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Chintamani (51) is walking slowly along the road, with a bundle of clothes loaded onto his bicycle. Finally, he reaches his roadside kiosk and sits down, panting. When asked why he was not riding the cycle, he said, “How far can I ride it? I have to get off every two-three minutes because of traffic snarls.”
The reason for these snarls is the eight power plants and 11 coal mines located in the Singrauli district of Madhya Pradesh. Huge trucks with 24 to 36 wheels run 24 hours a day and 7 days a week on the road to collect the coal and ash coming out of these plants.
“In such a situation, if you love your life, it is better to get off the road and walk slowly,” said Chintamani. One driver dies in road accidents in the district every 48 hours, Right to Information (RTI) activist Suresh Kumar told Down To Earth (DTE). Kumar said he had sought information on road accidents in the last 10 years (2016 to 2025) under the RTI Act. After getting these figures and calculating them, he found that on an average one person dies in a road accident every two days. Data released by the Regional Transport Office (RTO) shows that there has been a steady increase in road accidents from 2017 to 2024. While 163 people died in 2017, this number increased to 285 in 2024. By February 2025, this figure has already reached 39.
“This situation of gridlock and fear of death was not there 10 years ago. Now, it is becoming more frightening with each passing day,” said Chintamani. He added that the number of big trailers is increasing as more power plants are set up. Earlier, it would take him hardly 10-15 minutes to reach his kiosk. Now, it takes almost one and a quarter hour. This, despite the fact that the distance between his home and place of work is just three kilometres.
Chinatmani is a tailor by profession. On being asked as to how many people ride bicycles in the district, he said, “I don’t know about the district but 15 years ago, there used to be 24 bicycles in my joint family and now only my bicycle is left.”
Meanwhile, the number of motorcycles in the district has increased tremendously in the last decade. Kumar explains it like this: Everyday, new players in the energy sector come to Singrauli with the intention to set up their plants. For this, they need land. Families are displaced and the first thing they buy with the compensation amount is a motorcycle. The increase in the number of bikes in the district can be estimated from the fact that the number of nine other types of vehicles has remained limited to three digits for the last few years. Bike numbers, on the other hand, have remained in four digits.
Diwakar Dwivedi, editor of a vernacular newspaper, said even though the number of bikes is increasing rapidly in Singrauli, there is a strange paradox here. While every person who receives compensation buys a bike, almost half of them do not know how to ride one. Consequently, they hire drivers. That is why one will rarely see a bike rider alone here because there is a driver and the owner riding pillion. In a village named Bagaiya nearby, almost all the bikes are driven by drivers, according to Dwivedi. He added that people who hire drivers, never even try to learn how to ride a bike.
Singrauli is often termed ‘India’s energy capital’. So why has town planning not been done for the energy capital till now? To this, former Mayor of Singrauli Ram Lallu (2004-2009) noted that while the city’s settlement started with the first power plant (1977) established by NTPC (National Thermal Power Corporation), it has not been developed properly even today, after 48 years. “The fact is that many industrialists from across the country have set up their private power plants here, but none of them want this city to develop properly. If the city develops, they will have to pay more compensation.”
According to Lallu, about 35,000 families have been displaced so far by power plants. But only 4,000 people from these families have been able to get jobs in these power plants. “This city is not being developed deliberately. While NTPC and private power plants build colonies for their employees, the displaced people have not been rehabilitated till date.”
He warned that 50,000 more people are going to be displaced sooner or later as the Jayant coal mine project is being expanded in Singrauili. NCL (Northern Coalfield Limited) has issued a notification to this effect on February 4, 2024.
The displaced people have somehow managed to settle down around Singrauli town, where the sole arterial road is just seven kilometres long. It starts from Rajiv Gandhi Chowk and ends at Indira Gandhi Chowk. Displaced people have made their settlements on both sides of this pathway. According to the 2011 census, the district had a population of 1,178,273. But now, its estimated population is about 1.3 million. Of this, 350,000 are in Singrauli city, which has thus become densely packed. Subsequently, even pedestrians are not able to reach their workplace comfortably and on time.
Gayatri Singh, who works in a private sector company, said: “I have been living in this city for the last 40 years. The distance between my house and my office is just two kilometres. But it takes me more than one- and-a-half hours to cover this distance.” Earlier, Gayatri used to travel by the city bus. But there are only four of them and two are always out of order. As the number of displaced people increased, the city buses started getting more crowded. So, she started commuting by shared auto. But she started facing problems there too due to the crowd. Eventually, she was forced to start coming on foot. Now, it takes her one-and-a-half hours to cover this two-kilometre distance because the big trucks cause the most traffic snarls on the main road.
Given the poor connectivity in the district, a large number of outside vehicles enter and leave the town frequently. While former chairman of Madhya Pradesh Mineral Corporation Bhuvaneshwar Singh has stated that the government is even building airports at places where passenger traffic is negligible, an airport has not been made operational in Singrauli despite it having relatively high number of passengers who can fly. Due to this, people have to go either to Prayagraj or Varanasi to catch a flight. Both these places are located more than two hundred kilometres away from Singrauli.
Vehicles are the main cause of air pollution in the city, but power plants and coal mines are the main cause of air pollution in the entire district. SP Dubey, the former RTO of the district, told DTE that 95 per cent of the air pollution in the district is caused by power plants and coal mines and only five per cent is caused by vehicles.
Most of Singrauli’s coal mines are located in the urban area. The power plants located in the district do not follow government guidelines properly.
For instance, there is a directive to install Flue Gas Desulphurization (FGD) appliances in power plants to reduce sulphur dioxide (SO2) emissions and maintain air quality. However, FGD appliances have been installed only in units 12 and 13 of NTPC Vindhyachal. The remaining 11 units have been given time till June 2025. Similarly, private power plants have been given time till December 2026. Apart from this, there was an order to install an automatic wheel washing system in NCL’s coal mines. Of the 11 coal mines, this system has been installed only in Kharia, Nigahi, Jayant and Block-B according to the regional office of the state pollution control board.
It is not that efforts to reduce air pollution from the power plants of the district are going on only at the government level. Suresh Kumar had filed a petition in the National Green Tribunal (NGT) in 2020 against all the units spreading air pollution in the district. He told DTE that after five years after the petition was filed, NGT issued notice to 323 government departments of the district that they will be called for hearing.
“When will the hearing of so many government departments take place and when will the decision come?
This article is part of our series on how India moves, which looks at the relationship between air quality and human mobility in cities and towns