As in Texas in America which is floating on oil, Raniganj town on the main line of the Eastern Railway, with a population of around 0.15 million is standing on a vast coalfield. Mining started about seven decades ago by private owners, thereafter coal mines were nationalised by the Congress government. Mining operations were conducted on seams 70/80 feet below the surface of the town too. The Private owners were after slaughter mining giving little attention to stowing the vacant space with sand after numbing of coal. Continued seepage of water filled the vacant space but such accumulated water if finds a hole puts pressure and the water rushes to other to other vacant spaces thus enhancing the chances of subsidence.

The sucking of the pond in Raniganj was not an unnatural phenomenon. The entire Eastern Coalfields area with Raniganj as its nucleus has been subsidence prone. Let alone the private owners of coal mines, the Central Congress Government after nationalisation of coal industry, took little care to minimize the incidences of subsidence. Coal India too has not made any serious effort to curb the incidences of subsidence. The BJP government at the Centre is totally callous to the menace of subsidence. Rather its policy is to denationalise the coal industry and offer these mines to the private entrepreneurs. It has already planned to close down 64 coal mines in the ECL throwing 72,000 people out of job. Congress during its rule at the Centre in the early nineties used to speak about reforms with a human face, the BJP led government at the Centre does not even shed crocodile tears for the 72000 miners. Rather its will be happy if the miners leave accepting CIL’s voluntary retirement scheme.