Coal calculations

At Ladrymbai in Meghalaya, the lure of coal money threatens social disruption and environmental devastation.

TEXT AND PICTURES BY RUPA CHINAI

LADRYMBAI in the Jaintia language means `junction to Rymbai village'. This obscure village situated on a hillock in the Jaintia Hills of Meghalaya literally emerged as one with the coming of National Highway (NH) 44: it became a transit point for super-fast buses and goods trucks thundering their way between Guwahati and Silchar in Assam, and beyond to Manipur and Mizoram. The highway has also been Ladrymbai's road to ruin as the village turned into a pit stop for the coal trade.

The road made it possible for people of the area to exploit its coal and limestone deposits, which cover up to a quarter of the Jaintia Hills and are estimated to last at least a decade. In the absence of a development plan, supportive infrastructure, knowledge and skills, communities have engaged in uncontrolled gouging of the earth. While it has brought a rain of wealth for some, it has also brought social disruption and environmental devastation. Ladrymbai perhaps best represents the complexities of a development process that is turning traditional communities in the northeastern region into migrants and ecological refugees in their own homeland.

Ladrymbai today is a town that never sleeps. At night its barely contained demons spill out of the narrow gullies - tinsel girls with their pitchers of country liquor compete with rows of wine shops that boast the highest liquor sales in the State. In the bylanes, drug peddlers promise a psychedelic trip with pure grade heroin. Thus, Ladrymbai's nightly ritual of debauchery and mayhem makes it yet another frontier trading post.

Driving from Jowai, the district headquarters, to Ladrymbai highlights the contrasting countryside of the Jaintia Hills. Green, gently rolling, pine-tree-covered hills dramatically give way to a canvas of black. Thousands of tonnes of coal mined in the interior areas are carried in trucks over the rugged, unpaved terrain and dumped alongside the highway. Empty trucks returning from the neighbouring States after delivery of supplies carry this coal to the plains.

The haphazard mining has been taken to such absurd levels that Ladrymbai town is sitting on a rabbit warren of crisscrossing tunnels. Should a major earthquake occur in this seismic zone the entire town could cave in, residents fear. They have to negotiate mountains of coal lying all around them, blocking their doorways and polluting water sources and fields. Their children have nowhere to play, except on coal heaps. The destruction of tree cover has seen a fall in the level of groundwater and rainwater run-off. There is no access to clean drinking water.

Says Rapheael Kyndait of Yongkaluh village in Khlereat block: "One day we heard a tapping noise coming from under our house and discovered that people from a neighbouring village were digging coal right under our house. This led to a huge quarrel, but the problem was finally settled and they stopped. This kind of activity is happening in many villages. While there is plenty of mining going on, air and water are becoming impure. Our very survival is on the brink."

Adds Surej Banerjee, a dealer in motor spare-parts: "I do not like Ladrymbai, but there is a lot of money here. Our lives are at constant risk from landslips; the pollution is killing. There is no doctor or health centre. Coal has destroyed agriculture and water sources. Lack of clean water is our worst problem. We travel 10-15 km to have a bath once a week or pay Rs.10 for a tin of water. One survives on ingenuity or dies. If there were no coal here, not a soul would be here."

Land in Meghalaya is tightly held in private and local ownership. Constitutional provisions under the Sixth Schedule ensure customary rights and protection of tribal land. But in the rush for wealth, marginal landowners in the coal belt have sold out to those with larger holdings or to Jaintia businessmen living in Jowai. Others have entered into benami deals where the land remains in their name but control is ceded to the non-local who put in the capital for coal mining.

Politicians plead their inability to do anything as "the land is privately owned, we cannot interfere in what they do there".

