Gushing water, noxious fumes, ancient tools -- Bararee could be Bagdigi

Gushing water, noxious fumes, ancient tools -- Bararee could be Bagdigi
SUBRATA NAGCHOUDHURY

DHANBAD, MARCH 25: Bararee could be Bagdigi. Next to the killer mine, this hole in the ground could be death's very own portal. At the beginning of a morning shift, the fear and tension on the face of the miners is palpable.

At pit number 6, scores of miners waiting for their day to begin are reluctant to go down because of heavy seepage of water. The two pumps which should have drained out the water fell silent the previous night because of a short-circuit. This has led to water flooding the mine at a depth of 600 feet.

``It is one of those rare days when the colliery agent is around,'' says Haradhan, refusing to go down unless the agent, B.H.Mahajan, goes along with them and repairs the pumps. Mahajan's assurances ring hollow. ``It is just strata water, and if you want to be down there in the pit, you will have to face this. There is nothing to worry about,'' he says. Some give in while others refuse to stir. ``Who knows when Bararee will turn into another Bagdigi. It is too fresh to be forgotten,'' says Sabur Goradi, another miner.

The deadlock continues even as the water gushes in. This is not an unusual situation, just another day in the life of these impoverished miners who have to eventually descend into the depths where the fear of death lurks.

If it was water today, it could be something else tomorrow. Pit number 5 here had to be closed down sometime back because of carbon monoxide emission. The entire Bararee mine area is surrounded by burning coal seams. At daytime only the smoke rising from the surface is visible; at night the red hot cinders glow all around. ``In the face of such dangers, we do our work, bhagban bharose (trusting God),'' says Haradhan of Sabur.

Jharia happens to bear the country's most precious coal blocks. With 30 sq km of raging underground mine fires, hundreds of water-filled gobs (that part of the mine from where the coal has been extracted) and least safety for workers, Jharia is also the country's worst disaster-prone zone. And two months after the Bagdigi mishap that claimed 30 lives, nothing seems to have changed.

Safety here is just a luxury that comes only after the production target is met and thousands of stomachs are filled. There is a yawning gap between the official claims of huge investments for safety and the ground realities.

The BCCL officials -- beginning with Director, Technical, who was also officiating as the CMD to Executive Director (Safety) -- clam up if there is any talk of mine safety. Apparently, in the past three years the BCCL has claimed to have spent over Rs 300 crore on safety measures, at least on paper. But, as is starkly evident, not even pumps work at the sites.

The communication between the pit and the ground is still primitive. The working gear continues to be the age-old head-lamp and shovel. ``Supervision by senior officials of the BCCL is virtually non-existent,'' the miners complain.

However, their choices are limited. At Bagdigi, for instance, the miners were pushing for resumption of work at the earliest. ``This urgency,'' explains Suresh Prasad Gupta, a leader of the miners, ``stems from the fear of displacement.'' According to official sources, several pits in Khan Kusunda, Lodna, Kachi Balihari, Bhowrah North etc have already been closed as a precautionary measure. And the idle workforce have been ordered to shift to other mines.

In the post-Bagdigi scenario, the BCCL and ECL authorities are taking another shortcut to safety. They are trying to get the working plans cleared by institutes like the Indian School of Mines (ISM), Central Mining Research Institute etc before these are finally approved by the Directorate General of Mine Safety. As a professor of the ISM said: ``We could see through the plan and refused to oblige. The logic is simple. Should there be another Bagdigi, there would be more players for the BCCL or ECL to pass the buck on to.''