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Basanti Gond lost her husband just 10 days ago. Her husband, Munni Lal, was about 50 years old and had been unwell for several years. According to the family, he suffered from tuberculosis (TB) and was receiving treatment from the local Anganwadi. Munni Lal had worked in a stone quarry for many years.
Like Basanti Gond, Dulli Bai and Rakko Bai, residents of Manaur village in Panna district, Madhya Pradesh, have also lost their husbands. Dullibai’s husband, Chhote Lal, passed away about 20 years ago, while Rakko Bai’s husband, Gokul, died around 25 years ago. At the time, both men were aged between 30 and 35.
There is a long list of such women in the village. According to official figures, around 58 women in Manaur are receiving a widow’s pension. The common thread among them is that their husbands fell ill while working in the mines and died at a young age.
Most of the women, sitting together outside a house in the village, told Down to Earth (DTE) that there were very few men alive over the age of 50. This is why Manaur is referred to as the “village of widows”.
Panna district, widely known today for its diamond mines, once had a landscape dotted by sandstone quarries. These quarries were a vital source of livelihood for many local village residents. Though most of these mines have shut down, their legacy continues to haunt the region through a slow, painful toll on the health of those who laboured there.
Nirbhan Singh Gond, now 54, is one of the few who survived the disease. “More than half the women in the village are widows,” he said. When asked about the number of men in the village by age group, after some thought, he estimated there are only 5-6 men over 50 years old, 2-3 men over 60 and hardly any man over 70 still alive.
Roshni Gond, a young woman from the village, added that very few men born before 1990 are still living. She further claimed that there was hardly a household where the woman is not a widow. “Most of the men in the village did not live past 40, dying prematurely. Many of the women became widows within 5 to 10 years of marriage,” she said.
In Jaruapar and Darera, both part of Manaur Gram Panchayat, 46 and 30 women, respectively, are receiving widow’s pensions. In total, 134 women across Manaur, Darera and Jaruapar depend on the Rs 600 per month widow’s pension after losing their husbands. There are also many widows who have migrated.
Like the village residents, Manaur’s Anganwadi worker Kavita Yadav also believes that around 60 per cent of the village suffers from TB, with most of the men succumbing to the illness. However, social workers disagree that TB alone could be causing deaths on this scale.
Samina Yusuf, director of Prithvi Trust, which works for the health of village residents in the tribal areas of Panna, believes that many cases of silicosis are being misdiagnosed as TB.
Silicosis is an incurable occupational disease caused by prolonged exposure to silica dust, often produced during mining work. This dust enters the lungs, hardening them and leading to symptoms such as difficulty breathing, coughing, fatigue and bleeding from the mouth.
In June 2023, Yusuf submitted a list of 18 confirmed silicosis sufferers to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). These cases were certified by the government. She also provided a list of 16 individuals who had died from the disease and received compensation, as well as eight others who had not been compensated. After submitting the list, additional cases of silicosis were confirmed in people who were not included, Yusuf told DTE.
In the list submitted to the NHRC, only one person from Manaur, Paramlal Adivasi, was confirmed to have silicosis. According to Yusuf, all the individuals on the list were initially treated as TB patients. In 2011 and 2012, Prithvi Trust health camps certified 162 workers with silicosis, but a subsequent government investigation confirmed only 47 cases.
Before 2011, village residents in Panna were unaware of this disease. Its symptoms are so similar to TB that even doctors often misdiagnose it, treating most patients as though they have TB.
Manaur is one of dozens of villages in Panna district where men spent much of their lives working in the region’s numerous sandstone mines for a living. The mines were closed in 1998 due to the Panna Tiger Reserve, although a few remain operational.
“Most silicosis sufferers worked for many years in now-closed mines. If regular and thorough testing were conducted, silicosis could be confirmed in many patients currently thought to have TB,” Yusuf said.
This is the first part of a series. The next part will tell the story of Lachu Adivasi, who has silicosis and has been treated for tuberculosis for many years.