At Woping village, on the National Highway, a young man is overseeing the work of labourers at the coal mine situated in his backyard. They had struck a coal seam about four metres below the surface. The seam is a metre deep and 30 metres long. Crawling with a pickaxe and a candle into a two-feet-wide tunnel propped up with tree stumps, the men manipulate a wooden trolley with their feet and bring the coal to the mouth of the tunnel. The women carry it out and hammer it into small, uniform pieces. When rainwater flooded the mine, it was drawn out with a pump. The mine owner admitted that the land around is rendered unfit for human habitation. "But the money is huge," he added.

Trucks that can carry up to 26 tonnes of coal pay the mine owner Rs.2,000 a tonne or Rs.40,000 a consignment. It is a lot of money and flows in as long as the coal lasts. The rain of money has created an elite class in Jaintia society. It has seen the mushrooming of `cassata ice cream' villas - front porticos plastered with black and gold bathroom tiles - of nouveau riche fantasy. These moneybags are buying up property worth crores of rupees in Shillong. Flashy cars roaring on the highways are among other visible signs of wealth from coal.

Many of the mine owners are women. Jaintia society follows the matrilineal tradition where the youngest daughter gets ownership of the family home, land and other property. Described as `highway queens', these young women can be seen protecting their stockpile of coal on the National Highway and overseeing its loading and sale. Another group is seen sitting with large, wooden measuring boxes, buying coal heaped in overloaded lorries at the local retail price and then selling it back to the truck driver beyond the weighbridge, of course at a profit.

Local people speak with fear about the mafia dons of Ladrymbai - two women, said to be in their late 30s, who control all underworld activity in the place. They own most of the land in and around the township and charge exploitative rentals.

The booming coal trade has brought with it an army of seasonal, migrant workers from Bihar, Nepal and Bangladesh - desperate men who agree to work under any conditions to support their families back home. They manage to send home between Rs.500 and Rs.2,000 a month. A group of six labourers is hired to load coal onto a truck and paid Rs.500 by the truck owner. Out of this, Rs.100 goes to the local mafia as `parking charge' and the labourers share the rest. On an average they load five trucks a day. Said a young Bihari: "We have come here to earn through honest labour. We are not asking for favours. This injustice really pinches us."

The migrants live in sections called `Bihari line' and `Nepali line', in huts they have rented for Rs.1,000 from the mafia queens. In one such hovel, which offers no sanitation or hygiene, 13 labourers from Katiyar district in Bihar are packed in platforms with barely enough space to sleep, placed one on top of the other.

Father Sherman at the Good Shepherd Parish in Ladrymbai says he is at a loss how to mobilise the community and help them see the consequences of their exploitation. He has to only take them as far as Saiphung block, bordering Haflong district of Assam. Here, wisdom rooted in strong cultural traditions still guides communities towards the path of sustainable development and livelihood, but cries for the right kind of support.

Untouched by roads and electricity, development is still measured by the abundance of deer and wild boar in the forest. Traditional institutions still respond to the voices of ordinary people, unlike in Ladrymbai, where its members are busy making money.

The Biate tribe who live in Saiphung block have close cultural affinity to the Mizos. The villagers say that a century ago their nomadic forefathers were gifted this land by the Jaintia and thus came under the jurisdiction of the Jaintia Hills District Council. The other half of their tribe lives in adjoining Haflong district of Assam. Grateful to have land they could call their own, the Biate have understood the value of what they have and ensured its preservation.

Says Lal Puia, a former headman of Lungmaicham village: "We know there is coal on our land, too, but we have not mined it. The `ilaka members' (village governing body) and the headman will not allow mining here. People here know that mining has ruined people's lives, degraded their land and environment. Right now Ladrymbai is earning from the coal, but what will happen in the future? They will face problems - the soil will collapse, the hills will fall, people will be crushed. They will lose what they have."

Unlike in Ladrymbai, where individuals own the land, the Biate have a system of community ownership, which has enabled their society to operate as a cohesive unit. The Jaintia Hills District Council is made up of a group of `sardars' who represent a group of `Ranbashinong', who each represent a local level `durbar'. In Saiphung block individuals can claim ownership of land on which they live as also their paddy fields. Use of the forest and its resources is under the supervision of the village headman who is answerable to the ilaka members, who, in turn, represent the wishes of the community.

