Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 73
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Code Context


        trigger_error($message, E_USER_DEPRECATED);

    }
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 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php.'
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deprecationWarning - CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311
Cake\Http\ServerRequest::offsetGet() - CORE/src/Http/ServerRequest.php, line 2421
App\Controller\ArtileDetailController::printArticle() - APP/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line 73
Cake\Controller\Controller::invokeAction() - CORE/src/Controller/Controller.php, line 610
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::_invoke() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 120
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::dispatch() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 94
Cake\Http\BaseApplication::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/BaseApplication.php, line 235
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php, line 162
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php, line 88
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php, line 96
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Http\Runner::run() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 51
Cake\Http\Server::run() - CORE/src/Http/Server.php, line 98

Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 74
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Code Context


        trigger_error($message, E_USER_DEPRECATED);

    }
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 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php.'
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deprecationWarning - CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311
Cake\Http\ServerRequest::offsetGet() - CORE/src/Http/ServerRequest.php, line 2421
App\Controller\ArtileDetailController::printArticle() - APP/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line 74
Cake\Controller\Controller::invokeAction() - CORE/src/Controller/Controller.php, line 610
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::_invoke() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 120
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::dispatch() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 94
Cake\Http\BaseApplication::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/BaseApplication.php, line 235
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php, line 162
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php, line 88
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php, line 96
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Http\Runner::run() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 51
Cake\Http\Server::run() - CORE/src/Http/Server.php, line 98

Warning (512): Unable to emit headers. Headers sent in file=/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php line=853 [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 48]
Code Context
            if (Configure::read('debug')) {

                trigger_error($message, E_USER_WARNING);

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		&#039;subheading&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;description&#039; =&gt; &#039;-The Economic Times&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
5:20 am. Twelve-year-old Sandeep rubs his eyes. Prodded by his mother Savitri, he reluctantly steps out of his two-room mud house. Together, they head out in the darkness. Savitri walks purposefully, Sandeep trudges along. They are going to the opencast coal mine that is a 10-minute walk from their village Ghansaddi. On the way, they are joined by scores of people. In a curving file, they descend the slippery foot-trail without much effort. Some children, still sleepy, are chided to hurry up. By 5:30 am, they are inside the mine where it is still difficult to see beyond a few metres, the darkness blackened further by the plumes rising from the coal burning beneath their feet, and the haze of methane smoke and coal dust. It is a surreal vista.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Every morning, in open-cast mines around Jharia in Dhanbad, Jharkhand, thousands of people &amp;quot;pick&amp;quot; coal to sell it and make a living. They do it illegally and that&#039;s why early mornings are suitable to dig out coal and carry it up to a strip of land that overlooks the main mining area. The process is simple: women and men break coal with their picks and shovels, fill their cane baskets and carry them on their heads up to the stocking area; the children help in carrying the coal. This goes on till the sun goes down.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Dumpers belonging to a private company that operates this particular mine ply nonstop, going deep around the spiral and then coming up again. The supervisors in their 4x4 air-conditioned vehicles take rounds but ignore the villagers. Like the opening hour of a stock exchange, everybody is busy. A teenage girl fills her basket with small pieces; a man plays music on his phone while digging with his pick. In the background the drone of heavy engines of bulldozers and trucks remains a constant.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
