​Burrow tragedy: On the coal mining tragedy in Assam’s Dima Hasao

With four deaths so far, the coal mining tragedy in Assam’s Dima Hasao district has revived a long-standing debate on the hazardous nature of rat-hole coal mining in India. As opposed to modern coal mining, which is mechanised, the ‘rat-hole’ points to the crude and antiquated technique of employing people, and even children, to burrow into the ground to scoop out the underground coal. Depending on the depths that they plumb, the odds are high that their pickaxes will often unleash a torrent of water from a hidden aquifer that can suddenly inundate the excavated tunnel — as it is suspected to have happened at Dima Hasao. Because such accidents have recurred over the decades, along with the attendant health and environmental hazards, this mode of mining was banned by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) in 2014. The use of proper geological surveys and appropriate machinery would have made the mine economically unviable. The Assam Chief Minister has stated that the mine appeared to be “prime facie… illegal” and one abandoned by the State’s Mines and Minerals Department. If that is the case, it reflects poorly on the State administration that such mines can be exploited by unscrupulous elements with such ease, despite the ban. Surely, this is only a fraction of the unregulated mining that actually goes on.

The Supreme Court of India, in 2019, had asked whether it was possible for such mining to continue without the “connivance” of officials, when it was examining the rescue of 15 miners trapped in a rat-hole mine in the East Jaintia Hills in December 2018. A report submitted by a monitoring committee set up by the NGT observed that despite the ban, the demand for coal to power cement manufacturing and thermal power plants in the northeast had sustained and supported rat-hole coal mining. On the other hand, when convenient, State authorities have sought out and even felicitated rat-hole miners, some from Assam, as in 2023, when they were called in as a last resort after advanced machinery and the expertise of professional geologists and earth scientists had failed to rescue 41 construction workers trapped in the large, over-ground Silkiyara tunnel in Uttarkashi. The Dima Hasao operation too, like others, will end and the net success or failure of saving those trapped will induce a familiar amnesia that will be broken only by the next accident. Until decisive action to puncture the economics of rat-hole mining is taken, India is only burrowing the way to another tragedy.