Human geography

India’s coal reserves, fourth largest in the world, provide it with a cheap source of energy. However, the mining of coal causes severe damage to the environment:

• Pollution due to exposure of mining waste to air and water.
• Coal mining results in methane emissions, a powerful greenhouse gas.
• Fires from underground mines can burn for years, releasing smoke containing CO₂, CO, NOx, SO₂ etc.
• Deforestation when trees are cut down or burned for clearing the way for a coal mine.

Despite the damage caused by coal mining, it is expected to contribute the dominant share to India’s electricity production for decades to come. Even with annual growth rates above 10%, the share of renewable sources in India is unlikely to reach even 10% of the energy mix before 2040. (Solar energy still provides only about 1 per cent of the electricity generated in the country).

India’s reliance on coal is expected to persist even in 2040s, with an envisaged share of 42%-50% in energy mix. A lower growth trajectory of renewable energy in view of the challenges and uncertainty of prices, storage costs, grid connectivity and parity make it over-ambitious to expect them to be central for India’s development.  

Cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, Mumbai, Delhi-NCR etc grew significantly and fastidiously in the last two decades owing to growth in the IT-related services sector. The employment provided by the IT sector agrees with middle-class values and aspirations, further boosting the relevance and importance of these IT hubs, and further causing inward migration to these destinations.

Since, these IT hubs employ a considerable number of people, and since they attract a host of other related and unrelated services needed to cater to the daily needs of these employees, it causes the twin problems of over-population and over-crowding. The result is that municipal services get over-stretched, housing prices soar, traffic gets congested, prices of essential commodities inflate, and most importantly social tensions develop and increase. Sometimes, civil and police administrative machineries are also put to test in these cities. Especially in bigger cities like Delhi-NCR where IT hubs create sub-localities within the city, policing power is seen decreasing proportionately to the size and scale of a locality’s policing requirements. This is why problems like crimes against women, child abduction, racial-religious mob violence etc happen with great frequency in such places.

Lastly, the growth of cities as IT hubs creates problems with pollution, waste disposal and energy management. Also, E-waste generation and its associated harms, and also the strain that IT infrastructure put on the electric grid, are much bigger challenges than one would like to admit and the only way forward is to follow sustainable development practices while developing IT hubs.