Burning issue

The latest action plan offers little hope of controlling Jharia's underground fires.

IN the end there was no miraculous rescue for 14-year-old Mira Kumari, little media coverage of her rescue operation and no compensation for her family. On September 21, three adjacent houses in Shimla Bahal village, built above the vast catacomb of mines in the Jharia coalfields of Jharkhand, sank more than 15 metres into an abandoned mine gallery when the land separating the mine's roof and the surface gave way. Mira Kumari was cooking lunch in one of the houses.

Her father, Bijli Rajak, a miner at Bharat Coking Coal Limited (BCCL), the company that runs all the mines in Jharia, says he was forced to sign a declaration stating that he was satisfied with the rescue operation attempted by BCCL. He was also offered Rs.10,000 as compensation for the death of his daughter, the loss of his house and land and other possessions of a lifetime.

The Shimla Bahal incident is the most recent example of subsidence, a phenomenon that has plagued Jharia for decades. "Subsidence is the phenomenon of roof collapse in shallow underground mines right up to the level of the surface," says T.N. Singh, former Director of the Central Mining Research Institute, Dhanbad.

T.N. Singh explained that underground mining works on the basis of a system of pillars and mining galleries. Galleries are the tunnels cut into the earth where coal is actually extracted by miners, and pillars are the blocks left intact to support the roof of the galleries. Thus, mining is done around pillars of uncut rock to guard against roof collapse.

Subsidence is caused when the pillars can no longer support the roof of the mine. Excessive widening of galleries, mining too close to the surface or unsustainable mine geometry can cause pillars to collapse. "Unfortunately, Jharia district has been an epitome of unplanned, unscientific mining since the first mine opened in 1894, and we have been paying the price ever since," says T.N. Singh,

Over the last decade, however, subsidence has reached alarming proportions and this is attributed to the underground fires that are well documented. The first major fire was detected in the early 1960s. While there are some references to fires that go back almost a hundred years, problems really started when 110 mines caught fire between 1966 and 1970, and have been buring ever since.

The Jharia coalfields were nationalised in 1970 and over the decades the fire has spread or been contained but never extinguished. According to BCCL estimates, the fire burns in an 8.5 square kilometre area and has consumed 37 million tonnes of coal so far.

T.N. Singh believes that the first of the fires started soon after the end of the Second World War. During the War years the demand for fuel for the imperial war machine pushed up coal prices to a record high, but the 1950s saw a slump in the global coal market and a collapse of Jharia's mining economy. Several mines fell into disrepair as owners abandoned them, leaving rich seams of partially excavated coking coal exposed to a ready supply of oxygen. Over the years, these mines also became the preferred sites for illegal distilleries of the liquor mafia.

The fires were ignited probably by a combination of factors: the self-heating of exposed coal, the use of fire in the distilleries and the ready supply of powdered coal in the abandoned mines. Once ignited, coal fires are estimated to travel along coal seams at a rate of one metre a year through solid coal, and a 100 metres a year through exposed pillars. Thus, the underground fires of Jharia eat away at the pillars of underground mines leading to subsidence at the surface. The horizontal strain of subsidence opens up deep cracks on the surface, which feed fresh oxygen into the mines below, fuelling the fires.

This combination of underground fires and subsidence has destroyed vast areas of the Jharia coalfields. Coupled with the ecological damage done by open-cast mining, this has made parts of Jharia resemble moonscapes with dark, rolling hills and deep, smoking ravines. The area under the Rajapur Project seems to be covered permanently with an acrid haze. Here the fires are visible through shallow cracks on the ground.

By day the landscape is shrouded in smoke billowing from hundreds of cracks, and by nightfall parts of the hillside are lit up an eerie red by the glow of burning coal. The path of the advancing fires can be traced along the line of broken, smoking houses. Every few months, another line of houses is hollowed out into a smoking shell.

Many residents have title deeds to their land, but are helpless when confronted by fires that cut away the ground beneath their feet. The link between the fires and subsidence was horrifyingly evident in the Dhamdih area on October 27, 1995, when an estimated 250 houses collapsed in a period of two hours.

