What does it mean to close a mine?

**Akshara** (0:04)
In today's episode, we'll break down two important stories. First, we'll talk about what it means to close our mind, and then we'll talk about how carbon capture works.
Welcome back to The Daily Brief by Zerodha, where we cut through the noise to help you understand what's actually happening in the most important stories from business and markets.
If you're listening to this on your commute, on a walk, or at the gym, you can also find The Daily Brief as an audio podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. If you prefer reading, check out the newsletter using the link in the description. I'm your host Akshara, and today is Monday, 3rd August. Coming to the first story.
So when a shop shuts down, it happens in the afternoon. The owner clears the shelves, pulls the shutter, hands back the keys, and the space becomes someone else's problem. A factory takes longer with machines to sell and a site to clear, but the logic is the same.
You stop, you tidy up, and you leave. But a coal mine doesn't work like that. It isn't a building you can simply switch off. It's either a giant pit carved into the earth or kilometers of tunnels running underground. So when mining stops and the machines fall silent, the hole remains. And it doesn't just sit there quietly. Water seeps in and floods old workings, and the ground above abandoned tunnels can sink years later. Gases build up, and every monsoon, piles of waste rock can wash into nearby streams.
So closing a mine isn't about locking the gate. It's about bringing the pit and tunnels to a state where these risks are under control, and then monitoring them for years, because many of those risks don't disappear overnight. Now, that takes time. And sometimes, it takes decades.
Take Poore Chirmeri in Chhattisgarh. The mine stopped producing coal in October 1975, but its final closure order, which is the government's formal sign-off that the mine had been properly closed, didn't arrive until November 2025
50 years passed between the last ton of coal and the final piece of paper. Now, Chirmeri is not unusual. In July 2026, the Coal Controllers Organization, which is the arm of the coal ministry that runs all of this, published its annual report on mine closure, a document it calls Aroo. And its headline? 42 coal mines have now been scientifically closed. But these 42 are a peculiar sample. They aren't representative of Indian coal mining today. Most are old underground mines, concentrated in just two central Indian states, and many stopped producing decades ago. In fact, 25 of the 42 were shut before India even had comprehensive mine closure rules, which only arrived in 2009 Now, that also explains the long wait. On average, it took about two decades for a mine to go from shutting down to finally receiving its closure certificate. Chirmeri is the extreme case, taking nearly 50 years. But even the median mine spent close to 20 years in limbo.
So, the 42 closures aren't proof that India has built a modern mine closure system. They're largely a backlog finally being cleared, and that's still important. A mine stuck in limbo leaves its environmental obligations, funding and long-term future unresolved. But these 42 closures tell us more about how India is cleaning up its past than how it will manage its future. Almost all are underground mines, not the giant opencast pits that produce most of India's coal today. The real test will come when India has to shut a massive opencast mine that's still operating with an entire town built around it. Now, a final closure order isn't automatic. A mine gets one only after it has an approved closure plan, money set aside for the work, the closure work itself completed, an inspection by a government-authorized third-party agency, verification by the coal controller's regional office and a review by a technical committee. So in other words, it's far more than a company simply declaring the mine shut. But the order certifies something narrower than the word closed suggests. It confirms that the approved process has been completed, that the required work has been carried out, and the necessary checks have been passed. That's a reasonable standard for a regulator. The bigger question is whether it lives up to the language that surrounds it. Scientific closure, restoration and sustainable livelihoods. Those phrases promise something far more ambitious. A healed landscape and a local economy that has recovered.
New Majri and Adasa, both in Maharashtra, show how limited these closure orders really are. Their underground mines were formally closed even as open-cast mining continued above the same ground. The order closed one mine, but it didn't end mining there. In other cases, the certificate arrived before the site's planned second life had even begun. In 11 of the 42 mine profiles, post-closure work is still described as proposed or in progress. Chendipada, an open-cast mine in Odisha, received its closure order in May 2025, but its ecotourism project was still under preparation, with the tender floated in April 2026, after the report's own cut-off date. At Pawan in Chattisgarh, a Rs 32 crore community water treatment plant exists only as a signed memorandum, not as a functioning facility. The report never clearly separates mandatory closure work from optional redevelopment, making it difficult to know where regulatory obligations end and broader development plans begin. Now, that points to a more important distinction. Finishing a task is not the same as achieving an outcome. Sealing a mine shaft is a task. Proving the ground above it has stabilized is an outcome. Planting saplings is a task. Growing a self-sustaining forest is an outcome.