Producing 'So-So' Infrastructure for National Energy Security at the North Karanpura Coalfields in Eastern India

This paper examines transport infrastructure of only middling quality at a Jharkhand coalfield as supporting rather than preventing national energy security. The modest technical efficiency of the infrastructure emerges from a need to align the national provision of energy with a complex political ecology of coal in which various actors seek benefits from its 'safe' transport, supply coal to cottage industries and provide alternative livelihoods for the displaced. Unlike in Mitchell's Carbon Democracy, Jharkhand's 'so-so' coal infrastructure ensures delivery of coal by being dispersed and flexible, thereby allowing supply by avoiding blockades from influential groups close to the mines.