6:30 pm. The summer sun that has been searing one&#039;s eyes looks emasculated, denuded of its energy and heat. Soon, it disappears in the dusty toxic mist. Aren&#039;t you scared that you might be caught, I ask Sandeep&#039;s mother. &amp;quot;I am, and people have been arrested before, but what options do I have to make a living here?&amp;quot; she asks, and resumes digging. Later, she recalls how she used to be a vegetable seller till their village was literally gobbled up by the earth. With no fields left, and the new settlement reduced to a tiny number of families, she had to start picking coal. Her husband Mandal is old and people call him crazy, leaving Savitri to take the burden of running the household.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Every day, she picks five-six sacks of coal; each sack containing around 45 kg of coal. Sandeep, who just topped his Class IV exams, helps his mother out. Her husband also pitches in and &amp;quot;prepares&amp;quot; the coal by burning off the impurities. Later, a buyer will carry this &amp;quot;prepared&amp;quot; coal on his cycle to sell it in the nearby townships. A day&#039;s effort of picking, preparing and selling coal gets the family about Rs 200. This kind of coal is used mainly by small eateries and people who cannot afford or don&#039;t have LPG; a large portion of it also finds its way to coal dumps from where it is transported to neighbouring states like West Bengal and Bihar.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Assuming that around 10,000 families, with five members each, fill around five sacks every day, the daily turnover comes to Rs 50 lakh, as one tonne of coal is sold for Rs 2,500. But this money is made by the coal mafia and not by the likes of Savitri. Like with any other natural product, value is added at each step and the real producer gets the lowest price. For her, one kilo of coal fetches nothing more than Rs 1.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Why Open-cast Mining? &amp;quot;Open-cast mining is disastrous for both the environment and the people living in the region but it requires less investment and less time to extract coal. Here, in Jharia, coal seams occur at a shallow depth, so it is the best way for us to mine,&amp;quot; says a senior Coal India official, with 2,000 people working for him in the Jharia area. He didn&#039;t wish to be named nor his designation revealed. In a freewheeling chat over an hour, he emphasised that Coal India is determined to fulfil the Narendra Modi government&#039;s dream of doubling India&#039;s coal production to 1.5 billion tonnes by 2020. Around 90% of this is likely to come from open-cast mines. Today, the government behemoth, through its numerous subsidiaries, extracts around 490 million tonnes out of the total 565 million tonnes India produces annually.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/lethal-gases-from-jharias-coalfields-fire-continue-to-wreck-havoc-a-century-later/articleshow/52705763.cms?from=mdr&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to read more. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
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		&#039;credit_writer&#039; =&gt; &#039;The Economic Times, 12 June, 2016, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/lethal-gases-from-jharias-coalfields-fire-continue-to-wreck-havoc-a-century-later/articleshow/52705763.c&#039;,
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5:20 am. Twelve-year-old Sandeep rubs his eyes. Prodded by his mother Savitri, he reluctantly steps out of his two-room mud house. Together, they head out in the darkness. Savitri walks purposefully, Sandeep trudges along. They are going to...&#039;,
	&#039;disp&#039; =&gt; &#039;-The Economic Times&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;5:20 am. Twelve-year-old Sandeep rubs his eyes. Prodded by his mother Savitri, he reluctantly steps out of his two-room mud house. Together, they head out in the darkness. Savitri walks purposefully, Sandeep trudges along. They are going to the opencast coal mine that is a 10-minute walk from their village Ghansaddi. On the way, they are joined by scores of people. In a curving file, they descend the slippery foot-trail without much effort. Some children, still sleepy, are chided to hurry up. By 5:30 am, they are inside the mine where it is still difficult to see beyond a few metres, the darkness blackened further by the plumes rising from the coal burning beneath their feet, and the haze of methane smoke and coal dust. It is a surreal vista.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Every morning, in open-cast mines around Jharia in Dhanbad, Jharkhand, thousands of people &amp;quot;pick&amp;quot; coal to sell it and make a living. They do it illegally and that&#039;s why early mornings are suitable to dig out coal and carry it up to a strip of land that overlooks the main mining area. The process is simple: women and men break coal with their picks and shovels, fill their cane baskets and carry them on their heads up to the stocking area; the children help in carrying the coal. This goes on till the sun goes down.