Ladrymbai needs such leaders. Says Chelis Chyrmand, an elderly resident of the area: "We, the poor and landless, are at a loss to know what to do. The biggest problem here are the rich people and the headmen, who control everything and are only concerned about their own benefit."

Asked about the kind of development they seek, the Biate focus on good communication networks, improved skills in agriculture technology and quality schools. Sipping red tea in enamel mugs, a group of families in Lungmaicham articulated their needs.

Said one member of the group, "We have tried to build roads ourselves, but the black topping requires capital which we lack, so it has to be done by someone else. If the road is here we will be able to go to Ladrymbai and Jowai and sell our agricultural goods in the market there. At present produce grown here is fed to the pigs because it will otherwise rot."

The 50 km from Ladrymbai to Saiphung takes three hours on a road that is full of cavernous potholes. The North-East Council (NEC, a regional financing body) and the State administration cannot agree on whose responsibility it is to maintain the road, with each pointing to the other. The issue has remained unresolved for the past decade with no signs of a solution. The two buses that link Saiphung and Ladrymbai ply only in the summer months. At other times the people have to walk.

The Biate are familiar with jhum or slash-and-burn cultivation. Everyone has access to one or two hectares of land which enables only one crop of paddy a year because of water scarcity. This does not meet the needs of a household for a whole year. Along with the paddy crop - they grow an excellent quality of red rice - they grow jhum vegetables such as pumpkin, squash and green tomato, and fruits such as orange and pineapple. They use natural pesticide made from herbs to protect the organically grown crop.

From the forest they collect wild mushroom, which they sell in the market and buy the rice supplies they need for the rest of the year. Their diet, apart from rice and jhum vegetables, consists of wild boar and deer meat, leaf of sweet potato and bananas as also dry fish.

The people spoke of the need to learn new agricultural technology that would enable them to grow fruits and vegetables they can sell in the market. Access to money would enable them to ensure the health of their families and even think of higher education for their children, they said. But agriculture officers rarely move out of their offices in the district headquarters.

Stressing the need for good schools that provide basic education to their children, the residents of Lungmaicham said the government school there only provides education up to standard IV. Thereafter children have to travel 4 km to Saiphung town. Many have dropped out of school for this reason.

The Biate are skilled weavers of handloom cloth and cane baskets. At the home of the local school headmaster, R.P. Durpui, the family pulled out a cream-coloured cloth with thin maroon stripes. A museum piece, it was made from locally grown white and red cotton. While the white cottonseed may still be available, the red cottonseed is probably extinct, Durpui said.

The `puan pui' a thick white cotton quilt made as a wedding gift for a daughter, the finely woven cane floor mats, moorahs (stools) and baskets are other hand-made products used in a Biate household. If guided properly, these skills can supplement the Biate effort in holding fast to their culture, which in turn protects their environment.

Contrast this with the situation in Ladrymbai, where Augustine Hkydait, a coal-mine owner and member of the Good Shepherd Parish, says that many like him are forced to exploit the coal in the absence of any alternative means of livelihood. The government has failed to develop small-scale industries or the knowledge and skills base of people. Meanwhile, in selling off their forests and land for the coal business, he and his people are destroying the future of their children, he rues.

"We envisage that a time will come when the water runs out and we will have to leave this area. The rich are already moving to Jowai or Shillong. But where can we go? We will be like anyone else, nomads who live as refugees in our own homeland. Can you please send some police and army to defend us?" pleads Chelis Chyrmand.

The situation is a pointer to what the future holds for the northeastern region as it opens its borders for trade between India and Southeast Asia and the exploitation of its natural resources comes under increasing scrutiny both by the local people and others. At stake here are the last vestiges of the biodiversity gene pool remaining on this planet, as also the survival of a people whose traditional culture and wisdom have so far sustained it.