Coalgate is stirring a political storm this year, with even the office of the Prime Minister not left untarnished. Debjani Halder and Shauvik Basu, through a documentary on the Asansol-Raniganj belt, present another side of the story by showcasing how badly we have treated our coal mine workers, writes RAJNI SMITA
It’s the season of coal. A product that India has in abundance, it has in recent months produced enough ‘power’ to create a political storm in the country. Even the office of the ‘honest’ Prime Minister isn’t left untarnished. ‘Coalgate’ we call it today, the scam has the potential of tarnishing the well-groomed image of Manmohan Singh once and for all. But coal isn’t just about wily politicians, greedy corporate houses and ruthless mafia. What we miss, sadly, is the story of coal workers, working incessantly in mines under inhuman conditions without basic facilities available to them.
As the wretched worker gets completely marginalised, I come across a documentary, The Dark, produced by Colliery Mazdoor Sabha of India. Directed by Debjani Halder and Shauvik Basu, the 28-minute long film brings out the plight of the coal mine labourers in the Asansol-Raniganj belt, administered by the Eastern Coalfield limited (ECl).
No one denies the importance of coal, which contributes over 50 per cent of the total primary energy production in India. It is also true that the Raniganj coalfield is known for its quality, besides being one of the major coal producers in the country. But these can’t be the excuse to exploit the poor. The ECl claims that coal labourers have assured social benefits of contractual workers like mediclaim, life insurance, boots, caps, lights, etc. But, as the documentary shows, the reality is quite different. Contractual coal mine workers are doing their job without these basic facilities. Due to pressure of outsourcing, they have become puppets in the hands of contractors. The film also highlights the problems faced by women labourers, who work in places with no provisions of light, window, toilet, crèches, or even drinking water. Incidentally, most of the women workers are widows! This in a way explains why they are working in such a wretched condition — for livelihood in a world where their very existence is an issue. Originally hired for making “gooli matti”, needed to tighten the dynamite at the time of blasting, these women workers are forced to do heavy works.
Then, there is the issue of opencast mining, which gradually destroys the very pulse of a rural life. The most common problem associated with mining is that of involuntary displacement. Ask Basu about its hazards and he would quote the article, ‘Risk, safe guards and reconstruction: A model for population-displacement and resettlement’, where Prof Michael M Cernea says that the opencast mining is forced upon people for acquiring their mineral-rich land and in the name of rehabilitation people end up being worse off than before. Other risks associated with involuntary displacement are livelihood losses, employment problems and socio-cultural uprootedness. “When we asked the general manager of the ECl in the Sonepur Bazari area he assured that the company had provided proper rehabilitation packages to displaced people, but the scenario was quite different when we met the common people of the Kajora area; they told us that they had got no packages, and that some of them had to file a petition in the high court for getting compensations and proper rehabilitations,” says Basu.
While the ECl officials have claimed that the company has adequate safety measures in place, the reality is grim. “In Sangramgarh village, for instance, the total area is swamped with smoke due to unsafe opencast mining,” says Basu. Geophysicist Tapas Kumar Ghatak warns that if any fatal disaster takes place in near future, it would be man-made rather than natural. Prof Ranen Sen of Colorado School of Mines, USA, argues that opencast mining can disturb environment in various ways — from environmental degeneration to displacement of human beings. He also says that changes take place in soil texture due to settling of air-borne dust, leading to deterioration in the very characteristics of soil in the region.
Today when coal has grabbed the limelight for all the wrong reasons, one thing remains unchanged for centuries now: Mining has always been regarded as a ‘dirty’ profession. Even the illustrious Tagores, who had undeniable links with Raniganj, couldn’t evade the taint, perceived or real. In the 1830s Dwarkanath Tagore’s company — Carr, Tagore — began mining in the Raniganj coal belt. “The purchase of Raniganj was the most important single transaction of Dwarkanath’s business career,” writes Blair B King in his biography Partner in Empire: Dwarkanath Tagore and the Age of Enterprise in Eastern India.
Carr, Tagore laid the foundation of the fortunes of the Tagore family. Yet, it was a legacy which its most celebrated member viewed with ambiguous feelings. Rabindranath Tagore hardly referred to his grandfather Dwarkanath in his writings, and if King is be believed the poet had deliberately removed his grandfather’s papers from Jorasanko (family building) and burnt nearly all of them. Maybe Rabindranath could see how corruption and cruelty were part and parcel of the coal industry and, thus, wanted to avoid the muck it always brought to those associated with it. It’s time we moved ahead to reform this ailing industry.