Young men, all from Tamil Nadu and largely from Tuticorin, are employed round-the-clock to pick out stones as well as other objects from 11,000 tonnes of coal, which is required every day to generate 500 MW of power.

Says a hesitant 20-year-old M. Silva Kumar, who has been working here for the last two years: ``I worked at a power station in Uttar Pradesh for a year, before I was transferred to Delhi. The senior people working there taught me how to detect stones from coal and remove them.''

This picking of stones is not as simple as it sounds. The coal is wet and sticky. Moreover, the stones are more like boulders and can weigh up to a kg if not more. Yet, with an impressive agility they grasp the stone in a palm and in a smooth, economical movement, change its direction so that it falls out of the conveyor belt.

According to Kale Raj, a supervisor, the men work on eight-hour shifts and do a maximum of 48 hours a week. They are paid Rs 80 for a shift and housing and food is provided in the premises of the plant. ``I too started as a labourer and have taught them to separate stones from the coal.''

Interestingly, all the 40 men working in the plant are from Tamil Nadu. Says M.V. Pandi, site incharge of the Badarpur Plant: ``Ours is the only company which recruits and trains men to pick stones. We supply labour to power plants all across the country. Not everyone can do this as the constant motion of the conveyor belt makes your head spin. They are first trained in Chennai for three to four months and then sent to the power plants.''

Generation of electricity involves a step-by-step procedure, wherein coal is first unloaded from railway wagons and sprinkled with water to settle the coal dust. A fraction of the coal is tipped into the feeder from where it is carried to the conveyor belt; the rest is dumped into the yard for use when required.

Conveyor belts take the coal to the crushers where it emerges in bits with a maximum diameter of 20 to 30 mm. From the crushers, it moves to the ballmill which further grounds it into powder. This coal powder is fed into the boiler that generates steam, which in turn feeds the turbines. Turbines rotate the generator, which then produces electricity at a certain temperature and pressure.

Says Parveen Garg, senior superintendent, coal handling plant: ``Large pieces of stone can end up jacking our machines, but in most cases it just increases our oil consumption. As oil is much more expensive than coal, it increases our production costs substantially. The stone-pickers are a very important part of the entire electricity-generating process.''