Reckless In Raniganj

EIGHT-YEAR-OLD Muskaan is kneeling close to a patch of fresh, hot coal. She is sorting charcoal pieces that she will pile into a bamboo basket for her father to carry across the town of Raniganj. Everyday, groups of other men, women and children join her at this coal-burning ghat, only a few kilometres from the city’s main market. The coal that comes to them is mined and sold illegally. The irony is that Raniganj sits in the heart of India’s coal belt, yet residents rely on illegal coal to cook their daily food. If caught, Muskaan can end up in prison for months without trial, but a lonely constable in khaki from the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), watching passively at the sidelines provides the much-needed assurance.

This is only one of the many ironies of this small town in West Bengal’s Burdwan district. Fundamentally, the Raniganj story is about resources; mining what once belonged to the people and not giving back enough. Spread over 1,530 kilometres, the Raniganj Coalfields stretches far beyond the town itself, and is heralded as the birthplace of coal mining in India.

But as Muskaan bends over, she doesn’t know that the ground below could be a hollow cavern, a void created by the same illegal mining she’s a part of. Today, after years of unscientific coal mining, Raniganj is suspended over a thin crust of land; over a labyrinth of vacant galleries. Around the coalfields, there are deep gorges where the land has collapsed. Trees and buffalos often fall into them. Even the bustling town markets sit on a maze of hollow corridors, snaking haphazardly into each other. Locals live in fear that someday, the entire town with its 35,000 plus population could cave in. As they ply through the town’s dense alleys, no one knows where, or when, the feeble earth will crumble.

When coal was nationalised in 1973, the government took over Raniganj’s assets, but not its liabilities. Mining protocol demands underground cavities be filled with sand, but dungeons from the British era remain unfilled. Coal India Limited (CIL) that owns the subsidiary Eastern Coalfields Limited, which, in turn, owns the mines in Raniganj, is aware but has ignored the crisis for long. Recently, CIL chairman Partha Bhatta - charyya said he will get global investment to resume work in 19 abandoned mines. The mafia laughed. The mines, for them, have never been abandoned.

Mining continues, so does subsidence. Most recently, it happened barely 200 meters from the popular Anjana Cinema hall. Before that, an entire lake dried up, a few hundred meters behind Raniganj’s DAB school. An empty gallery somewhere sucked in the water. If the gallery had been packed with sand, the lake landform would not have been destroyed.

The locals, meanwhile, remain trapped in the curious cycle of need and greed. They inherited a land enriched with some of the best A-grade coal available in India. With CIL taking over, they lost access. Agriculture is not a viable option because all the ground water has seeped into the hollow earth. With no other skills, most are driven to either work for the coal mafia, or steal whatever coal they can find.

Desperation makes them act dangerously: early in the mornings, when a foggy haze covers the sleepy town, backfiring trucks and belching lorries are stirring up a cacophony at the Mahavir Colliery, the official and legal face of mining in Raniganj. Residents from surrounding villages watch as giant yellow machines extract coal from the mountain. As the arm of the machines rotates, loaded with freshly mined coal, a mix of dhotis, sarees and polka-dotted frocks lunge ahead: men, women and children leap to snatch pieces of coal that might drop from the machine’s jaws. These are the pieces they bring back to the ghat, to burn and sell. When chased by the police, they run with as much coal as they can carry. Those caught on the cliff plunge down to escape the police, risking serious injury, even death.

There are no official records, but locals vouch that hundreds have died in illegal mining mishaps, only to have their families threatened into silence by the coal mafia. No wonder, the position of head of police in Raniganj is a coveted one — because of the level of guaranteed mafia kickbacks. The biggest tragedy, however, happened the legal way: 200 miners died in Mahavir Collieries in 2001.