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Dumpers belonging to a private company that operates this particular mine ply nonstop, going deep around the spiral and then coming up again. The supervisors in their 4x4 air-conditioned vehicles take rounds but ignore the villagers. Like the opening hour of a stock exchange, everybody is busy. A teenage girl fills her basket with small pieces; a man plays music on his phone while digging with his pick. In the background the drone of heavy engines of bulldozers and trucks remains a constant.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;6:30 pm. The summer sun that has been searing one&#039;s eyes looks emasculated, denuded of its energy and heat. Soon, it disappears in the dusty toxic mist. Aren&#039;t you scared that you might be caught, I ask Sandeep&#039;s mother. &amp;quot;I am, and people have been arrested before, but what options do I have to make a living here?&amp;quot; she asks, and resumes digging. Later, she recalls how she used to be a vegetable seller till their village was literally gobbled up by the earth. With no fields left, and the new settlement reduced to a tiny number of families, she had to start picking coal. Her husband Mandal is old and people call him crazy, leaving Savitri to take the burden of running the household.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Every day, she picks five-six sacks of coal; each sack containing around 45 kg of coal. Sandeep, who just topped his Class IV exams, helps his mother out. Her husband also pitches in and &amp;quot;prepares&amp;quot; the coal by burning off the impurities. Later, a buyer will carry this &amp;quot;prepared&amp;quot; coal on his cycle to sell it in the nearby townships. A day&#039;s effort of picking, preparing and selling coal gets the family about Rs 200. This kind of coal is used mainly by small eateries and people who cannot afford or don&#039;t have LPG; a large portion of it also finds its way to coal dumps from where it is transported to neighbouring states like West Bengal and Bihar.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Assuming that around 10,000 families, with five members each, fill around five sacks every day, the daily turnover comes to Rs 50 lakh, as one tonne of coal is sold for Rs 2,500. But this money is made by the coal mafia and not by the likes of Savitri. Like with any other natural product, value is added at each step and the real producer gets the lowest price. For her, one kilo of coal fetches nothing more than Rs 1.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Why Open-cast Mining? &amp;quot;Open-cast mining is disastrous for both the environment and the people living in the region but it requires less investment and less time to extract coal. Here, in Jharia, coal seams occur at a shallow depth, so it is the best way for us to mine,&amp;quot; says a senior Coal India official, with 2,000 people working for him in the Jharia area. He didn&#039;t wish to be named nor his designation revealed. In a freewheeling chat over an hour, he emphasised that Coal India is determined to fulfil the Narendra Modi government&#039;s dream of doubling India&#039;s coal production to 1.5 billion tonnes by 2020. Around 90% of this is likely to come from open-cast mines. 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	&#039;subheading&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;description&#039; =&gt; &#039;-The Economic Times&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
5:20 am. Twelve-year-old Sandeep rubs his eyes. Prodded by his mother Savitri, he reluctantly steps out of his two-room mud house. Together, they head out in the darkness. Savitri walks purposefully, Sandeep trudges along. They are going to the opencast coal mine that is a 10-minute walk from their village Ghansaddi. On the way, they are joined by scores of people. In a curving file, they descend the slippery foot-trail without much effort. Some children, still sleepy, are chided to hurry up. By 5:30 am, they are inside the mine where it is still difficult to see beyond a few metres, the darkness blackened further by the plumes rising from the coal burning beneath their feet, and the haze of methane smoke and coal dust. It is a surreal vista.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Every morning, in open-cast mines around Jharia in Dhanbad, Jharkhand, thousands of people &amp;quot;pick&amp;quot; coal to sell it and make a living. They do it illegally and that&#039;s why early mornings are suitable to dig out coal and carry it up to a strip of land that overlooks the main mining area. The process is simple: women and men break coal with their picks and shovels, fill their cane baskets and carry them on their heads up to the stocking area; the children help in carrying the coal. This goes on till the sun goes down.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Dumpers belonging to a private company that operates this particular mine ply nonstop, going deep around the spiral and then coming up again. The supervisors in their 4x4 air-conditioned vehicles take rounds but ignore the villagers. Like the opening hour of a stock exchange, everybody is busy. A teenage girl fills her basket with small pieces; a man plays music on his phone while digging with his pick. In the background the drone of heavy engines of bulldozers and trucks remains a constant.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
