This unregulated and hazardous industry has been projected as a “cottage industry” of Meghalaya, till the time the National Green Tribunal (NGT) put a ban on it in 2014. There were no serious efforts to enforce the ban, though. In fact, the ruling parties came to power with the promise to get the ban lifted.Mining is the biggest source of electoral funding in the state, with many of the present ministers and legislators either owing or running the mines. Many candidates in the elections of 2018 had stakes in mining and transport activities. Meghalaya was never exempted from central laws regulating mining, although, now, the government is making efforts to circumvent the “illegality.”
- Not all locals benefit from mining. It has led to the privatisation of the commons and grabbing of land by a few. It is directly related to the increasing landlessness in the districts in which it is prevalent. There are, on an average, more than 50 mines per square kilometre in the Jaintia Hills.
- It is a tragedy that coal has become the mainstay of the economy, as other sources of livelihood have dried up because of mining. Those with access to more capital and resources inevitably get more profits, while the locals, in whose name the extraction is done, live at the behest of coal barons.
- More than 15 workers were trapped in one such black hole on 13 December 2018, as the water of the Lytein river gushed in through a puncture. Rescue operations have continued since then, although the crucial initial time was lost. The pumps to pull out the water from the mine reached the site only after two weeks.
- The mines were unmapped with no blueprint to aid the rescue work. Even with the navy pressed into action, it was difficult to take out the disintegrating bodies of the miners. Two miners were again killed in the same district on 6 January 2019. A similar incident in the Garo Hills had led to the NGT ban in the first place.
- Forty men had died in a similar way in 2002, while five miners were crushed to death in 2013. Deaths and injuries from falls, cave-ins, and flooding are an everyday event in the mining area, for which no one is held accountable.
- Rathole mining has been disastrous for the environment as well. Jaintia Hills has come to be known as the “land of dead rivers,” as the high sulphur and metal wastes have made the rivers toxic and acidic, killing the fish and degrading the soil quality. Thousands of acres of forest have been cleared and fields destroyed for mining or storing the coal.
- The landscape stands disfigured and ravaged, with the uncovered abandoned pits acting as death traps. With such degradation of the environment, mafia activities, child labour (an estimate putting their numbers at 70,000 in 2010), trafficking, and the lack of concern for workers’ life and safety, the government’s promises of regulation do not invite trust.
- Scientific mining also does not appear to be the answer, as coal seams are thin and deep inside and spread out, requiring mining over larger areas. The coal is also not of a good quality, undermining the economic viability.
- Who should take the responsibility of the recurring tragedies in the mining holes and manholes? Such questions have become much more difficult to answer in neo-liberal times. In this specific case of Meghalaya, despite the ban and the knowledge of violations, the business continued unabated, ignoring the fact that humans can enter the mining holes crawling on all fours like rats, but, in the case of inherent disasters, they cannot make their way out like rats.