On the other side of town, under the same morning fog, sacks of coal are being loaded on cycles. Hundreds manually dig it from secret cavities in the mountain known as ‘rat holes’, which usually come up in places where legal mining once occurred. When the underground hollows are left unfilled with sand, the mafia enters with ease, and excavates unscrupulously. The frail frame of Dubey Mondal stands out from the crowd, trying to fit more coal into a thin white sack. He is paid Rs 600 for every tonne. This coal has been mined illegally from a rat hole, ironically at the bottom of the same mountain where ECL mines at the top. “I work for the mafia. I have no other way to feed my family,” says Mondal, before setting off on his bicycle to designated depots. The bigger consignment is moved at night in trucks. The official price of coal is around Rs 2,800 a tonne, but the mafia sells it for Rs 1,300: the primary buyers are sponge iron units that have mushroomed around the town.

THE CHANGE in ECL’s mining policy may have made things worse. The company shifted towards open cast mining because it costs less, but this has, ironically, encouraged more illegal mining. Spread across the coalfields, vast, open mines look like festering, unwrapped wounds. Surface earth has been scraped to get coal, but the heaps of extracted rock, rubble and mud remain piled at the rim After ECL reaches the prescribed ‘stopping point’ or after it isn’t profitable to mine further, the mines are abandoned. The scraped material is not filled back in, a negligence that allows the mafia new ‘rat holes’ to mine illegally. The deeper they dig, the more the risk of razing through pillars that uphold the town, the more the chance of subsidence.

IN SHAMDI village, when the land caved in, it also sweeped away parts of Bhim Ruidas’s house. Like Ruidas, scores of other families live in cracked houses, in constant fear that the land below will collapse. A few months ago, ECL rehabilitated five families, but villagers say most returned because the quarters given to them were too shoddy. Barely 200 meters from Ruidas’s house, methane erupts from open fissures in the mountain. Young boys are afraid to play cricket in the village: deadly gas could suddenly come out of the cracks: Sajjal Rai died because he got too close.

Sometimes, when oxygen seeps into the underground methane-charged coal from these fissures, entire areas combust and fires rage: in Nimcha village, such fires occurred four times between December 2007 and February 2008. Haradhan Tapadar, who lives in Nimcha and does electrical work for ECL, was sitting in his cabin one morning when he saw white smoke some 30 meters away. Suddenly, the land began to subside; the smoke turned thick black, and then erupted into flames. “There is fire in the ground below. We live in constant tension. We don’t know when the next fire will be,” he says.

Kanhaia Singh, president of the Raniganj Chamber of Commerce, has written to ECL and Coal India about the dire situation, to no avail. “The lives of the people are in grave danger. Rampant illegal mining is one of the most serious causes. But the carelessness and callous attitude on the part of ECL authorities is also a major contributing factor,” he wrote in a letter to the West Bengal Government. Even the sand that is meant for filling hollow coal pits is being swindled, he added. A local ECL employee explains how: “The records show that 1,000 bags of sand have been sanctioned, but actually only 100 are being used for filling.”

The government sanctioned a Rs 6,354 crore mega rehabilitation package in September 2007. “This is only a ploy to get us out of Raniganj so the government can mine all the coal. We won’t leave” says Singh. As per CIL’s own records, 139 localities are directly impacted by the mining and in danger of subsiding. Rehabilitation work was to begin in 2008, but delayed due to lack of funds. The municipal corporation said last year that it would not be responsible for the safety of new construction. “We don’t want evacuation but stabilisation. They are illegally digging wherever they like. We don’t know where the rat holes have reached. Our lives could be in danger,” says Dr RS Ganguly, president, Raniganj Citizens council.

The sun is about to dip behind charred heaps of coal neatly piled at the burning ghat. Muskaan is rubbing the grainy residue off her fingers, ready to leave for home. “Sometimes, my hands burn, but that’s okay,” she says. Try talking to her father, and he won’t look you in the eye. He seems embarrassed to have involved his daughter in something illegal. “Coal is a funny thing,” he says. “When it’s down it belongs to the government, when we get it up it becomes illegal. No wonder they call it the black diamond.”