India's coal rush
Posted by Ngo jobs
on Sunday, 28 October 2012
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India's coal rush
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The country's dependence on coal is leaving a dirty trail of violence, landlessness and poverty. |
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India is hungry for energy. Over 173
power plants, all of them coal-fired, will be built to power the
nation's high-tech industries and booming cities.
This is accelerating an ongoing “coal rush” which has put our
dirtiest fossil fuel at the heart of India’s breakneck growth, and could
soon make a single state, Andhra Pradesh, one of the world’s top 20
carbon emitters.
But not everyone is convinced that this boom is a blessing. Physicist
and businessman, Asoke Agarwal believes that India is heading for
disaster:
"It is time that we think of a more austere way of living. That was
what India was famous for earlier. Today we have just aped the West. The
West has gone at a speed at which they are destroying themselves, and
we are following them. So it is high time that we realise that there is
something drastically wrong with our economy."
On 101 East, filmmaker Orlando de Guzman takes a dark
journey through the coal belt of Jharkhand and West Bengal, to look at
the winners and losers of this booming industry. |
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Labels: International news