Socio-Economic Development in India's Jharkhand: An Analysis of the Influence of Coal Mining

The common rhetoric leading up to the bifurcation of the states of Jharkhand and Bihar in November of 2000 was that the government of Bihar was exploiting natural resources from the region in which indigenous, or adivasi, Jharkhandis inhabited. By extension, it is believed that the region’s continued underdevelopment has been exacerbated by the selective allocation of state benefits and services, meant for the region’s disenfranchised adivasis, by interest groups outside these social parameters. Anti-tribal policies fueled the Jharkhandi movement for political and socio-economic emancipation of the adivasis in the Chotanagpur region (Jharkhand) in defining their own autonomous state. Given that Jharkhandis gained independence from Bihar in 2000 with the explicit desire to control extraction of the region’s natural resources, most critically its mineral resources, it is helpful to look at both states to determine if the coal mining districts (which are found in Jharkhand) experience a statistically lower measure of socio-economic development than those where coal mining is absent. If the coal mining districts in Jharkhand show a pattern of low development in key socio-economic indicators, then it may help support the theory proposed here that coal mining is directly prohibitive of Jharkhand’s socio-economic development. Several scholars put forth that the common rhetoric on how the mining sector, while bringing not only employment but development and economic growth to mineral-rich regions in India, is unfounded. Given their findings, it is reasonable to question the contribution of coal mining to under-development in the mineral-rich state of Jharkhand. This paper contributes a critical analysis of the effects of coal mining specifically to under-development in the region, and establishes a strong corollary relationship between coal mining and less-developed districts in Jharkhand. The quantitative substance of this research presents in-depth statistical and spatial analyses of how coal mining relates to socio-economic indicators of development at the block level in the state of Jharkhand, India. However, block-level data of Bihar were also collected and used in a cross-sectional comparison to glean significance from the relationships of under-development and mining in the broader region.The socio-economic indicators for examining under-development are used in this study as outcome variables. Access to educational and health facilities and practitioners are important indicators as they directly impact the health and welfare of the population and are therefore useful proxies for under-development. In addition, the literacy rate and incidence of chronic illness are included to give nuance to the measures of educational and medical facilities and practitioners, as the mere presence or absence of a facility is not a perfect measure of performance. Also relevant are instances of under-employment in highly productive sectors of the economy and a reliance on other, less productive ones such as agriculture. Employment and agricultural productivity is complicated by the process of forest or crop land degradation for the development of mines and other state projects. For these reasons, it is important to discuss types of employment and land diversion as proxies for poverty and under-development.It is worth noting that a significant body of the literature supporting this paper discusses tribal, or adivasi, rural communities as separate and distinct socio-economic entities, and have arguably been disproportionally affected for a variety of reasons. This paper does not diversify the rural and urban classes and caste distinctions, as discriminatory development policy “has been sector- and region-based, not ethnicity-based.” Rather, a summary of the findings on this topic is worth an inclusion in the literary review.