Dhanbad

Dhanbad has been on fire since 1916. India's coal capital—a city of 1.2 million in Jharkhand—sits atop the Jharia coalfield, the country's primary source of coking coal for steel production. But 37 million tons of that coal have been consumed by underground fires burning continuously for over a century. The blazes began at Bhowrah colliery in 1916, and despite every remediation attempt, plumes of smoke still rise from 27+ active sites today. Coal worth ₹60,000 crore ($12 billion) remains unmined because extraction would fan the flames. The human cost is measured in craters: in July 2024, a 3-metre-wide, 4-metre-deep sinkhole opened near Indira Chowk and swallowed a parked truck. The adjacent settlement Lalten Ganj was devoured entirely by subsidence that same year. Wikipedia describes Dhanbad as the 'coal capital of India'; what it undersells is that this capital is slowly consuming itself. A master plan called for relocating 79,000 families by 2021; by 2024, only 4,049—5%—had been moved, and many who relocated found themselves stranded in Belgadia township with no jobs and no affordable transport back to the mines. The biological parallel is autoimmune dysfunction: the city's energy source has become pathological, attacking the very community built to extract it. Jharia's high-grade coking coal remains essential for India's steel industry, but mining continues in a landscape of active combustion, making this one of the world's most dangerous industrial zones. The government claims fires are down from 17.32 km² to 1.80 km²; residents say the flames and subsidence persist.