This story is produced by The Xylom, a nonprofit news outlet covering global health and environmental disparities, and co-published with Icarus Complex Magazine and Mekong Independent. Subscribe to The Xylom’s newsletter here.
Amrit Lalbhagat and his family have always relied on the forest next to their village in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh for their sustenance.
“None of us suffer from malnutrition as we source our food from the forest,” Lalbhagat tells The Xylom. He owns only a quarter of an acre of land in Mudagoan village, but he has never purchased any nuts or vegetables from the market and still uses neem twigs as toothbrushes, as his ancestors did.
He belongs to the Oraon tribe, which considers its relationship with its lands and forests to be sacred. Members of the tribe grow chironji, mangoes, and jackfruits in their farms and source mushrooms and bamboo shoots from the forest. With its wood, they build their homes, and under its shade, they honor their dead.
“We are the worshippers of the forest. Our ancestors are cremated here,” Lalbhagat says.
But this forest, which Lalbhagat and 500 other Oroan families have relied on for more than four generations, is now under threat from Gare Pelma Sector II, a coal-mining project operated by a conglomerate owned by the second-richest man in the world’s most populous country.
Billionaire Gautam Adani, the chairperson of the Adani Group, has long fostered close ties with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has steered the country towards authoritarianism and oligarchy. In 2014, Modi flew on an Adani group-owned aircraft as Prime Minister-designate, triggering a national controversy. Within Modi’s first year in office, the market value of the Adani Group rose by approximately $5.7 billion.
The Indian government had granted environmental clearance to the Gare Pelma Sector II project in July 2022. However, the National Green Tribunal quashed the clearance in January 2024 and asked the environment ministry to “re-examine the matter from the stage of conducting public consultation afresh.”
Additionally, according to India’s Forest Rights Act of 2006, forest-dwelling communities have the right to use, manage, and own certain forest lands. If any such project desired to use or manage these forest lands, the local village government, also known as the gram sabha, had to consent to the project.
“[The project] did not receive a No-Objection-Certificate from the gram sabha,” Lalbhagat says, indicating that the project is a clear violation of the tribal and forest rights.
Despite this verdict, the Indian government reissued the clearance in August 2024 without fresh public hearings.
To protect its business interests, the Adani Group engages in what Reporters Without Borders describes as a “relentless legal offensive against journalists” in India to silence press scrutiny. Now that his domestic dominance is secured, Adani is trying to establish rapport with U.S. President Donald Trump, another authoritarian and oligarch who calls Modi one of his “greatest friends”.
In November 2024, Adani made headlines after American federal prosecutors under the Biden administration accused him of committing bribery and defrauding investors based on false statements. A little more than four months after Trump’s return to the White House, the Wall Street Journal reported that Adani was trying to get the Trump administration to drop the bribery charges against him, even as he faced a probe into whether his companies were buying Iranian petrochemical products. A Reuters report on April 7 said Gautam Adani will ask a U.S. judge to dismiss the Securities and Exchange Commission’s civil fraud case linked to an alleged bribery scheme. Three weeks after the Wall Street Journal report, contractors engaged for the project uprooted nearly 5,000 trees to clear space for the Sector II project, while about 2,000 police personnel held back hundreds of tribal residents who attempted to resist the operation.
In a February 24th speech launching a nationwide protest against the U.S.-India trade deal, Rahul Gandhi, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, accused Modi of selling out the interests of his countrymen and farmers, such as the Oraon tribe, to protect himself and Adani.
“I challenge Prime Minister Modi, cancel the trade deal. If you have the guts, do it. But he cannot do that. There is pressure on him,” Gandhi said. “The threat of [the] Epstein Files is there. The case against Adani is hanging on his head.”
Tribal opposition to the Sector II project stems from decades of historical injustices these communities have faced, especially as the Raigarh district of Chhattisgarh became a cluster of coal-mining projects. These projects have already polluted the air, contaminated groundwater, and reduced the soil’s fertility for farming.
In the past decade, the Indian government re-auctioned plots of land in Raigarh to various private and public entities after a nationwide corruption scandal that cost the country billions of dollars, leading to the cancellation of previous coal mine licenses. Most of the nine contiguous plots, spread across four sectors, are owned, developed, and/or operated by four conglomerates: the Adani Group, the OP Jindal Group, the Aditya Birla Group, and the Sarda Group.
