The paper presents the socioeconomic profile of the people around proposed mining areas of Mahanadi Coalfields Limited at Talcher and Ib valley coal mine areas to generate base line data for future intervention. The Quality Of Life (QOL) has also been indexed in a 0-10 point scale based on some important value function like occupation , caste and land ownership. Jan 2008

At present, there is much anxiety regarding the security of energy supplies; for example, the UK and other European States are set to become increasingly dependant upon imports of natural gas from states with which political relations are often strained.

Currently, over a quarter of the world’s primary energy supply comes from coal. Since the rich world has already created its coal infrastructure, the increased use of coal in China and India is now under scrutiny. In 1980, rich countries used over 65 per cent of the world’s coal; in 2000 their share was roughly 50 per cent. By 2005, this figure fell to 38 per cent as consumption in China and India grew.

The proponents of coal have come up with a novel idea