July 7/11: Driving through the coal districts. Everything black. The huts stained with black rain. The sand on the side of the roads black. The smell of coal burning and smoke rising. Streets stained with volcano ash. Coal powders blackens the cheeks of already dark adivasis. Black sediments flow into their lungs.
On the other side green fields for rice, turmeric, okra, onions. Cows plowing the fields, tilling the rich brown soil. Red huts pepper the forests. We drove through the roads and villages in contrast from each other. What a juxtaposition!
JMACC, the Jharkhand Mines Area Coordinating Committee; monitoring, organizing & advocacy arm of BIRSA organization for the mines affected people, took us to both the scenes so we could witness the contrast between the districts where coal companies have dominated swaths of previously green farm/forest lands and the sites of the andolans (movements) who were able to hold off mass scale coal mining and retain their freedom. One black and the other green. Going to both areas was extremely important because the experience showed that people led struggles that encompass decades, involve courting jail and getting beaten up by the coal mafia, even personal expenses from meager pockets CAN AND DO WORK!
ABOVE: Both areas of Jharkhand with coal deposits close to the surface of the earth and only a few hours away from each other. See the difference? And the difference is not merely the preservation of some bucolic beauty or a nature lover’s paradise. The difference is hard-core economics. Land that is rich in soil and water can take 2, 3 even 4 crops a year. These are tangible yields that continue to compound and form a self-sustainable economy for generations. The yields generated in one or two years dwarf the one time compensation offered by the mining company for the loss of land that has been a part of families for several years.
The companies have enticed farmers in areas where agitation has formed a veritable locally built opposition by increasing the payments of land manifold, though they are still often below the market price. The mining interests may be compelled to raise their offers, yet the one time compensation comes no where close to what most families derive from farming and related activities.
This coal rich area few hours to the north of Ranchi, the capital of Jharkhand, has been the darling of both colonial and corporate forces. The first railway in the entire India was established during the British times to export coal from Dhanabad, in this this region, to the ports of Calcutta for global trade. When Indira Gandhi nationalized coal companies the entire process of coal mining intensified. As Jharkhand’s movement for autonomy began to gain clout in the 1990s, a movement that originated so that adivasis and rural backward castes had more political power, the mining companies began to flock to the region. Many of those who fought for a tribal state in the 70s and 80s ended up being part of the Coal Kingdom! Think about America’s creation in the mid 1700s: instead of a process of development that had to reconcile a long history and diverse rural and urban populaces, the founding fathers had the opportunity to construct a state from scratch, and thus launched the modern republic based on Enlightenment philosophies. In Jharkhand, (I may be simplifying it a bit) as political legislation was crafted and land designated as the government’s was sanctioned, the process of mineral capitalism could be easily expedited.
The principal issue of coal mining in these areas is that the coal companies dig open casket mines because there is coal close to the surface of the earth, and open mines are cheaper to operate than underground mines. Yet the companies, after the 7-8 year operation of digging in a circle, leave the site as quickly as they can to extract the most amount of money from various projects and move on. They leave these massive canyons open, refusing to fill it up with the original dirt, rock, or proper sediment. If they do, the companies do shoddy work and fill up the canyon superficially. The people sometimes build villages or huts on top of the land, but entire houses have fallen in like a vacuum when the surfaces have little sediment packed underneath. There are massive piles of the sand that has been dug out to extract the coal that literally sit behind a village as if part of beautiful scenery. After years, trees have grown on top of these mounds. Its as if a company built a subway in Charlotte or Ahmedabad and left the mud dug out of the ground in 10-12 story piles in Myers Park
CG Road.
CG Road.
Mounds of black sediment sitting on the ground idly for years
The black lines are coal deposits and the gray lines are layers of stone.
So JMACC isn't advocating the end of coal excavation. They want the ground to be restored after the diggings, so people can go back to their lives at least a little, though the ground would still be barely fertile and the lives of previous inhabitants have been on halt for more than 7-8 years. Seems like a simple, humble plea right? But companies revolve their mission around profit, and spending some months and expenses to restore the soil subtracts from the immediate gain of starting a new project of coal digging few km away. They become profitable only by externalizing the costs, a mantra that remains rigidly in place worldwide. JMACC tries to find these projects out in advance, demanding compensation, stopping excess of land being taken away, and attempting to create some effective policies in the state legislature to end haphazard land displacement. We also must reduce the rampant pace of this excavation.