In Raigarh, there is ample scientific evidence — from both government bodies and private organisations — linking the deteriorating health and socio-economic conditions of tribes to these mining projects.
A 2017 study by the Community Environmental Monitoring and Dalit Adivasi Mazdoor Sangathan found that soil samples from a village in the region with neighboring coal mines and thermal power plants had cadmium levels 169 times higher than safe limits.
Similarly, in 2018, the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute, on behalf of the Maharashtra State Power Generation Company Limited, the owner of the Sector II mine, found contamination consistent with mining waste after conducting soil and water tests in Mudagoan and 13 other villages in the same belt, demonstrating a direct correlation between reduced yields and the existence of coal mines.
“Despite such solid evidence, government bodies are working with project proponents to green-flag the projects rather than work for people and check environmental concerns. It’s left for people to push,” says Rinchin, a land rights activist.
Since 2012, Rinchin has been supporting tribal communities on the ground, helping them take their concerns to local authorities, fight cases in court, and push for more health and environmental impact studies. Today, Raigarh’s tribals are empowered: they collect data, protest against coal projects, and petition the courts, even as they face criminal charges for their actions.
Rinchin has several charges filed against her for participating in protests, where she resisted illegal demolitions of tribals’ homes, advocated for clean air and water, and demanded implementation of Indian laws that respect environmental and tribal rights. She is currently fighting three court cases. Yet, it is largely due to this collective persistence that several government agencies were compelled to conduct these assessments in the first place.
“[The tribals] are environmental warriors, and they are facing a lot of burden. How is it that [the claims of power plant owners] are always validated?” Rinchin questions.
There are just a lot of issues at stake — health of local communities, equity issues, and issues of energy security. Are they meeting these criteria? They are not. Authorities are diluting environmental norms, preparing shoddy Environmental Impact Assessments, ignoring social and environmental impacts, equity, and justice.”
Shripad Dharmadhikary, environmental activist and researcher
Adani Enterprises has highlighted its “green” approach to mining in its sustainability reports, which involves planting trees around mining sites and replacing diesel trucks with those powered by hydrogen to reduce carbon emissions. However, given that they are extracting, processing, and distributing coal among other fossil fuels, environmental activist and researcher Shripad Dharmadhikary says their approach towards sustainability is “likely to be nothing but greenwashing or lip service.”
“Mining is one of the most disruptive interventions in the environment and one that leads to some of the most drastic modifications. Thus, sustainable mining is almost an oxymoron.”
India is supposed to be reducing its dependence on coal. It submitted two core pledges directly linked to reducing coal dependence as part of its commitment to the Paris Agreement.
The first pledge states that by 2030, 50% of India’s cumulative installed electricity capacity will come from non-fossil fuel sources, a target the Indian government claimed it has achieved as of early February; India has pledged to continue economic growth while emitting nearly half the carbon per unit of growth compared to 2005 by 2030. Alongside this, India has also committed to creating an additional carbon sink through planting forests and trees.
As a result, multiple fossil fuel extraction plans were denied by the Indian government in recent years to meet these goals.
“The recent example in Rajasthan, where approval was denied for a 3200 MW thermal power plant, since the state has strong [renewable energy] projects and plans. There is also Madhya Pradesh, where the Morena solar and storage project has created a template for other states to follow,” says Deepak Sriram Krishnan, deputy director of the energy program for the Indian division of the World Resources Institute.
Krishnan says the government should prioritize clean energy supply, improved grids and storage, and minimize the environmental and social impacts of corporate and governmental decisions. “Today’s decisions should also consider the multiple positive policy outcomes beyond the energy sector transition — in particular, improved health sector outcomes, economic development, and environmental protection.”
Yet, Raigarh’s story stands as a stark contradiction to these goals, uprooting trees for additional coal mining plants. Within the Lalbhagat family land stands a large mahua tree (Madhuca longifolia), which, besides playing a sacred role for the family, provides them with seasonal food, medicine, and income.
The mahua’s seeds, also known as dori, are rich in proteins and minerals. The family roasts the dori at home for consumption and then sells the surplus in the local market, sometimes in the form of oil and alcohol extracts.
“One mahua tree fetches Rs 10,000 ($112) a year. It is good money for us because we don’t need [a lot of] money,” Lalbhagat says.
