Raniganj coal mining has been transformed from an industrial history lesson into a public warning at a Durga Puja pandal in south Calcutta. The Thakurpukur State Bank Park Sarbojanin installation recreates a working colliery to show how underground extraction, abandoned shafts and unsafe mining practices have left parts of Bengal exposed to land subsidence and continuing human risk.
The installation is not merely a visual recreation of a mine. It connects the energy that powers Bengal’s cities with the landscape and communities that bear the risks of extracting that energy. Its central argument is simple: the urban comfort created by electricity depends on a mining system that remains largely invisible to the people who consume its output.
That connection is especially significant in Bengal, where coal accounts for roughly 80 per cent of the state’s total installed power capacity, according to the account of the project. The figure places the pandal’s theme within a wider infrastructure chain. Coal is not only a commodity or an industrial input; it is part of the electricity system on which homes, offices, factories and public services depend. The installation asks visitors to look beyond the switch and towards the mine, the worker and the land above abandoned workings.
Raniganj occupies a foundational place in that history. Mining began there in 1774, making it the historic birthplace of Indian coal mining. The region’s legacy is also linked to the expansion of rail and river transport. The installation recalls how Prince Dwarkanath Tagore bought a bankrupt mine in Raniganj’s Narayankuri village in 1832 from the British firm Alexander & Company. Through Carr, Tagore & Co., he modernised mining infrastructure and developed a riverside shipping jetty on the Damodar to move coal downstream by steamboat.
Although Tagore died before the jetty was completed, coal from the region later powered eastern India’s first steam engines when the Raniganj extension railway line opened on February 3, 1855. These details establish that the coalfields were not peripheral to the making of the modern region. They helped build the transport and industrial systems that connected eastern India, while also creating a long-term landscape of underground extraction.
The contemporary danger presented by the pandal is land subsidence. Puja committee secretary Sanjoy Majumdar described Raniganj as “a disaster waiting to happen”, attributing the vulnerability to decades of underground extraction, unscientific mining practices and a vast network of abandoned shafts. The installation’s framing is important because subsidence is not only a mining accident. It can become a built-environment problem when the ground supporting homes, roads and other structures is weakened or when excavated gaps are left unfilled.
The source account does not provide a map of the affected areas, a count of vulnerable settlements or an assessment of the number of abandoned shafts. It does, however, identify the central institutional concern: the physical consequences of extraction can persist long after mining activity has moved on. The theme-maker, Raju Sarkar, said he wanted to draw attention to illegal mining in which excavated gaps are left dangerously unfilled. The installation therefore directs attention not only to the historic industry, but also to the enforcement and remediation questions surrounding unsafe extraction.
Sarkar planned the project for two years and, four months before the installation was completed, visited an operational colliery in Kajora with committee members after securing special permission from mining authorities. The group descended about 450 feet to reach the reserves and signed a liability bond before entering. Sarkar described the underground environment as hot, suffocating and pitch-black without headlamps. That experience shaped the physical design of the pandal and supplied a first-hand reference for its atmosphere.
The pandal opens with a corrugated-tin façade carrying the words “Welcome to Bengal Colliery” and the reminder that “The most important thing to come out of a mine is the miner.” Inside, rusted walls trace the history of Bengal’s coal industry. Railway wagons stand on either side of the upper tier, while a glowing, air-conditioned city skyline is set behind cramped tin sheds representing miners’ homes.
That contrast is the installation’s clearest urban device. The city appears as a place of comfort, cooling and electricity, while the mining settlement is shown as a place of exposure and constraint. The composition does not present energy consumption as an abstract economic activity. It places the infrastructure of urban life beside the housing conditions and occupational hazards of the workers who make that infrastructure possible.
The installation also depicts the risks carried by miners’ families. The account refers to the threat of cave-ins, toxic gas pockets and sudden water ingress, as well as the anxiety of not knowing whether a family member will return from work. A mural of a woman carrying coal gives that risk a domestic and human dimension. The coal supply chain is represented not only through machinery and wagons, but through the household that waits for the worker to come back.
Visitors descend a dimly lit ramp lined with newspaper clippings about past mining tragedies. A wooden thakurer singhasan, or altar, represents the prayer offered for miners’ safety before they enter the depths. At the end of the tunnel, Durga is reimagined as a miner, holding a pickaxe and wicker basket. Her third eye marks her divinity, while her other hands are arranged behind her to form a crown.
This adaptation gives the installation a specific cultural and civic function. Durga Puja temporarily turns neighbourhood spaces into public forums, and the pandal uses that access to bring a difficult industrial subject before visitors who may otherwise encounter coal only as electricity or as a distant economic sector. The display does not claim to resolve the mining region’s risks. It makes those risks legible through the familiar forms of a festival, a city skyline, a railway wagon, a household and a deity.
The project also highlights a gap between the visibility of urban infrastructure and the visibility of the systems that sustain it. Power capacity can be measured and displayed, but the conditions of extraction are often separated geographically and socially from the city that consumes the energy. Bengal’s reported dependence on coal brings that separation into sharper focus. The same state that relies heavily on coal-based installed power capacity also contains landscapes shaped by historic and continuing mining.
The information available with the project does not establish whether the installation has prompted a formal response from mining authorities, whether a comprehensive subsidence assessment is under way, or how illegal mining sites are being secured. Those questions remain outside the scope of the pandal’s account. What it does establish is the scale of the historical relationship between coal and regional development, and the continued vulnerability associated with extraction practices and abandoned underground workings.
The larger urban question is therefore not whether a festival installation can substitute for technical assessment or administrative action. It cannot. Its value lies elsewhere: it makes a hidden infrastructure relationship visible. The city’s electricity, the coalfield’s geology, the miner’s workplace and the family’s home are presented as parts of one system rather than as separate stories.
By placing a working colliery inside a Kolkata neighbourhood, the Thakurpukur installation turns Raniganj’s mining legacy into a public conversation about land, energy, labour and safety. The evidence presented through the project confirms the historical importance of the coalfield and identifies subsidence and unsafe extraction as continuing concerns. What remains to be established is the extent of present-day vulnerability and the institutional measures being taken to address it.