It is believed that stowing galleries with sand slurry can prevent subsidence and the spread of fires. The slurry supports the gallery roof and reduces air circulation in the mine, thereby depriving the fires of oxygen. This can be accompanied by the creation of "water blankets", where water is pumped into abandoned mines in an attempt to lower temperatures and quench fires.

However, BCCL stands accused of being notoriously lax when it comes to sand stowing. In terms of corruption, sand stowing is perhaps the most lucrative avenue in the mine business. Residents and workers alike told Frontline that it was done only on paper.

On its part, BCCL has indicated a readiness to shift residents of fire-prone areas to safe locales under the Master plan for Jharia Coalfields. According to a petition filed in the Supreme Court in 1997 by Haradhan Roy, a former Member of Parliament from neighbouring Raniganj (which faces similar problems), the first Masterplan was drafted in 1983 and envisaged a re-organisation of the Jharia and Raniganj coalfields by shifting roads, railway lines, power supplies and populations to safer areas at a total cost of Rs.8,000 crores.

Till date, more than 22 reports have been prepared on the issue at a cost of Rs.114 crores. Another Rs.75 crores was spent until December 31, 1997, in various fire-fighting schemes. The most recent plan was drafted in 2003 in response to a Supreme Court directive. The plan envisaged the relocation of an estimated four lakh people in almost 65,000 households from "hot areas" to "cool areas" over a period of 20 years. However, it ran into severe political and local opposition and is in the process of being redrafted.

Partha Bhattacharya, Managing Director of BCCL, told Frontline that the latest version of the Jharia Master plan was under revision at the instance of the Supreme Court, but would be finalised shortly. BCCL has begun construction of 3,200 housing units at Beghoria, on the outskirts of Dhanbad, and plans to start relocating people by mid-2007. Opposition to the plan is building up.

While BCCL has stated that the resettlement project shall focus solely on those settled in unsafe areas, and that Jharia town itself shall be left untouched, residents of the town are far from convinced. The fact that Shibu Soren, Union Minister for Coal, has made a series of contradictory statements over the last year has not helped matters. "BCCL is speaking with a forked tongue," claims Ashok Aggarwal of the Jharia Bachao Samiti.

Aggarwal and his fellow workers believe that BCCL will deliberately keep the fire burning until evacuation of the town becomes necessary. They allege that BCCL will then declare the area unsafe and force residents to accept compensation at paltry rates. While this does seem far-fetched to some, the track record of BCCL and the State government validates significantly the fears of the Samiti.

A letter from the Chairman of the Railway Board to the Secretary of the Ministry of Coal, dated April 5, 2002, and made available to Frontline, accuses BCCL of undermining the safety and stability of railway lines in the area by "indiscriminate mining without following safety provisions stipulated by the Directorate-General of Mine Safety".

In fact, the Putherdih railway line at the Lodna-Bagdigi collieries had to be removed as BCCL claimed it could not control the approaching fires in time. The entire stretch of the railway line is now being mined for coal.

The fact that those displaced 30 years ago by the Bokaro Steel Plant have not been resettled yet is enough to worry most residents.

However, even those in the villages and on the fire-scorched periphery of the town are reluctant to move. They explain that relocation is not simply an issue of housing, it is also a question of livelihood. The relocation site visited by Frontline is about 10 km from Dhanbad and is literally in the midst of a jungle. Employment prospects seem unlikely for at least the next five years.

BCCL officials blame local opposition on a combination of ignorance and vested interests. They claim that most of the employment in the villages revolves around the theft of coal earmarked for industry. However, they fail to see their own part in it.

The mining industry has destroyed vast swathes of Jharia. While coal has brought prosperity to some, it has made life impossible for those outside the coal industry. Fires and subsidence have ravaged private lands, making them unfit for agriculture. "This land is my own," says Abdul Halim Ansari, a panchayat member in Shimla Bahal, "but it is of no use to me because BCCL has destroyed it from below."

BCCL has stopped hiring workers on a permanent basis and no other industry exists in the area. Thus people have the option of either joining the formal coal industry and working in the mines as private contracted labour, or working in the informal coal industry. As it turns out, they stand to lose either way.