"Coal workers hope education can help the next generation win cleaner, healthier jobs in a region that has been wedded to dirty, dangerous mining for over a century"

"Video blogger Lalji Kurmi is waiting to go viral.

It's an unusual dream for a resident of India's oldest coalfield, Jharia, where fires rage underground, bare trees stand guard morosely around mines spewing dust and fumes - and where coal has provided work for at least four generations.

Kurmi, 32, was the first in his family to get an education: a diploma in mining. Now he and many other young people in the region want to leave their soot-blighted lives behind, even as coal production soars.

But they face an uphill struggle in an area where there is no other thriving industry."

Roli Srivastava reports for the Thomson Reuters Foundation December 12, 2022. [2]