6:30 pm. The summer sun that has been searing one&#039;s eyes looks emasculated, denuded of its energy and heat. Soon, it disappears in the dusty toxic mist. Aren&#039;t you scared that you might be caught, I ask Sandeep&#039;s mother. &amp;quot;I am, and people have been arrested before, but what options do I have to make a living here?&amp;quot; she asks, and resumes digging. Later, she recalls how she used to be a vegetable seller till their village was literally gobbled up by the earth. With no fields left, and the new settlement reduced to a tiny number of families, she had to start picking coal. Her husband Mandal is old and people call him crazy, leaving Savitri to take the burden of running the household.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Every day, she picks five-six sacks of coal; each sack containing around 45 kg of coal. Sandeep, who just topped his Class IV exams, helps his mother out. Her husband also pitches in and &amp;quot;prepares&amp;quot; the coal by burning off the impurities. Later, a buyer will carry this &amp;quot;prepared&amp;quot; coal on his cycle to sell it in the nearby townships. A day&#039;s effort of picking, preparing and selling coal gets the family about Rs 200. This kind of coal is used mainly by small eateries and people who cannot afford or don&#039;t have LPG; a large portion of it also finds its way to coal dumps from where it is transported to neighbouring states like West Bengal and Bihar.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Assuming that around 10,000 families, with five members each, fill around five sacks every day, the daily turnover comes to Rs 50 lakh, as one tonne of coal is sold for Rs 2,500. But this money is made by the coal mafia and not by the likes of Savitri. Like with any other natural product, value is added at each step and the real producer gets the lowest price. For her, one kilo of coal fetches nothing more than Rs 1.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Why Open-cast Mining? &amp;quot;Open-cast mining is disastrous for both the environment and the people living in the region but it requires less investment and less time to extract coal. Here, in Jharia, coal seams occur at a shallow depth, so it is the best way for us to mine,&amp;quot; says a senior Coal India official, with 2,000 people working for him in the Jharia area. He didn&#039;t wish to be named nor his designation revealed. In a freewheeling chat over an hour, he emphasised that Coal India is determined to fulfil the Narendra Modi government&#039;s dream of doubling India&#039;s coal production to 1.5 billion tonnes by 2020. Around 90% of this is likely to come from open-cast mines. Today, the government behemoth, through its numerous subsidiaries, extracts around 490 million tonnes out of the total 565 million tonnes India produces annually.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/lethal-gases-from-jharias-coalfields-fire-continue-to-wreck-havoc-a-century-later/articleshow/52705763.cms?from=mdr&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to read more. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;(The writer is a freelance journalist)&lt;/em&gt;&#039;,
	&#039;credit_writer&#039; =&gt; &#039;The Economic Times, 12 June, 2016, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/lethal-gases-from-jharias-coalfields-fire-continue-to-wreck-havoc-a-century-later/articleshow/52705763.c&#039;,
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5:20 am. Twelve-year-old Sandeep rubs his eyes. Prodded by his mother Savitri, he reluctantly steps out of his two-room mud house. Together, they head out in the darkness. Savitri walks purposefully, Sandeep trudges along. They are going to...&#039;
$disp = &#039;-The Economic Times&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;5:20 am. Twelve-year-old Sandeep rubs his eyes. Prodded by his mother Savitri, he reluctantly steps out of his two-room mud house. Together, they head out in the darkness. Savitri walks purposefully, Sandeep trudges along. They are going to the opencast coal mine that is a 10-minute walk from their village Ghansaddi. On the way, they are joined by scores of people. In a curving file, they descend the slippery foot-trail without much effort. Some children, still sleepy, are chided to hurry up. By 5:30 am, they are inside the mine where it is still difficult to see beyond a few metres, the darkness blackened further by the plumes rising from the coal burning beneath their feet, and the haze of methane smoke and coal dust. It is a surreal vista.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Every morning, in open-cast mines around Jharia in Dhanbad, Jharkhand, thousands of people &amp;quot;pick&amp;quot; coal to sell it and make a living. They do it illegally and that&#039;s why early mornings are suitable to dig out coal and carry it up to a strip of land that overlooks the main mining area. The process is simple: women and men break coal with their picks and shovels, fill their cane baskets and carry them on their heads up to the stocking area; the children help in carrying the coal. This goes on till the sun goes down.