Shillong, Dec 9: Rat-hole coal mining is dangerous, unsanitary and heavily polluting but none other than Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma looks back on the banned practice with rose tinted glasses, saying that people in Meghalaya had been doing it for centuries and it was key to the livelihoods of lakhs of families.
Rat-hole coal mining was banned by the National Green Tribunal in 2014 for its deleterious effects on the environment. Miners also risked life and limb to scratch out a living in the depths of unsafe mine shafts and, while it did support poor families, it was the coal barons – many of whom are, or are connected to, politicians – who really profited from the mines.
Sangma’s comments come after new claims of illegal mining, one which was said to have cost the lives of three miners. The state government is often accused of not doing enough to combat illegal mining, though it denies looking the other way.
Today Sangma said that rat-hole coal mining was an age-old practice that had been going for around 200 years before being dubbed illegal. Because it was such a fixture of people’s lives it “takes time for them to come out of that mode where livelihood, families and other businesses are dependent [on coal],” he said. “It is easy to say now it is illegal but for 200 years it was legal.”
When the NGT banned the practice, the whole state government machinery turned to preventing rat-hole mining but it was “complicated” given how old the practice was.
The CM defended his government’s record, saying that “thousands” of police cases have been initiated, charge sheets filed and illegal mines closed under his watch. But for the practice to really be done away with, the people need alternative livelihoods.
Sangma’s alternative to mining? More mining, specifically the ‘scientific’ variety, which has reopened the way for mining to take place in Meghalaya. The prerequisites for scientific mining licences are more rigorous than the Wild West style of rat-hole extraction, so it will take time for coal mining to get back to the old days in terms of volumes and employment numbers.
In the meantime, the government will continue to act against illegal extraction, he said, while also remaining “humane” in its considerations of why people still engage in rat-hole mining.