When there is more coal beneath the open mine, underground mines start to become created. Ten times more deadly. Two things happen. Sorry I’ll have to simplify this because it’s a chore for me to understand scientific processes in Hindi J. With these excavations, methane is released into the air in pervasive amounts, killing miners. Mining kills at least five people a day, guesses an activist of JMACC. There is some carbon or something in this methane that makes it more dangerous than the methane some use for cooking or that comes from cow mmhmm or our mhhmm (though that is a HUGE pollutant as well). The deaths are isolated and due to accidents or sicknesses, so it doesn’t seem like the epidemic it is. Also, water pressure builds up fast miles beneath the surface, and it has been unleashed on entire communities before, killing several and destroying fields of crops. Dynamites intended to burst ground to get at the coal are fatal as well.
The land displacement phenomenon appears here as well. Adivasis get their land taken away by Tata or Indian Coal Company or some public coal corporation with little to no compensation that their family of 6-8 can subsist on. Few of the local community become proletariat, a working force that many of the corporations delude or threaten into working by razing their crops. Then, they are on the move. Entire villages are abandoned. When some from other districts come to temporarily work as laborers excavating the mineral, they occupy the huts for a few years. Many come from all over the region in adjoining states, UP, Bihar, MP. They can’t go back after the labor is over, because there is not work back home. So what do they do?
People gather some coal and try to sell it to urban households. Human nature is so perseverant and enterprising… they make do with the pittance of opportunities surrounding them. We saw countless men who piled bags of coal on their bicycle and literally walked it to a nearby town, anywhere from 7-20 km away. My tear ducts became moist as these men, many with white hair creeping onto their scalps, trudged on with coal stained flip flops. Forget me, even the men from the ages of 30-45 who were in the car with me would struggle to hold the coal-burdened bicycle let alone to it. These men walked km after km in the blazing heat with their muscles that were fading due to lack of proper nutrition. Some set off at midnight to reach by morning. Others make bricks, trying simply to make some kind of living. The shiny film on top of the coal blocks that we saw is oil, to grease engines etc.
This man is selling bits to houses in a provincial village. He’s relatively fortunate enough to have a cart (though questionably strong) instead of a bicycle. I couldn’t capture the men on the road; we were travelling too fast in the car.
This man is selling bits to houses in a provincial village. He’s relatively fortunate enough to have a cart (though questionably strong) instead of a bicycle. I couldn’t capture the men on the road; we were travelling too fast in the car.
We know the situation. Appalachians face similar sufferings, if not so drastic, as Duke energy plunders their communities for the resource that our entire lives so obviously rely on. Yet the resource curse strikes again, and the Appalachian community is the poorest in the US. Coal is the number one source of energy in India, China, and the US by far. We want blazing air conditioning and then want to wear sweaters, we want our SUVs, we want to keep the lights on even when we don’t need to, we want to watch TV, we won’t moderate or restrain ourselves for these poor people. We are middle class! They are standing in the face of modernization, of necessary industrialization. Why shouldn’t we enjoy, right? Too bad for them, maybe next life they’ll be able to work their way out of poverty! My comfort depends upon driving these people off their land. I get cheap energy because the coal companies spend negligible amounts in rehabilitation for them. I mean I can’t avoid admitting it without soaking myself in hypocrisy.
Because of the coal canyon, water cannot hold in the ground in nearby fields, so all the water flows to the site of construction and leaves the khetis. We all know water flows to the lowest point. So how can people cultivate crops nearby? Wells for drinking water are drained. Here is the sick part. Corporations have to do some kinda service to ease the minds of us consumers at least superficially right? They have to say, hey, we are doing welfare for the native people. So they tell the locals here, take the same water that came from the coal pits to drink, bathe, wash clothes with. The water hasn’t been purified AND is highly acidic because it came from coal rich areas all the way underground, but what can the people do? Their wells are dried. And these excavation projects are numerous and omnipresent in their area so they cannot divert water from a nearby river or lake. So they drink it. Then they get sick, catching cholera etc. There is little love in these times though. We stopped by a center that serves as an organizational structure when these activists go in the field and also a dispensary for malaria, TB (you catch it if you breathe the coal dust air for your entire life) etc. They started 12 years ago after a cholera epidemic killed 50, and since there hasn’t been one death! What local pioneers those women are! They gave me great inspiration in this bleak area.
