bengal

The Hindu

30-04-2025

Published : Apr 30, 2025 18:39 IST - 8 MINS READ
In March 2025, an angry crowd of 300 villagers descended upon a mining site in Chanda mouza in West Bengal's Birbhum district. The word had spread that despite their protests, the Trinamool government had commenced the digging of the coal pit. And, for sure, tractors had swung into action, men hired from outside were supervising the digging, and everything was covered with a layer of red dust.
Sushil Murmu was worried. Once a staunch supporter of the Trinamool, he is now vice president of the Gram Sabha Samannya Hool Committee (GSSHC), a platform formed by the local Santhal community fighting for Adivasi rights and against land appropriation. Deeply disappointed by what he perceived to be the Trinamool's betrayal, he said, 'Mamata Banerjee claimed Ma-Maati-Manush as the Trinamool's core ideology, but they want to take away the identity of the Adivasi by taking away our forests and land. Our organisation's main goal is to ensure that the Forest Rights Act is upheld and the Adivasi are not displaced for corporate and business interests. We embody the spirit of Birsa Munda. Our ancestors have fought the British, and if required, we will carry the tradition forward. We will not let the government, which represents corporations, take away our land.'
Ashoke Soren, an active member of the organisation, echoed him: 'They promised jobs, but where are they? They promised 6,000 jobs but to date have given 500-600 people contractual employment, which has less than minimum wages and no job security. We formed this committee for the development of the area, which can happen not through coal mining but through availability and access to education and medical infrastructure. Development is not dispossession. If Mamata wants to bring development, she should build infrastructure. To date, nowhere in the country has the Adivasi seen any upliftment in the name of development after being displaced from their land.'
The Deocha-Pachami-Dewanganj-Harinsinga coal block in Birbhum district is home to traditional forest-dwellers. According to the 2011 Census, Mohammad Bazar Block, where the mine is located, has a population of 18.9 per cent Scheduled Tribes or Adivasi, as against the State's 5.8 per cent. In Chanda village, where mining has begun, Adivasis constitute approximately 71.56 per cent of the population.
Announced in 2021 as a welcome initiative towards the public good of generating employment and State revenue through non-renewable energy resources, and a signal of Bengal's changing stance towards industrialisation and wealth generation, the project came to a standstill at one point with stiff opposition from the local Adivasi community.
Mamata Banerjee's meteoric rise to power and toppling of the CPI(M)-led Left Front government were premised on the promise of a people-centric governance, with special attention to the rural population. Most of India's social movements have sprung up in protest against the acquisition of land and displacement of the indigenous population; in fact, the last few decades have seen an explosion of state-led land expropriation for private investors, with little regard to the rights, entitlements and access of communities to critical resources.
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The evocative slogan of the Trinamool in 2011, 'Ma, Mati, Manush' (Mother, Land, Humankind), powerfully critiqued the logic of capital accumulation and resonated in Bengal with the assurance of the return of power to the agrarian community. However, it was always tempered with equal reassurance to investors that Bengal would embark on a path of industrialisation. This supposed balance between industrialisation and the continuing empowerment of agrarian communities has now come under considerable strain.
Commoditisation of land
The Deocha-Pachami project is spread over 3,294 acres of land, including forest land, government-vested land, and privately owned land that supports agricultural production and human settlements. Land has become an increasingly contested commodity, with rapid urbanisation, real estate development, industrialisation, and mining. The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill (RFCTLARR), passed in 2013, made certain changes but continued with state-led land acquisition for privatisation.
However, it introduced some significant changes, including obtaining the consent of land losers, as well as increased compensation of four and two times the market rate in rural and urban areas, respectively. Along with the Forest Rights Act of 2006, which sought to remedy the historical injustice of displacement faced by traditional forest-dwellers by extending to them the rights of tenure and the powers to manage and conserve forests, it was meant to prevent, at least partially, the pauperisation of indigenous/agrarian communities. However, the Deocha-Pachami project flouts both in spirit and content.
Mamata's ascendancy to power with the promise of 'Ma, Maati, Manush' invoked land as the mother, which needed territorial safeguarding from rapacious capitalism, and putting people at the centre, instead of profit. The Deocha-Pachami mining project is part of larger trends in India, where forest land is turned into environmental dystopias and forest-dwellers into a pool of precarious, footloose labour, migrating to various parts of the country to eke out a living.
