Now, ‘rat miners’ try to save Uttarakhand workers. Who are they? How do they work?

On Sunday, the rescue of 41 construction workers trapped in a tunnel in Uttarakhand received yet another setback after the augur machine broke. Authorities have now turned to ‘rat miners’ to help rescue the men who have been stuck in the 4.5-kilometre tunnel since 12 November. But who are these ‘rat miners?’ How will they help rescue the workers? Let’s take a closer look: A crude, controversial practice First, let’s take a look of rat mining. As per Outlook, the practice is a crude way of digging coal. It is done via excavating deep tunnels. The controversial method is used mostly to remove coal deposits through narrow passages.  Its name comes from its resemblance to rats burrowing through narrow holes. As per Indian Express, the narrow passages are normally big enough to fit just one individual. Miners get into these passages via ropes or bamboo ladders. They then remove the coal using equipment such as pickaxes, shovels, and baskets. Rat miners are specialists in digging and drilling manually in narrow passages including tube mines who mostly work in mines and have the experience of drilling for hours.

The rat hole mining technique is generally used in coal mining, especially in regions that have difficult terrain.

OP Singh, professor of environmental studies at North Eastern Hill University (NEHU) in Shillong, previously told the newspaper the practice can be divided into side-cutting and box-cutting. “In the side-cutting procedure, narrow tunnels are dug on the hill slopes and workers go inside until they find the coal seam. The coal seam in hills of Meghalaya is very thin, less than 2 m in most cases,” he said. The box-cutting sees a rectangular opening from 10 to 100 square metres made – after which a 100 to 400 foot pit is dug. After the coal seam is identified, rat-hole-sized tunnels are dug horizontally through which the coal is removed. As per ETV Bharat, children are often employed as ‘rat-miners’ The practice was barred by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) in 2014. The Indian Express quoted the NGT as saying in its order, “It is also informed that there are umpteen number of cases where by virtue of rat-hole mining, during the rainy season, water flooded into the mining areas resulting in death of many… individuals including employees/workers.” The body added it was doing so to preserve the citizens’ Right to Life and due to its harmful environmental effect. However, accidents showed that the practice continues despite the ban. As per Editorji.com, at least 28 people have died from rat mining since 2018. As per The Print, 15 miners were killed in Meghalaya 2018 after such a mine in Ksan was flooded by water from the nearby Lytein river. Six workers lost their lives after a crane collapsed into a coal mine in January 2021 in Meghalaya. The NGT had fined the Meghalaya government Rs 100 after the 2018 incident. However, the villagers themselves remain unfazed by the practice. [caption id=“attachment_13437202” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] A team of six ‘rat miners’ from central India will now drill from inside the evacuation pipe which is around three feet wide. ANI[/caption] “We have been living on coal for ages. We don’t have agricultural land. Whoever had land, coal mining polluted them and made them unfit for agriculture. We want the government to do something to convince the Centre to lift the ban. So, yes, we want our representatives to take this issue up with the Centre at the earliest,” a villager of Meghalaya’s Tuber Kmaishnong village told the Outlook. The ban in 2019 was set voided by the Supreme Court which ruled that coal mining in Meghalaya could continue through ‘scientific mining methods’. The apex court ordered mining be conducted as per the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act (MMDR) and the Mineral Concession Rules, 1960. Rat mining had become a big election issue ahead of the polls, as per the outlet. Some had even pushed for the practice to be legalised. WR Kharlukhi, a Rajya Sabha member from Meghalaya, was quoted as saying by The Times of India. “Why should my people suffer for the sake of failure of a policy somewhere?” “There are times when we should see what is more valuable – human lives or other concerns. If you say that human life is not valuable, then okay. Or if you feel that we tribals are not valuable, then okay. But don’t keep our people hanging like this.” “For 40 years, rat-hole mining was allowed and only now they realised that it is harmful. Did they not know that rat-hole mining was going on in Meghalaya? I see people are made to suffer for no fault of theirs,” he added. In Assam, the practice is not banned. Scroll quoted a report by Assam’s chief conservator of forest as saying that rat-hole mining in and around the Saleki proposed reserved forest increased from zero hectares in 2015 to 979.7 hectares in 2020. The commission called it an “astronomical increase” and slammed authorities for their “tacit consent/approval to such illegal mining”. A mine sardar from Assam told The Print that “the labourers do it for money”. “They get paid anywhere from Rs 700-800 to Rs 1,500-1600 as daily wages,” he added. “Only men go down the tunnels. It can be a group of 100 labourers engaged at one particular site at a time. They camp in temporary shelters for days together and cook their own food. At about 4 am-5 am, they get into the tunnels and come out before noon,” he said.

