WHEN RAM DIED in a roof collapse in an illegal coal mine in late 2006 in Jharkhand State, India, he was doing the only thing left for the survival of himself and his young wife. An Adivasi, or Indian tribal person by birth, he had seen his family’s traditional source of sustenance destroyed by the advance of large-scale opencast coal mines. According to his cousin Sushila, a woman in her early thirties, “He was not a happy man. He was a farmer and used to work in the fields, but with the coming of the coal mines our jungles and farmlands reduced every day, badly affecting the village economy.” ...
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