A risky place to live

It's a risky place to live, with poor air quality, underground fires and splitting or sinking land. Families have been facing relocation for years, and Anjali fears the mine and fires will one day displace her family and separate her from her friends. She says some of the homes in their village, Ghansadih, have already been damaged or destroyed by the land subsidence and fires from decades of large-scale mining activity. Bharat Coking Coal Limited did not respond to NPR's request for comment.

Opencast coal mining, in which the rocks are extracted from pits and not tunneled mines, can destroy the land and cause significant air pollution. Coal accounts for about 70% of electricity generation in India, which is the third-biggest global emitter of greenhouse gases. One study estimates that in 2018, more than 30% of the country's annual deaths for people over the age of 14, as well as one in five deaths worldwide, were attributable to air pollution from fossil fuels.