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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Deadly dust by Chitrangada Choudhury

Deadly dust by Chitrangada Choudhury

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published Published on Feb 8, 2010   modified Modified on Feb 8, 2010

Though many migrant workers from south Madhya Pradesh have died of the incurable workplace disease called silicosis contracted from inhaling quartz dust in stone crushing factories in Gujarat, the public health system has carried out no comprehensive survey to identify the disease, which is often passed off as tuberculosis, many factories have not installed anti-pollution systems, and the NHRC has been sitting on the case since 2006

“He kept coughing…became more and more weak…so thin that his bones started to show. I took him to the district hospital, to Jhabua, and then to Indore, wherever I could…sold my farm and spent Rs 60,000. But every doctor said Bimaari pakad mein nahi aati (We cannot treat the illness). No treatment worked.” On a chilly November morning weeks ago, Kan Singh cremated his nephew, Phul Singh, who was in his early twenties. 

Villagers in Undali in Madhya Pradesh, 400 kilometres south of the state capital of Bhopal, watched the orange flames reduce Phul’s corpse to ashes. But for his lungs. “They remained behind and when we tore them open, there were fistfuls of white dust inside,” recounted Kan Singh on a recent evening, as darkness descended on this village that is without electricity. 

In the days following Phul’s demise, this community of 700-odd families of the Bhil tribe saw two more of its youth—Mohan Budda and Mahesh Mori—die. Their illnesses were similar. As were the signs following the deaths. “We put more logs on the pyre, but still his lungs did not decompose. We wondered why. Inside, we found the same dust,” said Mahesh’s hapless father Amar, clutching a photograph of his dead son and a fraying x-ray of the debilitated youth’s lungs. 

A fatal and incurable workplace disease called silicosis (see box), picked up in the course of backbreaking labour in the stone-crushing factories of Gujarat has, according to partial government estimates, already taken the lives of over 300 Bhil villagers in arid southern Madhya Pradesh. Many more are headed towards death, similarly ill from inhaling the deadly quartz dust while working in the factories on below minimum-wage work as distress migrants. 

The macabre tragedy is largely caused by the apathy of multiple authorities. For example, more than a month since the cremations in Undali, the local public health system had not even registered the deaths, or bothered to probe what caused three young men to die in such quick succession. Across the three districts of the region (Jhabua, Alirajpur and Dhar), there is still no systematic and in-depth medical testing by the state to ascertain how many villagers are dead and how many have the fatal illness, and how to arrest the avoidable phenomenon. 

Far away in the capital Delhi, a file on the silicosis deaths accumulates papers in the apex watchdog body, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). In 2006, faced with inaction by local authorities in spite of the mounting deaths of villagers, a workers’ rights body from south Madhya Pradesh, the Khedoot Mazdoor Chetna Sangathan, had first moved the NHRC, documenting over 500 cases of past and impending deaths. 

Its Jhabua-based head Amulya Nidhi said, “We urged NHRC to issue three directives to local authorities. First, conduct a comprehensive check-up to arrive at an accurate figure of the affected and the dying because doctors here only diagnose tuberculosis, not silicosis, for which there are anti-pollution laws meant to prevent its contraction at the workplace. Second, draw up a relief and compensation package because medical expenses are crushing the bereaved and the ill. Finally, prosecute the factories and ensure they do not hire any more unsuspecting tribals to undertake this fatal work.” He added, “Three years have gone by. We are still engaged in the same battle.” 

Senior NHRC official Chandrakant Tyagi argued, “NHRC has not ordered relief and compensation yet, because we want to give enforcement agencies enough time to respond. Our endeavor is compensation, treatment, and prevention of more illnesses.” The next NHRC hearing is slated for February 15 but responses from the Gujarat and MP authorities to the NHRC notice seeking information were yet to come in at the time of writing. 

On the ground, criminal neglect ensures that laws notwithstanding, the Bhils of this region continue to be condemned to premature and painful deaths: industrial safety standards and labour laws that authorities neither monitor nor enforce, an unresponsive public health system that does not diagnose a fatal and now widespread workplace illness, and a social security net that does not deliver. This, despite successive droughts in this zone of single-crop farms, which push families out of their homes and into exploitative labour for half of the year. 

In recent weeks, when Amulya Nidhi did a survey for the central government, he found that 60% of the adult population in 22 villages had migrated in search of work to survive. Work under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) in the villages did not last more than 50 days instead of the legally binding 100 days of work. In Dhyana village, panchayat secretary Khurban Tomar pulled out a ‘Death Register’, to show the names of 79 villagers who have succumbed to silicosis in the past five years. “We were asked by higher officials to conduct a survey and give them the information, but nothing has happened since. People have no option but to migrate.” 

S H Safdari, the CEO of the Zilla Panchayat which oversees the NREGA programme underplays the scale of the illness, while justifying administrative inaction: “There are only 25 silicosis cases in my district. How can we stop the workers? They get Rs 300 in stone factories, or triple the NREGA wage, so they go.” The relaxed official added, “How can we prosecute factories in Gujarat? They are not under my administration.” 

About 200 kilometres away, in the industrial complex of Godhra in eastern Gujarat, at the Hindustan Mineral Products unit, where desperate Bhils from Undali had found employment, owner Suman M monitored daily production figures. Toying with the remote control of the split air-conditioner in his chamber, the suave, bearded businessman said in the manner of a patriarch: “Tribals from south MP--90% of my workers--are so poor that when they come to me for work, they have been hungry since two or three days. They ask me for money to buy food before they can start work in my unit.” 

Suman said “the nuisance” caused by the non-governmental campaign highlighting deaths from the silica dust pushed him to install dust-control mechanisms in his unit in 2008. But he laughed off any responsibility for the deaths: “After tribals work here, how do I know where they go and what do they do in the other months? Do they drink or do they smoke? It is all a big lie that our factories caused silicosis.” 


InfoChange India, February, 2010, http://infochangeindia.org/201002088154/Health/Features/Deadly-dust.html
 

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