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Dumpers belonging to a private company that operates this particular mine ply nonstop, going deep around the spiral and then coming up again. The supervisors in their 4x4 air-conditioned vehicles take rounds but ignore the villagers. Like the opening hour of a stock exchange, everybody is busy. A teenage girl fills her basket with small pieces; a man plays music on his phone while digging with his pick. In the background the drone of heavy engines of bulldozers and trucks remains a constant.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;6:30 pm. The summer sun that has been searing one&#039;s eyes looks emasculated, denuded of its energy and heat. Soon, it disappears in the dusty toxic mist. Aren&#039;t you scared that you might be caught, I ask Sandeep&#039;s mother. &amp;quot;I am, and people have been arrested before, but what options do I have to make a living here?&amp;quot; she asks, and resumes digging. Later, she recalls how she used to be a vegetable seller till their village was literally gobbled up by the earth. With no fields left, and the new settlement reduced to a tiny number of families, she had to start picking coal. Her husband Mandal is old and people call him crazy, leaving Savitri to take the burden of running the household.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Every day, she picks five-six sacks of coal; each sack containing around 45 kg of coal. Sandeep, who just topped his Class IV exams, helps his mother out. Her husband also pitches in and &amp;quot;prepares&amp;quot; the coal by burning off the impurities. Later, a buyer will carry this &amp;quot;prepared&amp;quot; coal on his cycle to sell it in the nearby townships. A day&#039;s effort of picking, preparing and selling coal gets the family about Rs 200. This kind of coal is used mainly by small eateries and people who cannot afford or don&#039;t have LPG; a large portion of it also finds its way to coal dumps from where it is transported to neighbouring states like West Bengal and Bihar.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Assuming that around 10,000 families, with five members each, fill around five sacks every day, the daily turnover comes to Rs 50 lakh, as one tonne of coal is sold for Rs 2,500. But this money is made by the coal mafia and not by the likes of Savitri. Like with any other natural product, value is added at each step and the real producer gets the lowest price. For her, one kilo of coal fetches nothing more than Rs 1.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Why Open-cast Mining? &amp;quot;Open-cast mining is disastrous for both the environment and the people living in the region but it requires less investment and less time to extract coal. Here, in Jharia, coal seams occur at a shallow depth, so it is the best way for us to mine,&amp;quot; says a senior Coal India official, with 2,000 people working for him in the Jharia area. He didn&#039;t wish to be named nor his designation revealed. In a freewheeling chat over an hour, he emphasised that Coal India is determined to fulfil the Narendra Modi government&#039;s dream of doubling India&#039;s coal production to 1.5 billion tonnes by 2020. Around 90% of this is likely to come from open-cast mines. Today, the government behemoth, through its numerous subsidiaries, extracts around 490 million tonnes out of the total 565 million tonnes India produces annually.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/lethal-gases-from-jharias-coalfields-fire-continue-to-wreck-havoc-a-century-later/articleshow/52705763.cms?from=mdr&quot; title=&quot;http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/lethal-gases-from-jharias-coalfields-fire-continue-to-wreck-havoc-a-century-later/articleshow/52705763.cms?from=mdr&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to read more. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;(The writer is a freelance journalist)&lt;/em&gt;&#039;
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5:20 am. Twelve-year-old Sandeep rubs his eyes. Prodded by his mother Savitri, he reluctantly steps out of his two-room mud house. Together, they head out in the darkness. Savitri walks purposefully, Sandeep trudges along. They are going to..."/>
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                <strong>Lethal gases from Jharia&#039;s coalfields fire continue to wreck havoc a century later -Valay Singh</strong></h1>