But even these basic human needs are now threatened by coal projects that offer no benefits to the tribal communities themselves.
Globally, Indigenous communities have increasingly pushed back against mining projects to mixed results.
The Navajo and Hopi tribes of the Black Mesa Plateau in northeastern Arizona waged a successful four-decade fight against Peabody Energy’s coal mine. Tribal members documented declining spring flows and drying wells due to Peabody’s use of the Navajo Aquifer, a natural spring that is their only source of potable water and sacred within their community. They pushed tribal and federal authorities to halt the mine’s operations, and as a result, the Black Mesa mine was closed in 2005.
Now, native plants dot the former footprint of the mine, and tribal members are cautiously optimistic about having the land returned to them for grazing livestock and gathering culturally important plants.
In Australia, the Wangan and Jagalingou people are the traditional owners of the land where the Carmichael coal mine is located in Queensland’s Galilee Basin. They have been resisting a project run by Adani Enterprises — locally known as Bravus — for years. According to the tribes, the mine has exceeded its environmental limits and poses a threat of permanent and irreversible harm to the Doongmabulla Springs that support rare desert wetlands, endemic fauna species, and are important for groundwater health in the region.
Even after the Queensland government extinguished native title rights over large tracts of tribal land to clear the way for the mine, the community stood firm. “No matter what system, no matter what is going on, we’ll always be here and we just ride it out like it’s an ice age and keep moving forward,” tells Gurridyula Gaba Wunggu, a Wangan and Jagalingou custodian, to The Queenslander.
Janki Sidar, from Nagramuda village, just seven miles southeast of Mudagoan, has witnessed the harsh transformation of her community.
The village lies near the Sector IV/1 coal mine, operated by Indian conglomerate Jindal Power Limited, subsidiary of the OP Jindal Group and led by industrialist Naveen Jindal. The coal dust and slurry from the existing mine have already made their way into the village’s fields. As a result, Sidar’s yield of paddy and tomatoes is no longer what it used to be. Many residents in her village suffer from tuberculosis and respiratory diseases, which are worsened by the mining dust.
“Dust has eaten up our fields, leaving nothing to yield,” she says. “I have two kids. They get skin irritations on their hands and a cold all the time.”
For the past year, Jindal Power Limited had also been clearing trees in the area to expand its mine into Sector I. This unsettled Sidar, as the project, which had involved blasting open the land to make way for the mine, could have damaged their homes. Villagers had been pressured to relocate.
“We wouldn’t like to be relocated, but do we have a choice? What we eat is something we don’t get outside the forest,” Sidar asks.
Villagers living in areas affected by the Sector I coal mine project had been protesting in response to the Raigarh administration and Jindal Power Ltd putting together what they described as a “secret” public hearing. Protestors launched an economic blockade, blocking roads and halting the movement of vehicles, especially those carrying coal. The Xylom reached out to Adani Enterprises Limited and Jindal Power Limited on March 12. There has been no response.
A senior official from Raigarh claimed the government followed the hearing process by the book. “60% of the participants consented to the project, and following the villagers’ demands, land compensation rates were increased by 150%,” he said.
The official added that all the families asked to relocate to make way for the mine were offered employment for one family member, as well as a house, as part of the deal. “In the Gare Pelma [Sectors I and II] coal mine project — one of India’s largest coal reserves — compensation rates are up to five times the market rate.”
Yet, the grassroots pressure worked: in late December, Jindal voluntarily withdrew its application for the public hearing, and promised that “no further action will be taken in this regard until the support of the villagers is obtained.” John Lakra, Additional Chief Engineer at the Chhattisgarh Environment Conservation Board, Raipur, confirmed to The Xylom that the project remains stalled, with no further developments as of March 23, 2026.
The grassroots movement in Raigarh, which finally notched its first victory, is as powerful as the one in northeast Arizona or western Queensland. But breakthroughs like these are the outlier in India; Adani’s Sector II project still looms large.
Rinchin believes that’s not because the movements are weak, but because government agencies remain profoundly indifferent.
“People have protested, got public hearings cancelled and court orders to shut down operations, penalised companies to the tune of Rs 160 crores [$17.3 million] for violating environmental norms,” she says. “The question is: why are courts unable to get their own orders implemented, and why is the administration not safeguarding the interests of the people fighting for their land, livelihood, forests, and health?”