Seen here is a Vikram, originally an army truck, modified to transport coal through the dusty town of Ladrymbai in Jaintia Hills of Meghalaya. The reporter could not tell the difference between this town and the other coal towns in Orissa or Jharkhand, the mining states of India
(Photographs by Monali Zeya Hazra)
Labourers load coal on to trucks at Wapung. The coal business in Jaintia Hills is slowly leading to a shift in the demographic status of the area. Most of the employed labourers are migrants from Bangladesh and Nepal.
The employment policy of Meghalaya requires 60% of both managerial and non- managerial jobs to be reserved for local people. But the resident Khasis prefer the supervising jobs to menial labour
(Photographs by Monali Zeya Hazra)
A worker squats to pull out a fully laden tray of coal from a hole. When the coal within the pit exhausts, horizontal tunnels are dug through which workers burrow to find coal. Many workers narrated incidents of tunnel roofs collapsing and trapping the workers inside
(Photographs by P Madhavan)
Mine pits are transforming the Jaintia landscape as everyone hopes to strike coal. Deposits occur very close to the surface making coal extraction through rat-hole mining cost-effective. The steps to follow are simple: clear a patch of land, dig a pit and dump the overburden on the adjacent land. Small wonder mining is rampant and indiscriminate
(Photographs by Monali Zeya Hazra)
A mine worker at Sutnga village in Jaintia Hills guides an overloaded coal tray being pulled up by a crane, with a rope to keep it from tipping over
(Photographs by Monali Zeya Hazra)
An array of shops selling ancillary mining equipment along the road and a variety of heavy-duty vehicles moving through Ladrymbai suggested that the transformation of the town was complete.
The Meghalaya Pollution Control Board has reported an increase in air pollution in this coal belt. The average SPM (suspended particulate matter) count is 200 microgramme per cubic metre. The majority of the patients at the primary health centre in the area complain of asthma and other respiratory tract ailments
(Photographs by Monali Zeya Hazra)
A Khasi woman supervising work shouts instructions to Bangladeshi workers. She is a member of the family that owns the mine.The coal business in Jaintia Hills is rife with class divisions built over regional identities
(Photographs by Monali Zeya Hazra)
Workers crouch low to break coal in a rat-hole mine. Ideally, they should have been wearing a safety gear but the privately run mines in this region consider adhering to safety and environmental precautions a nuisance.
For the state government, it is uneconomical to regulate these mines, which except paying road tax for transport don’t contribute to the state’s economy
(Photographs by P Madhavan)
Young girls, also coal traders, shy away from the camera. Local trade in coal proliferates along Jowai road. It is a nocturnal affair. Traders, most of whom are women, sit in wooden shacks behind the coal heaps to buy coal. Trucks from local mines travelling to Shillong offload a little coal at these roadside shacks, while drivers pocket the extra money.
The coal bought is later sold to households in the nearby villages. Electricity and cooking gas top the list of energy requirements in the Northeast. And demand more than exceeds supply. Domestic needs are increasingly met by the ubiquitous coal
(Photographs by Monali Zeya Hazra)
Workers unload coal from a coal tray held straight by a crane. For a tray of coal, each worker digging in the mine is paid Rs 200 and the loader is paid Rs 60
(Photographs by Monali Zeya Hazra)
Workers loading coal at Sutnga village take a water break. Coal and gravel sit in heaps releasing heavy metal ions, which turn the ground and water toxic
(Photographs by Monali Zeya Hazra)
A thin stream of water leaches from a mound of coal excavated along the National Highway No. 44. A unique feature of the coal found in this region is that it is rich in sulphur. On contact with water, the sulphur in the coal reacts to form acids. With high rainfall, acid mine drainage is a serious problem in the state
(Photographs by Monali Zeya Hazra)
5.78 million tonnes of coal produced by Meghalaya sits in heaps along Jowai road in Jaintia Hills, Meghalaya. The wooden crates sitting on each coal pile serve as the local unit of measurement. Traders buy coal not in kilos but by the number of wooden crates it fills.
Local buying and selling of coal is common in Jaintia hills, a notified sixth schedule area governed by autonomous elected councils. These councils have the power to make laws to divert land other than reserve forests for non-agricultural purposes considered likely to promote the interests of the inhabitants
(Photographs by Monali Zeya Hazra)
Workers stand in the coal tray to enjoy an easy ride back into the mine pit. Mining has spurted a need for many secondary services and by itself has a high employment potential. This has led to a high influx of migrants from neighbouring states and countries, and has become a cause for concern for the Meghalaya government
(Photographs by Monali Zeya Hazra)
A worker manually operates a wooden pulley to pull out coal from a mine pit. Abundant deposits and an increasing demand for coal push miners to phase out wooden pulleys in favour of hauling of coal via cranes
(Photographs by Monali Zeya Hazra)
Pipes being used to pump out groundwater encountered while mining for coal. The pH values of both surface and groundwater tested in the region were in the range of 3 to 3.7, indicating that the run off from the mines is eventually seeping into water bodies.
Though the mining business in this region is people-owned, it is unregulated and thereby run unscientifically
(Photographs by Monali Zeya Hazra)
Heaps of black coal are in contrast to the green of the hills in the background at the collection point in Wapung. Built on community land, the collection point stockpiles coal from the mines in the region, which are inaccessible to trucks.
Mining in Jaintia hills is a private enterprise, which is slowly growing into a small-scale industry. No regulations and an aloof government emboldened people to extract more coal
(Photographs by Monali Zeya Hazra)
A coal loader carefully picks her way out of a mine pit stained black with coal deposits. Rickety wooden stairs are the only way to reach the bottom of this rat-hole mine in Sutnga village in Jaintia. Rat-hole mining involves digging a pit to a depth of 200 feet to 300 feet
(Photographs by P Madhavan)
Rubble and earth piles next to a newly inaugurated mine pit. Faced with diminishing returns from agriculture, people turn their land over to mining. They either attempt mining themselves or lease their land to other miners on a contract.
The Meghalaya Agriculture Minister E C Bamon noted a decline in the area under paddy cultivation due to increased diversion of land to mining in Jaintia Hills. But 80% of the state’s population is in rural areas, 70% of who still depend directly on agriculture for livelihood
(Photographs by Monali Zeya Hazra)