Between Legitimacy and Illegality: Informal Coal Mining at the Limits of Justice

Commonly presented as arising from poor policing and corruption, and as destroying the environmental commons, "illegal" production and marketing of coal is a significant aspect of everyday life in eastern India. Representations of illegality hide unpleasant social realities of the coal mining tracts: poor environmental performance of the state-owned mining sector, social disruption and displacement of communities, and a general decay in the traditional subsistence base. This paper works through the complex layers of mining laws and investigates whether the laws protect the interests of the disadvantaged. It offers a rethinking of what causes and constitutes illegality when a large number of people's livelihoods depend on this kind of mining.