The above was a call given by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848. May 1 is a day dedicated to workers who are hardly recognised for the efforts they put in. On this day it would have been fitting for the people of Meghalaya to remember the 15 dead miners trapped in the flooded rat hole coal mine at Ksan, East Jaintia Hills since December 13, 2018. Christmas and then Easter were observed but the faithful forgot to petition their Creator in heaven for the souls of these castaways and the Government on this earth to retrieve their bodies. It is now 137 days since the miners were trapped. It is instructive that whatever attempts have been made by the state government so far have been at the behest of a Delhi-based petitioner, Aditya N Prasad who approached the Supreme Court purely on humanitarian grounds. The apex court has been directing the State Government to get its act together by seeking the help of the Indian Air Force to airlift the water pumps from the Kirloskar Brothers; the Indian Army to constructing temporary structures for mounting the water pumps, while the Indian Navy were brought in to dive into the ill-fated 137 ft deep hole to try and recover the bodies. From day one, the Deputy Commissioner, East Jaintia Hills had written to the Government that the local mine owners had the expertise to carry out the dewatering process since they executed this task regularly after the rainy season. This suggestion was given a go by.
The presence of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) was meaningless since they did not have a standard operating procedure (SOP) for managing a mine disaster. They have not carried out such an exercise in the past despite there having been several such mining disasters. This brings us to an important point – that of labour rights and welfare in the State of Meghalaya. The State Government recently observed that much money has been spent in the miners’ rescue mission without any results. What the Government has failed to acknowledge is that it has not only messed up in not getting the local mine owners to help out but has also added to the dilemma by delaying the process. The Kirloskar pumps were not lifted quickly enough; the pumping process which should have gone on continuously was erratic with complaints about there not being enough electricity to power the pumps. And while there are powerful advocates in the apex court arguing on behalf of the mine owners, not a word is being said about the safety measures to be adopted for the miners. This is a clear case of violation of human rights by none other than the state.