Living on fire
The Jharia coalfield is a storehouse of prime coke coal in the country, consisting of 23 large underground and 9 large open cast mines.
At present, more than 70 mine fires are reported from this region, burning away of an important energy resource, possessing danger to humankind.
The pollution caused by these fires affects air, water, and land, its smoke containing poisonous gases such as oxides and dioxides of carbon, nitrogen and sulphur, which along with particulate matter are the causes of several lung and skin diseases, and these fires lead to degradation of land not allowing any vegetation to grow in the area.
One of the most persistent threats from the fires is land subsidence. As the burning coal turns to ash, hollow pockets are created underground leaving the surface unstable and causing sudden collapses.
At night, the fields turn into an unnatural sight as blue flames dance across their surface, the firestorm beneath clearly visible through the fissures coursing over the ground.
Coal has been known to spontaneously combust when it comes in contact with the air underground and fires are frequently started and sustained by man-made factors such as the improper closure of abandoned mines or lightening.
Jharia has 4 lakh people, and India has the highest density of such fires in the world, together with the largest population to live in subterranean coal fires -affected areas.
In 1971 Bharat Coking Coal Limited (BCCL) took the charge over the mines, apparently to check misconduct, but has not done any good at preventing or containing the fires in the mines. Acting on a Supreme Court directive, in 2003, the government set apart an rs 5,000 crore rehabilitation package for the residents of Jharia and requiring around rs 350 crore annually, the proposed Jharia Action Plan was set to be one of the country’s largest peacetime evacuation, next only to Partition. Still, Jharia residents believe the BCCL is trying to deceive them and chase away from their land, claiming their properties, private and public, have been endangered because of the BCCL’s careless mining practices in the first place. The company favors the open cast method of mining, which means pits are sunk into the ground and successive seams of coal exposed and removed, saying that the best grade coking coal is mainly found in the upper reaches of the mines, thereby justifying their use of this method. Nevertheless, open cast mining is ecologically unfriendly.
Jharkhand was a virgin forest area. And coal mines have seriously impacted the aboriginal and semi-aboriginal tribes that are the natives of Jharkhand, dominant among whom are the Santhals, Agarias and Birhors. For these tribes, the forests are their entire source of sustenance, and decimation of the same has meant the destruction of their entire way of life. While several tribes are forced to the city in search of employment, many (including children and women), stay behind to take up work in the illegal mines that dot the countryside and provides insignificant sum of money. They dig up coal with their bare hands for about rs 60 to 70 a day.
These mines are veritable death traps, claiming the lives of hundreds each year. But for their owners, ensuring the safety of those who go down into these dank orifices is of least priority.
“Most workers here have little financial backing, and if they get injured in the course of work, having them treated could mean arrest, as the mines are illegal. Mostly, they are simply left to fend for themselves or are buried there.”
Their deaths go unrecorded, even by the local police, and their families do not get the compensation the state often puts out in cases of mine accidents.