India’s coal dependency crisis: How neoliberal energy policies and climate denial collide with global decarbonisation deadlines
Original framing: “India may need to raise coal power capacity as demand surges, official says - Reuters” — Reuters (via Google News)
The framing erases Indigenous resistance to coal mining, such as the ongoing struggles of the Hasdeo Aranya forests in Chhattisgarh, home to the Baiga and Gond tribes, who have waged legal and nonviolent protests since 2015. Their worldview treats forests as living entities (*Jungle Bachao Andolan*), a perspective absent from corporate and state narratives. The Supreme Court’s 2021 order to halt mining in Hasdeo Aranya was a rare legal victory, yet it remains overshadowed by mainstream media’s focus on 'energy security.'
India’s coal crisis is not a technical or economic problem but a political one, where corporate lobbying, historical inertia, and neoliberal energy policies collide with global climate imperatives.
The framing of 'demand surges' obscures the agency of Indigenous communities, the legacy of colonial industrialisation, and the technical feasibility of a renewable transition—all of which are actively suppressed by fossil fuel interests. Solutions lie in dismantling corporate capture through energy democracy, enforcing just transitions with climate finance, and leveraging legal and artistic movements to expose the absurdity of coal dependency in a solar-rich nation. The trickster element here is the deliberate misdirection: what appears as an inevitable market force is actually a constructed crisis, propped up by actors who benefit from delay. The path forward requires restoring marginalised voices, historical accountability, and cross-cultural learning from nations that have successfully transitioned—all while naming the power structures that profit from the status quo.