The last of the asbestos miners

When miner Dansingh Bodra was asked about the people from his village who he worked with in the asbestos mines of Roro, who have all died before their time, he slowly starts counting, first to himself, and then loudly: “gyaara, Pooliya Sondi… baara, Rohto Gop… taira, Bagan Sondi… chowda, Vijay Singh Sondi… pandra, Gono Sondi… sola, Harish Sondi… sattra, Sukmon Sondi… atthra, Rahto Samadh.”

Dansingh himself suffers from cancer, a huge tumour grows out of his stomach.

It took him five minutes to remember the dead. A few seconds to denounce the company that laid them off one fine day when the mines shut down in 1983.

“They gave us nothing, no healthcare, no pension, just these illnesses.”

“I worked in the mines for 12 years, and from that day itself I used to cough, and slowly it started to get worse.”

This man with a lump growing out of his stomach remains a testament to the reality of internal colonisation, of a company that currently earns aggregate revenues of over Rs800 crore, of industrial development, and the idea that mining offers jobs.
Dansingh Bodra awaits death in a village where his three grandchildren sleep behind him suffering from fever. The mines have long but closed down, but the dust and pollution that emanates from them, still spread across the fields.

Even today, as per law, especially as per section 22 of the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act 1981, all asbestos mines have to be closed. But Hyderabad Industry Limited, part of the CK Birla Group, did not close their mines at Roro village at Chaibasa, West Singhbhum, Jharkhand. As a result, the asbestos fibres that are blown into the wind, that seep into the fields and rivers, still exist 30 years after the mines shut down.

“So many people died before they turned forty,” said Birsingh Sondi, who points to his neighbours house, “There lived Mangalsingh Sondi, who was 25 when he died, and he never even worked in the mine. His father, Sukmon, worked there, and he died a few years ago too.”

A deadly carcinogen
Asbestos, whose use, manufacture and extraction is banned across the European Union, is still used widely across India and is part of a Rs4,000 crore industry dominated by around 18 companies who justify the use of asbestos as a substitute for affordable roofing, and claim that chrysotile asbestos can be safely manufactured and used without risks.

The companies claim that the kind of asbestos used in India isn’t carcinogenic, even as all forms of asbestos are classified as carcinogenic by the World Health Organisation, the International Labour Organisation, and the International Agency For Research On Cancer, who mention in a report that was published in 2010: ‘Epidemiological evidence has increasingly shown an association of all forms of asbestos (chrysotile, crocidolite, amosite, tremolite, actinolite, and anthophyllite) with an increased risk of lung cancer and mesothelioma.’ It goes on to mention that an estimated 125mn people are still exposed to asbestos at the workplace.

Yet, the Asbestos Cement Products Manufacturers Association, one of the main lobby groups for the continued production and use of asbestos, has repeatedly claimed, “Some five hundred other products and industrial processes are recognised as carcinogens, but this does not mean that we must prohibit their use.”

While the lobby has often reiterated that chrysotile asbestos is safe, the chairman of the Asbestos Cement Products Manufacturers Association, Abhaya Shanker, is also the managing director of Hyderabad Industries Limited. According to him, they have closed the Roro mine, and that the mountains of asbestos tailings from the mine are not carcinogenic.

“Roro is a finished chapter, a closed mine 30 years back, what’s the point of Roro? I don’t understand,” he exclaims in a telephonic interview. “That is all an old story, an old type of asbestos and that is all done. The mine is safely handed over, and closed, and handed over to the government of India, and there is no danger to the public. It’s all bullshit.”

“According to the Supreme Court directives in the CERC case, you have to monitor the health of your workers? Do you also monitor the health of your workers from Roro?” I asked.

“You can look at our world class health monitoring system, for our workers… for several years we keep calling them, for check-ups, for studying them…” responds Shanker.
“Even the Roro workers?”

“The Roro workers are all finished, we would have done them (the survey) for a couple of year, and it’s been 30 years now, nobody would be alive now,” says Shanker.
Closing the mountain

Roro Hills at Chaibasa were first mined for chromite in the early 1960s by the Tatas. The mines were sold to the CK Birla Group, as the Tatas moved onto mining chromite at Sukinda, in Odisha, which itself, aaccording to international environmental group Blacksmith Institute, is one of the 10 most polluted places in the world, where approximately 70% of the surface water is contaminated by hexavalent chromium, and 24.7% of the population living around the mines are suffering from pollution-induced diseases.

When I had visited the village of Suanla in Sukinda in 2010, an old man scoffed at the media’s ability to highlight the issue. He claimed that over 30 people have died in the past few months. Some called the deaths in Suanla an exaggeration, but in the house of Markand Hembram, four members of the household had died within a year.

Quoting the report by the Blacksmith Institute, the government itself had gone on to say: ‘It is unique, it is gigantic and it is beyond the means and purview of the [Orissa Pollution Control] Board to solve the problem.’

Back at Roro, there were attempts to close the mountain and clean up. Way back in 2003, a public hearing was held where villagers from 14 villages around the mines had spoken up about working in the mines and the health issues in their villages. The hearing was organised by Jharkhand Organisation For Human Rights, and was paneled by a group of prominent doctors and advocates.

The report of the hearing was taken to the District Collector and Chief Medical officer who were given representations for conducting medical camps, to monitor health of workers and non-workers, and to detail a scientific closure of mines and to hold Hyderabad Industries Limited accountable to pay for health and environmental damages.

Yet, till date, there have never been any attempt by any official body — from the Pollution Control Board, the Directorate General of Mines Safety, the Mining Department, the company or the local administration to remediate and clean up the mine tailings or do a proper closure.

At Roro, only three miners who worked with the Birla Group are left alive. But not everyone worked directly under the company since independent contractors had also taken on the work of disposing asbestos dust, and they paid workers Rs1.50 per day, for working from eight in the evening to eight in the morning, to clear dust.

“There was no izzat in mining, we should never have allowed them here,” says Dansingh Bodra, who had even worked underground, mining asbestos without any protective clothing. And there were accidents: Turam Sondi, Jida Sondi and Dausar Sondi were killed in the mines in a few years before the lockout and the closing of the mines.

“No one should ever have worked the way we did.”