By Tanya Kapoor & Anandajit Goswami
The Dual Imperative and the Ethics of India’s Coal Transition
Introduction: Growth, Restraint, and the Justice Blueprint
India has reached an inflection point in history, faced with an urgent dual imperative at once aspirational and accountable. The first is developmental: fulfilling the vision of Viksit Bharat 2047 via sustained economic growth and job creation. The second is an ecological one: to see the national commitment of reaching Net Zero emissions by 2070 realised. Redoing these trajectories will require a deep re-imagining of the fundamentals of industrial growth, for coal is still the basis of over seventy percent of India’s power generation (MoSPI / ET EnergyWorld, 2024; Reuters, 2025) and supports livelihoods across more than a third of its districts (Mongabay-India, 2021).
So the coal transition as it unfolds is not a technical swap of fuels, but a civilizational negotiation between the Real (the material economy in extraction) and the Symbolic (the institutional grammar of sustainability). Its improper management could aggravate unemployment, environmental destruction and social disunity. When well-managed it can turn vulnerability into capability, and create avenues for youth empowerment and ecological restoration (TERI, 2023).
An integrated justice framework anchored in Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach, combined with psychoanalytic and spatial theory, offer a conceptual framework to interpret this transformation. In a similar vein to Lacan’s three-dimensional schema of the Real, the Symbolic, and the Imaginary (and with a supplementary Existential dimension as inspired by Derrida’s concept of the Spectre of Loss), India’s transition can be regarded as a multi-layered process of material, institutional, relational, and moral reconfiguration (Anandajit Goswami, 2024).
The Normative Core: Capabilities, Agency, and Desire
Justice is described in the Capability Approach as the maximization of people’s substantive freedoms (the capability sets), the capacities that enable them to lead lives they value (Sen, 1999). Energy is an instrumental capacity that allows for mobility, security and productivity. But freedom depends on being able to make choices using resources that matter. In the coal regions, structural deprivations (low levels of education, insecure tenure, caste hierarchy, and limited political voice) constrict that menu.
Ensuing young people to accept this means a just transition must thus extend human agency. As psychoanalysis suggests, agency emerges where desire finds new symbolic coordinates. Programs for re-skilling, higher education, and entrepreneurship in the fields of renewable energy, manufacturing clusters, and digital innovation can give these coordinates (Brookings India, 2021; NITI Aayog, 2023). To want differently, to imagine oneself as a creator of value rather than a victim of closure, is the first act of justice.
The Real Lens: Livelihoods and Material Security
The Real is what stands in opposition to being represented: dust, fatigue and uncertainty that plagues mining towns. The transition sparks fear of abandonment among millions whose daily bread depends on coal.
Mechanisms that can anchor material security include the DMF (District Mineral Foundation), created under the Mines and Minerals Act 2015. Nevertheless, audits show underutilization, and low community involvement (CSE, 2021). The 2025 National DMF Workshop of the Mines Ministry advocated that DMF spending be placed in line with just-transition priorities e.g. livelihood diversification, health and education (Mines Ministry, 2025).
MGNREGA should be extended to coal-producing lands to create an interim source of income. Concurrently, district training hubs and incubation centers can train the youth for emerging green sectors, such as solar panel maintenance, and sustainable construction. WRI India (2025) advises the combination of DMF with state employment missions, so that reskilling takes root in a full market absorption. Improving PHC and mobile clinics might reduce the chronic respiratory and orthopedic diseases common to mining sites (TERI, 2023). The material basis of dignity lies in this continuity of life.
The Symbolic Lens: Institutions, Law, and Policy Coherence
The Symbolic means the space for law and those institutions that organize recognition. India’s informal workers are mostly beyond this terrain and therefore not exposed to formal schemes and social insurance (TERI, 2023).
Justice begins with naming. A broad worker census and identity cards would confer legal visibility, but would also make eligibility for welfare and training possible. Formation of Just Transition Cells at the state and district levels with representatives from workers, local administrations and industry can embed participation within governance (TERI, 2023).
It is also important to find coherence in financing architecture. Centralization of DMF, corporate social responsibility (CSR) funds and climate finance under one roof could create a more seamless investment process. As Modak et al. (2024) contend, blended public-private mechanisms are the key to unlocking India’s demographic dividend. Policy thus becomes both the syntax and the conscience of transformation.
The Imaginary Lens: Identity, Gender, and Community Engagement
The Imaginary deals with how communities see themselves and each other. In coal towns, social identity forms a part of the mine (its rhythm of work, danger and community). When extraction stops, meaning disappears and a void takes over. This haunting absence where livelihoods vanish but the psychological architecture persists is captured in Derrida’s Spectre of Loss (Anandajit Goswami, 2024).
This must be compensated for by the kind of inclusive storytelling and participation we need: Recognition Justice. Women are disproportionately on the receiving end during this transition: unpaid childcare, social insecurity and increased home stress (TERI, 2023). Gender equitable livelihoods programs, micro-credit networks and self-help groups can translate recognition into agency.
Securing land and forest rights under the Forest Rights Act secures assets and legitimacy for tribal and forest-dwelling populations. By building on both technical planning and oral histories in public forums and youth councils, the Imaginary rupture might be turned into a new collective narrative of purpose and pride.
The Existential Lens: Innovation, Education, and Ecological Repair
The Existential dimension shifts from mourning to rebuilding. Mining regions should not just close pits but also re-open the possibility. Experiments in Odisha’s Angul and Chhattisgarh’s Korba show that reclaimed mine land can be used for solar parks and light manufacturing units (TERI, 2023). Projects like these represent what psychoanalysis refers to as sublimation, the shift of loss into creativity.
These initiatives must embrace education and entrepreneurship. Community colleges with sustainable energy, waste management and agro-innovation in their curriculums can weave ecological repair into the fabric of human well-being. DMF-enriched incubation centres could offer support to fledgling small companies in renewables logistics and eco-tourism.
The economic repair has to go in tandem with the social repair. Supporting counseling, art-collectives and youth clubs give space for re-symbolization; they allow communities to discuss a shared future. As the landscape heals, so too does the psyche of the place.
Global Responsibility and the Open Future
India’s Long-Term Low Emissions Development Strategy (LT-LEDS) envisions the coal transition in an ethic of fairness and inclusiveness (Modak et al., 2024). But schemes such as the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) could turn down the decarbonization burden onto developing economies. Real climate justice necessitates funding streams that enhance capabilities instead of adding new dependencies.
At the domestic level, convergence with DMF, Just Transition Cells and national climate finance platforms for coherence (WRI India, 2025). Internationally, partnerships should focus on technology transfer, vocational training and concessional finance. The moral horizon of the Indian coal transition is therefore planetary: to reconcile responsibility with right and growth with grace.
Success in bringing this transition forward will be judged not solely by gigawatts, or tonnes avoided, but by lives reimagined. When youth in former mining regions can be agents, find employment, and re-inhabit the land with dignity, India’s dual imperative will have its ethical resolution.
(Tanya Kapoor is a research intern at Ashoka Centre For People Centric Energy Transition and Anandajit Goswami is Research Lead, Senior Research Fellow, Ashoka Centre For People Centric Energy Transition, Advisor, Professor, MRIIRS. Views expressed in this article are the personal views of the authors.)
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