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                -The Economic Times<br /><br />5:20 am. Twelve-year-old Sandeep rubs his eyes. Prodded by his mother Savitri, he reluctantly steps out of his two-room mud house. Together, they head out in the darkness. Savitri walks purposefully, Sandeep trudges along. They are going to the opencast coal mine that is a 10-minute walk from their village Ghansaddi. On the way, they are joined by scores of people. In a curving file, they descend the slippery foot-trail without much effort. Some children, still sleepy, are chided to hurry up. By 5:30 am, they are inside the mine where it is still difficult to see beyond a few metres, the darkness blackened further by the plumes rising from the coal burning beneath their feet, and the haze of methane smoke and coal dust. It is a surreal vista.<br /><br />Every morning, in open-cast mines around Jharia in Dhanbad, Jharkhand, thousands of people &quot;pick&quot; coal to sell it and make a living. They do it illegally and that's why early mornings are suitable to dig out coal and carry it up to a strip of land that overlooks the main mining area. The process is simple: women and men break coal with their picks and shovels, fill their cane baskets and carry them on their heads up to the stocking area; the children help in carrying the coal. This goes on till the sun goes down.<br /><br />Dumpers belonging to a private company that operates this particular mine ply nonstop, going deep around the spiral and then coming up again. The supervisors in their 4x4 air-conditioned vehicles take rounds but ignore the villagers. Like the opening hour of a stock exchange, everybody is busy. A teenage girl fills her basket with small pieces; a man plays music on his phone while digging with his pick. In the background the drone of heavy engines of bulldozers and trucks remains a constant.<br /><br />6:30 pm. The summer sun that has been searing one's eyes looks emasculated, denuded of its energy and heat. Soon, it disappears in the dusty toxic mist. Aren't you scared that you might be caught, I ask Sandeep's mother. &quot;I am, and people have been arrested before, but what options do I have to make a living here?&quot; she asks, and resumes digging. Later, she recalls how she used to be a vegetable seller till their village was literally gobbled up by the earth. With no fields left, and the new settlement reduced to a tiny number of families, she had to start picking coal. Her husband Mandal is old and people call him crazy, leaving Savitri to take the burden of running the household.<br /><br />Every day, she picks five-six sacks of coal; each sack containing around 45 kg of coal. Sandeep, who just topped his Class IV exams, helps his mother out. Her husband also pitches in and &quot;prepares&quot; the coal by burning off the impurities. Later, a buyer will carry this &quot;prepared&quot; coal on his cycle to sell it in the nearby townships. A day's effort of picking, preparing and selling coal gets the family about Rs 200. This kind of coal is used mainly by small eateries and people who cannot afford or don't have LPG; a large portion of it also finds its way to coal dumps from where it is transported to neighbouring states like West Bengal and Bihar.<br /><br />Assuming that around 10,000 families, with five members each, fill around five sacks every day, the daily turnover comes to Rs 50 lakh, as one tonne of coal is sold for Rs 2,500. But this money is made by the coal mafia and not by the likes of Savitri. Like with any other natural product, value is added at each step and the real producer gets the lowest price. For her, one kilo of coal fetches nothing more than Rs 1.<br /><br />Why Open-cast Mining? &quot;Open-cast mining is disastrous for both the environment and the people living in the region but it requires less investment and less time to extract coal. Here, in Jharia, coal seams occur at a shallow depth, so it is the best way for us to mine,&quot; says a senior Coal India official, with 2,000 people working for him in the Jharia area. He didn't wish to be named nor his designation revealed. In a freewheeling chat over an hour, he emphasised that Coal India is determined to fulfil the Narendra Modi government's dream of doubling India's coal production to 1.5 billion tonnes by 2020. Around 90% of this is likely to come from open-cast mines. Today, the government behemoth, through its numerous subsidiaries, extracts around 490 million tonnes out of the total 565 million tonnes India produces annually.<br /><br />Please <a href="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/lethal-gases-from-jharias-coalfields-fire-continue-to-wreck-havoc-a-century-later/articleshow/52705763.cms?from=mdr" title="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/lethal-gases-from-jharias-coalfields-fire-continue-to-wreck-havoc-a-century-later/articleshow/52705763.cms?from=mdr">click here</a> to read more. <br /><br /><em>(The writer is a freelance journalist)</em>               </font>
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		&#039;title&#039; =&gt; &#039;Lethal gases from Jharia&amp;#039;s coalfields fire continue to wreck havoc a century later -Valay Singh&#039;,
		&#039;subheading&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;description&#039; =&gt; &#039;-The Economic Times&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