He said each rat-hole mine can be a 30 inch x 30 inch square box or bigger.

“Some of these can be 400-500 ft deep. From the bottom of the pit, horizontal chambers of 2-3 ft height and as long as 400-1,000 ft are drilled into the hills,” he said. “These chambers are connected to the lateral mines. About 40-50 people work inside the mine at a time — aged between 18 and 50 years,” he added. “Some mine sirdars also use children. There is 1-2 feet of water inside these mines that is constantly being drained out while work is on. And when there is shortage of oxygen, the drilling machine pipes pump out air to help them breathe,” he added. Speaking to Scroll, Digboi resident Lakhya Jyoti Gogoi, a leader of the Satra Mukti Sangram Samiti said, “Many people have died in the illegal rat-hole activities, which are already banned in Meghalaya." “Workers crawl for hours into the rat-holes without any safety measures. Usually one miner earns Rs 1,000 to Rs 1,500 per day.” Jarnel Minj, the president of the regional committee of the All Adivasi Students’ Association of Assam, told the commission at least 15 people had died and 7 had become disabled due to such work. Minj told Scroll the dead were employed by the “coal mafia”. “It was a theft of coal carried out by coal mafias in Margherita,” he said. “Poor people, irrespective of the communities, get involved in the coal extraction for a living. They earn Rs 1,200-1,500 per day.” He added, “Many people get trapped in the tunnels while extracting coal but they don’t get any compensation.” What happens next? Since attempts to drill a tunnel horizontally through the debris trapping the men have been plagued by damage to machinery, and rescuers now drill by hand after clearing away the broken equipment inside the narrow evacuation pipe. A team of six “rat miners” from central India will now drill from inside the evacuation pipe which is around three feet wide. They will now enter the pipe and remove the debris manually. The team includes engineers from the Indian Army’s Madras Engineering Group as well as civilians. The men will carry tools such as hammers, trowels and shovels and life support devices. The auger machine stuck inside the pipe produced 48 metres of debris near the mouth of the tunnel.

The rat miners will now remove the debris by hand.

“Three of us will go inside the tunnel, one will do the drilling the other will collect muck and the third one will push the muck through the trolley,” Rakesh Rajput, one of the miners, told Reuters. “We have been doing it for more than 10 years and there’s enough space for us. The 41 men are also labourers and we all want to bring them out,” he said. [caption id=“attachment_13437212” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] The men will carry tools such as hammers, trowels and shovels and life support devices. ANI[/caption] Parsadi Lodhi, a resident of Jhansi, told Indian Express, “I have been doing this work for the last 10 years in Delhi and Ahmedabad. But the work to rescue trapped people will be a first for me… There is no reason for us to be scared. This is an 800 mm wide pipe, and we have worked in 600 mm holes. There is around 12 metres of debris. If it’s just soil, it will take around 24 hours, but if there are rocks (in the debris), it could take 32 hours or more,” he said. It is a challenging operation. We were called in from Delhi. We reached here yesterday. We are basically from Madhya Pradesh. We will try our best to complete the drilling process as soon as possible, one of the civilian specialists who reached the site to carry out manual drilling told news agency ANI. Officials call these men “skilled workers”. “Skilled labourers will do the manual drilling,” said Harpal Singh, a former head of state-run Border Roads Organisation. “This is a sure-shot way of making progress.” “They are trained in working in every situation so that’s not a worry for us,” said Mahmood Ahmad, managing director of the NHIDCL company, which is building the tunnel. Government and private agencies involved in the rescue have also been pursuing other options. On Sunday, they opened another route to the men, aiming to drill a shaft straight down from the top of the mountain above. By Monday afternoon, they had drilled 31 metres (102 ft) of the 86 metres (282 ft), officials said, adding that the focus remains on the horizontal route. Bad weather could complicate the rescue. Thunderstorms, hail and lower temperatures with a minimum of 9 degrees Celsius (48.2 degrees Fahrenheit) are forecast in the mountains. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s principal secretary, or chief of staff, PK Mishra visited the site and spoke to the trapped men through a communication link. He told them “everyone is making efforts to bring all of you out as early as possible”. The tunnel is part of the Char Dham highway, one of Modi’s most ambitious projects, aimed at connecting four Hindu pilgrimage sites through 890km of roads. Authorities have not said what caused the cave-in which trapped the men as they were nearing the end of their night shift but the region is prone to landslides, earthquakes and floods. With inputs from agencies