Chinmayi Shalya, Ishita Kapoor, Sandeep Pai, Tikam Singh Banjara
The Ministry of Coal in 2024 acknowledged that India has 341 ‘abandoned/discontinued’ coal mines, of which 147 will have to be closed. In January 2025, the ‘Guidelines for preparation of Mining Plan and Mine Closure Plan for Coal and Lignite Mines’ were amended to include the concept of ‘just transformation’ for local communities around coal mines to address ‘the social, economic, and environmental challenges associated with mine closure activities’ and allocate a proportion of the escrow fund for it.
These two developments have finally mainstreamed the concern about ageing coal regions, planning for eventual reserve exhaustion in high producing regions and ensuring that the local coal dependent communities undergo the transition from the coal economy in a “just and
equitable” manner.
In this context, we have developed the Coal Transition Vulnerability Index (CTVI) as a tool to understand differential vulnerabilities of India’s 52 coal districts. The CTVI provides a ranking to help understand which districts are and will be most vulnerable to coal transition.