The anti-dispossession movement that brought the Trinamool to power, the exacting grassroots movements that mobilised public opinion and catapulted Singur and Nandigram to national news, the emergence of leadership at various levels, particularly from platforms formed by unwilling farmers, the involvement of Kolkata-based activists and intellectuals all turned the movement into a textbook case of people's resistance to the State's exploitative practice, market-oriented growth, and liberalised development.
Some are, therefore, surprised at the ideological and political turn the party has taken now. A party that once stood by farmers against rapacious capital accumulation, is now, a decade and a half later, in cahoots with the idea of development that has become synonymous with industrialisation, urbanisation, and dispossession. Currently, Deocha-Pachami is under heavy surveillance, and police presence enforces control through tracking of movements and intimidation.
Anuradha Talwar from the Paschim Banga Khet Majoor Samity, who was part of the anti-land acquisition movement in Singur and Nandigram, talked of the pervading atmosphere of fear reminiscent of Nandigram: 'The local Trinamool members prevented members of Kolkata-based rights groups and journalists from entering the area, accusing them of creating trouble. We went there to speak to the villagers, and within 30 minutes, WhatsApp messages were circulated that a group of Maoists had entered the villages. The officer in charge of the Mohammed Bazaar police station stopped our vehicle when we were leaving to confront us about our intentions. It is the same atmosphere of intimidation and illegality [that was] enforced by the CPI(M) in Nandigram.'
While in Nandigram, after police firing, Section 144 was imposed, in Deocha-Pachami, there has been no such legal action. Instead, the ruling party depends on the party-police-administration nexus to achieve its end without drawing traction by invoking the law. There is no freedom of movement, the police have set up camps in the villages, residents seen talking or meeting publicly are accosted, and no one can enter the villages. The Internet was blocked for three days to prevent any mobilisation.
Jui Koley, a law student and an anti-land acquisition activist, drew attention to the increasing confusion created by the Trinamool to break the movement against the project. 'Mamata, in a recent press conference, announced that the government is not acquiring land; they are buying it and, therefore, the consent of the gram sabha and other clauses specified by the RFCTLARR are irrelevant. The party members and other administrative officials have also been telling the villagers that this will be an underground coal mine, so there will be no question of displacement. If that is the case, why are they trying to convince villagers to give up land, and why is there such an environment of intimidation and surveillance?'
From February 2025, soon after bhumi puja, the digging started in the government-vested lands. Some villagers assert that it is forest land, but on the website, overnight, it was classified as vested land to pre-empt any resistance. The digging to remove the overburden, that is, the thick layer of basalt guarding the coal reserve in 12 acres of land in Chanda mouza, is clearly designed for open-pit mining.
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Ajoy Murmu, a local villager, was sceptical of the government's promise of development. 'We don't need coal mines; we need schools, hospitals, functioning primary health care centres. We are Adivasis, and we make a living off the land and its forests; if the government takes that away from us, we will lose our livelihood, identity and way of life. If they want to bring development to the area, they should strengthen social infrastructure, not open coal mines. This will only profit the rich, will not bring anything to us.'
Sushil Murmu spoke of jal-jangal-jomi (water-forest-land) as the right of traditional forest-dwellers. 'The identity of the Adivasi is tied to land and forests. If Mamata wants to improve the lives of the Adivasi, let her implement social security schemes. GSSHC is working closely with the gram sabhas to ensure schools function, primary health centres are staffed, and midday meals and anganwadi schemes are efficiently implemented. Labelling us as Maoists and troublemakers is the government's strategy to break the movement against illegal land grabbing,' he said.
In West Bengal, land wars have once again taken centre stage in the political life of the incumbent government. A party already struggling with the rap of corruption, scams, and lack of clean governance, the Trinamool is no longer associated with Ma-Maati-Manush but with development that is profit-centric rather than people-centric. Given that Mamata's vote bank remains minority communities, including Muslims and Adivasis, particularly against the BJP's incursion, it remains to be seen how the abandonment of the party's core promise would pan out electorally in 2026.
Panchali Ray is Associate Professor in Anthropology and Gender Studies and Associate Dean (Academics) at Krea University.