India is home to thousands of unregulated,
unmonitored coal mines. Migrant workers risk their lives in these
underground "rat hole mines," chipping away coal with pick axes and
hauling it away in baskets. More than 5 million metric tons of coal are
mined by hand every year.
The environmental damage caused by this mining is spectacular:
landscapes destroyed, fresh water polluted, fish and wildlife killed.
"The river was our source of water," Kip Amtra, a village headman, tells
filmmaker Michael T. Miller. "Now, the people do not touch it. They are
repulsed by it."
In Miller's short documentary, miners in the northeastern state of
Meghalaya struggle to find work after an Indian judicial agency shuts
down the mines indefinitely. "With the mines closed," says Nishant, a
Nepali migrant, "there's really no reason to live here. There is no
other work."
This documentary is a production of the
Woodrow Wilson Center in association with
Think Out Loud Productions.
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