Until the late 1980s Godda was full of forests and was a remote place far from science and technology and was living in a dark age as other districts of Jharkhand.

The entire scenario changed after coal was first discovered in abundance under the Rajmahal Hills by a team of the Geological Survey of India.

Central Mine Planning and Design Institute Ltd. conducted a detailed survey of the area.

The Rajmahal Opencast Coal mine project was conceived in early 1980s, initially to supply coal to Farakka Super Thermal Power Project of NTPC, with an initial annual capacity of 5 million tonne.

For expansion of this coal mine project to 10.5 million tonne per annum, an agreement was signed between Coal India Limited and Canadian Commercial Corporation in January 1989 where MET-CHEM Canada Inc. was designated as the Canadian Executing Agency for implementing the project.

The main economic activity of the people is agriculture, and major crops are paddy, wheat and maize.

According to the 2011 census Godda district has a population of 1,313,551,[8] roughly equal to the nation of Mauritius[9] or the US state of New Hampshire.