By HH Mohrmen
It is very unfortunate that in Meghalaya we ended the year with sadness. Similarly, we began the year with a sense of grief over what had happened at Ksan. The incident in which water inundated a rat hole mine, has affected most of us immensely, so much so that the arrival of the New Year was a sombre affair and it slipped away without one realizing it had come and gone. How can one even wish relatives and friends happy new year when a pall of gloom envelopes the horizon?
The tragedy is not only that we have people trapped in an illegal mine which was inundated by water, but sadly we are not even sure how many people are trapped in the mine. This is something that should make the state government ashamed of. In all likelihood the sordar or the manager would have the numbers of miners engaged in the mine on that fateful day. Alas till date no has one come forward to claim that he is the manager or perhaps the manager himself is also trapped in the mine. So we would be able to get the exact numbers of miners trapped only after the de-watering of the mine is completed.
Then there is also a faint idea of how deep the vertical shaft is. Let’s say that the depth of the vertical shaft is 350 feet. Considering that the average height of a one-storey building in Meghalaya is 10 feet, the shaft in the mine at Ksan is so deep that we can easily fit a 35 storey building inside the shaft. This is the sheer size of the vertical shaft where the miners are trapped which is equivalent to the height of a 35 storey building, but this again is not at all an issue; the problem is the horizontal tunnels inside this mine.
For those who are not familiar with the mining in Meghalaya, mining in the state was earlier done by miners digging a horizontal tunnel on the side of a hillock. A tunnel the size of the coal seams was dug horizontally and they continued digging on the tunnel as long as there is coal and stopped when the coal is exhausted. This is also how the mining system in the area derived its name as rat hole mining, because the tunnel is similar to a hole burrowed by a rat.
As the miners continue digging and move on along the tunnel, they also leave part of the coal at equal intervals to serve as a column to support the roof. But after the coal is exhausted at the far end of the tunnel, the miners were then asked to remove the columns in a process known in local dialect as ‘bam païa,’ or eating or removing the columns. Many accidents happened in the process when even the columns which were meant to support the roof of the mine were removed and there were many cases of mine roofs collapsing and burying alive the miners body but the incidents went unreported since other then the mine owner and manager no one actually knew who went in and who came out. If the miners are illegal migrants then even their family members don’t dare raise a stink.
This is the mining method they used earlier, but now the mining process used is known to the coal miners as box cutting. However box cutting system is no different from the previous rat hole mining except for the vertical shaft which goes to more than 300 feet deep, depending on the location of the coal seams. The vertical cutting of earth in the shape of a box is also why this type of mining is called box cutting. The vertical shaft is dug till it locates coal seams and once the seams are located a horizontal tunnel is dug and the extraction of coal begin. The horizontal tunnel is so narrow that a miner has to crawl to do his job. The horizontal tunnel is no different from the rat hole in the earlier method of mining. The only difference is that the box cutting has replaced the earlier method of mining with the vertical shaft. Hence we continue to call it rat hole mining. Even in box cutting the miners continue digging the horizontal tunnel till the coal is exhausted and then as they move towards the entry or the vertical shaft, they also remove the columns in a process which is very dangerous.
Coming to the case in Ksan, in all probability the miners are trapped inside the horizontal tunnel which goes sideway while they were digging coal. The other problem is no one knows how long the tunnels are. We have the size of the vertical shaft, but not the horizontal tunnels from where the coal is extracted. And sadly, no one knows how many of these horizontal tunnels are there in this particular mine. This is the major problem which makes the rescue operation very difficult and the only option for the rescuers is to dewater the mine.
Because the extraction of coal is done illegally and there is no monitoring from the government, the miners can go as deep as they want and can dig as many horizontal tunnels as there are mine seams inside the mines. Because the mining is done without any government monitoring, there is no map or inventory which could otherwise be of help to the rescuer. This is just with respect to the shape or the design of the mine, but the nature of the water, the turbidity of the water is also a major challenge for the diver. This is an attempt just to help readers understand the complex nature of the rescue operations. Of course reaching the bottom of the vertical shaft can be easy, but the challenge is when it comes to entering the horizontal tunnels, the size of which can be less than five feet.
The government is aware of the system of mining that was employed by the miners and is also well briefed about the hazards that the miners have to endure, but it is not willing to take action to monitor or regulate the activity. In spite of the treacherous nature of these mines the government has allowed a laissez-faire mining reminiscent of the days of David Copperfield and the working environment of industrial workers then in England. As a matter of fact, all attempts were made by all governments past and present to allow this dangerous activity to continue. Much of the efforts of the government both under the leadership of the Congress and the NPP were to find out ways and means to convince the Central government to allow this activity to continue without any regulation. And this is the price that we have to pay for that go as you please policy.
In the name of tradition and on the pretext of the unique land tenure system in the state which is guaranteed by the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution, we were befooled by our leaders. Political leaders in the state irrespective of their political affiliations have moved from pillar to post to convince the central government to allow mining in the state to continue without regulation. In the past every government sought to avoid and skirt Central Acts which regulate mining and guarantee protection of the environment. Absolutely no thought was given to the safety of the miners and the government always tried to avoid Rules & Regulation framed by the Director General of Mines and Safety (DGMS) Government of India.
The question is why do we continue to take shelter in the special category status that was guaranteed to us under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution? The Sixth Schedule of the Constitution does not gives us license to destroy our environment neither does it gives us a free hand to engage in a business activity without taking care of the safety of the people we employ. But when will we ever learn?