As each day passes, hopes of the miners trapped inside the Ksan mine at Lumthari being rescued alive are fading. Nineteen days have passed since news came in on December 13, last that 13 miners were trapped inside the mine after it suddenly flooded. The numbers then went up to fifteen but even that is a conjecture. No one really knows how many miners actually went in. The mine owner, Krip Chullet first absconded and was later arrested. It would be interesting to see how the case against him proceeds if all the 15 miners are dead. When mining operations are carried out illegally then there are simply no records of anything. All transactions are in cash and there’s no paper trail. However, this is not the first mining disaster. The real tragedy is that there has been no corrective action and rat hole mining continues as usual. Till date no one has been held accountable for the many deaths that have occurred inside the mines in South Garo Hills in 2012. The locals who know the modus operandi of rat hole mining opine that miners are regularly trapped inside the mines when it caves or is flooded because of a breach which occurs when miners accidentally hit an abandoned mine.
The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) have done their bit but they expect the District Administration to organise the necessary equipment to pump water out of the mine. Unfortunately, the response from the Administration was tardy and tentative. The impression is that they did not know how to proceed with the rescue measures. This was bound to happen as this is also the first instance when news of the mine disaster hit the national and international media headlines. This disaster is compared to the Thailand rescue mission in June this year when 13 young boys who were trapped in a flooded cave were successfully rescued by British divers. The world watched the rescue operation with bated breath. India too had lent its high-powered pumps manufactured by the Kirloskar Brothers to suction out the water. The Kirloskar Brothers have volunteered to assist the Meghalaya Government but not before much time has passed as the request for assistance suffered from a bureaucratic time lag.
If nothing else, this tragedy should result in immediate corrective measures. Rat hole mining may be viable for the mine owners but is a deadly labour for the miners whose lives hang precariously every single day they descend into the dark abyss called the rat hole mines. Hence rat hole mining cannot be regularized and coal mining in its present form cannot be legalized. The Government of Meghalaya has to come up with a robust, transparent and comprehensive Mining Policy at the earliest.
