Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the historical trajectory of coal-land and labour relations entangled with the changing socio-materiality of coal over different regimes of state and capital, and its contribution to the (re) production of coal geography – which has critical implications for the post-coal future.

Paper long abstract:

India's longstanding presence of coal with its multi-faceted socio-materiality suggests incredible transformative power and complex configurations of capital, state, land and labour relations. This paper examines the historical trajectory of coal-land and labour relations entangled with the changing socio-materiality of coal over different regimes of state and capital, and its contribution to producing space – the (re) production of coal geography – which has critical implications for the post-coal future. Combining historical research and long-term fieldwork in one of the highest coal-producing regions – Talcher in the state of Odisha, the paper argues that coal-land relations are critical in producing the labour regime and coal geography in India. While the coal-land relations produced semi-proletariats and enclaves during the colonial period, a temporary transition to the formalization of coal workers, proletarianization, and the emergence of company towns defined the coal geography during Nehruvian Developmentalism. This paper conceptualizes the contemporary coal geographies as ‘precarious coal geography’ since the liberalization in the 1990s, as it combines the colonial legacy of the enclave, reminiscent of Nehruvian ‘company towns’ and precarity featuring environmental and bio-physical depletion of bodies, escalated socio-economic inequalities, labour hierarchies, and varied forms of exploitation. The paper further argues that uneven labouring bodies are arranged as permanent workers, subcontracted and casual wage workers (besides invisibilized care providers) for the everyday functioning of the precarious coal geography. The paper emphasizes unevenness produced in the precarious coal geography and, poses the risk of reproduction and escalation during coal closures and transitions.