Friday, July 11, 2025
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Between hope and desperation

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The sighting of one body inside the Ksan mine on day 34 of the mine disaster has given the parents of the deceased some hope of retrieving the bodies of their loved ones. Realistically speaking it is not possible to have survived in an atmosphere suffused with sulphurous gases for over a month.  The rescue operation was at best a delayed reaction; badly coordinated and lacked the sense of urgency from state authorities. The navy divers and National Disaster Relief Force (NDRF) were rendered helpless because of the inability to drain out the water from the mine. The hydrologist from Hyderabad was flown in only three weeks after the disaster. It appears that there was a complete lack of planning about what the priorities should have been. The North East Space Application Centre (NESAC), in Meghalaya, the Regional Head office of the Geological Survey of India also in Meghalaya and other related parties and institutions should have been sounded to see if they have solutions. In fact an SOS from the Government of Meghalaya should have gone out instead of going about the rescue mission on a piecemeal basis. Whatever rescue missions arrived at the Ksan mine were requisitioned only after the Supreme Court intervened because of a petition pending before it.

The people of Meghalaya too have been found wanting in their response to this tragedy. Many took this as another mine accident and blamed the miners for taking calculated risks. The coal mine owners were impervious to the tragedy. All they could think of was how to transport their illegally mined coal until January 31, the date earlier given by the Supreme Court on December 5. On January 15, the date of the next hearing the apex Court took a grim view of the transportation issue after it was briefed by the lawyer for the Citizen’s Forum about the illegality and venality of the coal mining process and the  15 miners trapped inside the Ksan mine.

There is absolutely no empathy with the parents and relatives of the trapped miners who have been waiting on tenterhooks for positive news which has evaded them for over a month. There are interest groups whose loyalties lie with the coal miners instead of with those trapped inside the mines. The ethnocentric fault lines that emerge on a regular basis tell us that the value of human life in Meghalaya is determined by its ethnicity and economic status.

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