How many more deaths will it take to shake the Government of Meghalaya from its stupor and push it to pass the Meghalaya Mining and Minerals Act? Granted that the State Government led by its Chief Minister is fighting raging battles on several fronts, but should the Mining Minister, BM Lanong not have rushed to the disaster spot to get a first- hand account of the tragedy? At this point we wonder if things can be left to the wisdom of the state government only. It is high time people file public interest litigations to demand that coal mining be declassified from a cottage industry to a large scale, extractive activity that generates crore of rupees daily and which should therefore follow strict safety regulations. Coal mining in Meghalaya can by no stretch of imagination be called a cottage industry just because some politician made populist moves to win votes at one time. But who will inform the powers that be in Delhi? At this juncture the only way forward is judicial intervention. The fact that coal is still mined using archaic methods is inexcusable. And that miners are made to crawl like rats into the insides of the earth to earn their bread and then to die because there are no mine safety regulations is criminal. Where mining is concerned the State Government has completely failed to regulate the process and rein in the rapacious miners for whom greed know no bounds. We have always known that human lives are expendable in the coal mines but this is the rare occasion when the issue has got the limelight it deserves because it involves 15 miners trapped in a hell hole.
That it takes a disaster relief team from Assam to rush to the site for rescue operations also tells us that Meghalaya is totally unprepared to meet such mining disasters and yet this is a mineral rich state! Somebody somewhere has to be made accountable. The mine owners’ names should be made public and they should adequately compensate the family members of the miners even though money will never compensate for human life. Mining can no longer be allowed to be a privately conducted laissez faire, all for profit business. The Government has to immediately come out with its Mining Policy and implement it to the letter. The mafia raj cannot co-exist with the rule of law. It has to be one or the other. Civil society and individual activists have been clamouring for the Mining Policy but their pleas have fallen on deaf ears. This is an opportunity for civil society to take the Government to task.