We stopped by a haat (local, makeshift market) where BIRSA was organizing a memorial for a community leader who self immolated (set himself on fire) to protest the fact that the government was embezzling funds from village laborers building a well in their community. BIRSA was able to interview him on the way to the hospital, and he died few hours later. He felt that, as an educated young village leader whose position was to deal with the government representatives for this project, the burden of the corruption fell upon him. Of course it didn’t, but he gave up his life to draw attention to such injustice perpetrated against people who do not have the experience or education to interact with fraudulent officials who are determined to make as much money for personal profit as they can.
I don’t have access to post the videos of the interview, nor believe the majority of you have the heart to see such burns.
Inscribed are his last words – spoken just before his death.
Self immolation makes us shudder with pain, yet it does in fact happen once in while – when people drive themselves to such drastic measures out of desperation and frustration, hoping the brutality of their self infliction will rouse support for a cause that is eclipsed out of the public eye. It set off the Middle East revolutions with the Tunisian fruit seller, it became a face of the Vietnam war with the monk on fire, it even set off Prague Spring. Ironically, out of curiosity I attended a seminar on the Red revolts in Eastern Europe at Harvard when I was visiting the university (among a couple other classes) in Feb. The hour class was all about the first martyr of Prague Spring, who set himself on fire in protest of the USSR’s puppet regime. The fact that these elite institutions have bookish academics who study these “phenomena” and debate its justification and impacts forty years later while it happens in real life for new, more pressing issues bothers the hell out of me.
Also, the open market had stalls where people were selling meat. “Fresh meat” took on a whole new meaning here! A vendor had a herd of goats tied by a rope behind him and a stone. Guess what happened. Exactly. Then I saw him skinning the goat, taking off his fur by turning him, well now it, upside down. Don’t worry, I’ll include pictures. I guess its not more gross than the American meatpacking industry, which is a mechanized and mass production method of treating animals with cruelty by confining them in miniscule places in their filth and then executing them by the millions each day. The form of butchery I saw has been going on for thousands of years. I just wish I had had the sense to close my eyes.
See the goats on the right and the dead animal on the left? Yeah, that process of living to dying probs happened in like 10 min.
Wanted a close up didn't you? Haha that man on the left is staring at me like what the hell do you want?
Sorry, several sad stories in a row. Let's move on to the green and freshening part of my day.
We drove to a village where a local Ambedkar and Buddha reading, Che and Birsa loving, Dalit empowering man and his family were staging a successful struggle against the mining companies. There were 37 coal companies in the region vying for control, 63 coal blocks, and 208 overall villages that would be displaced if the companies stationed their excavations.
This poster was hanging in his modest room! The quotation at the bottom is cut off but is terribly important: Minerals are ours, not just stakeholders but OWNERS! Remember Birsa Munda? And that’s the quintessential pic of Che.
Showing us all his books! Ambedkar essays, science of mining, Buddha and Ambedkar juxtapositions, social change literature... He was joking, “I end up spending most of my money on books whenever I leave my home!" Sentiments my family can relate to...
By relentlessly attending public hearings, (the next one was craftily and intentionally held on the day the farmers had to sow the seeds for the next season) they were able to foster a veritably loud andolan to prevent massive land displacement, holding the biting sharks at bay (temporarily, because the struggle continues daily). Occupying newspapers frequently, staging demonstrations, and exposing corporate lies became routine for this man and his organization, which started as a Dalit (“untouchable” case) supporting group to educate those existing on the margins of society and building their confidence by initiating more than 20 Dalit owned and operated stores in nearby villages.
The man’s father and mother themselves were beaten by dundas
He took us to some fields so we could see the cultivations. I have never seen such beauty! (I say that a lot, don’t I?) Yet the factories continued to mar the landscape in the distance.
What is so freaking depressing about this is that the natural beauty of this area is unbelievable. I call it civilizational nature – fields, forests, huts, cows, farmers—that seem to flow intuitively in the landscape. It isn’t man (or woman) dominated. At home, its like we live in the urban world and then go camping in the mountains to “take a break”. Being here restored my “liking” of nature. I was joking with my dad that I’m an urban girl – I can’t love nature. I can like it. I’ve always liked walking barefoot in the dirt, or planting flowers and vegetables, or going for hikes along nature trails. Here, nature doesn’t seem separate from society. They mesh effortlessly.
