India's first plan for a socially fair shift away from coal in areas where mines have been shut will include a survey of local people, alternative jobs for them and efforts to protect basic services from the effects, according to government officials.
Work on the plan — for which the government is seeking support from the World Bank — will begin this month, with ground surveys of two mining-hub districts in eastern India, federal coal ministry officials told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Preliminary reports will be submitted to the government within a year, but the timeline for the "just transition" project is about eight years and it will cost at least $1 billion, they added.