5:20 am. Twelve-year-old Sandeep rubs his eyes. Prodded by his mother Savitri, he reluctantly steps out of his two-room mud house. Together, they head out in the darkness. Savitri walks purposefully, Sandeep trudges along. They are going to the opencast coal mine that is a 10-minute walk from their village Ghansaddi. On the way, they are joined by scores of people. In a curving file, they descend the slippery foot-trail without much effort. Some children, still sleepy, are chided to hurry up. By 5:30 am, they are inside the mine where it is still difficult to see beyond a few metres, the darkness blackened further by the plumes rising from the coal burning beneath their feet, and the haze of methane smoke and coal dust. It is a surreal vista.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Every morning, in open-cast mines around Jharia in Dhanbad, Jharkhand, thousands of people &amp;quot;pick&amp;quot; coal to sell it and make a living. They do it illegally and that&#039;s why early mornings are suitable to dig out coal and carry it up to a strip of land that overlooks the main mining area. The process is simple: women and men break coal with their picks and shovels, fill their cane baskets and carry them on their heads up to the stocking area; the children help in carrying the coal. This goes on till the sun goes down.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Dumpers belonging to a private company that operates this particular mine ply nonstop, going deep around the spiral and then coming up again. The supervisors in their 4x4 air-conditioned vehicles take rounds but ignore the villagers. Like the opening hour of a stock exchange, everybody is busy. A teenage girl fills her basket with small pieces; a man plays music on his phone while digging with his pick. In the background the drone of heavy engines of bulldozers and trucks remains a constant.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
6:30 pm. The summer sun that has been searing one&#039;s eyes looks emasculated, denuded of its energy and heat. Soon, it disappears in the dusty toxic mist. Aren&#039;t you scared that you might be caught, I ask Sandeep&#039;s mother. &amp;quot;I am, and people have been arrested before, but what options do I have to make a living here?&amp;quot; she asks, and resumes digging. Later, she recalls how she used to be a vegetable seller till their village was literally gobbled up by the earth. With no fields left, and the new settlement reduced to a tiny number of families, she had to start picking coal. Her husband Mandal is old and people call him crazy, leaving Savitri to take the burden of running the household.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Every day, she picks five-six sacks of coal; each sack containing around 45 kg of coal. Sandeep, who just topped his Class IV exams, helps his mother out. Her husband also pitches in and &amp;quot;prepares&amp;quot; the coal by burning off the impurities. Later, a buyer will carry this &amp;quot;prepared&amp;quot; coal on his cycle to sell it in the nearby townships. A day&#039;s effort of picking, preparing and selling coal gets the family about Rs 200. This kind of coal is used mainly by small eateries and people who cannot afford or don&#039;t have LPG; a large portion of it also finds its way to coal dumps from where it is transported to neighbouring states like West Bengal and Bihar.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Assuming that around 10,000 families, with five members each, fill around five sacks every day, the daily turnover comes to Rs 50 lakh, as one tonne of coal is sold for Rs 2,500. But this money is made by the coal mafia and not by the likes of Savitri. Like with any other natural product, value is added at each step and the real producer gets the lowest price. For her, one kilo of coal fetches nothing more than Rs 1.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Why Open-cast Mining? &amp;quot;Open-cast mining is disastrous for both the environment and the people living in the region but it requires less investment and less time to extract coal. Here, in Jharia, coal seams occur at a shallow depth, so it is the best way for us to mine,&amp;quot; says a senior Coal India official, with 2,000 people working for him in the Jharia area. He didn&#039;t wish to be named nor his designation revealed. In a freewheeling chat over an hour, he emphasised that Coal India is determined to fulfil the Narendra Modi government&#039;s dream of doubling India&#039;s coal production to 1.5 billion tonnes by 2020. Around 90% of this is likely to come from open-cast mines. Today, the government behemoth, through its numerous subsidiaries, extracts around 490 million tonnes out of the total 565 million tonnes India produces annually.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/lethal-gases-from-jharias-coalfields-fire-continue-to-wreck-havoc-a-century-later/articleshow/52705763.cms?from=mdr&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to read more. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;(The writer is a freelance journalist)&lt;/em&gt;&#039;,
		&#039;credit_writer&#039; =&gt; &#039;The Economic Times, 12 June, 2016, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/lethal-gases-from-jharias-coalfields-fire-continue-to-wreck-havoc-a-century-later/articleshow/52705763.c&#039;,
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5:20 am. Twelve-year-old Sandeep rubs his eyes. Prodded by his mother Savitri, he reluctantly steps out of his two-room mud house. Together, they head out in the darkness. Savitri walks purposefully, Sandeep trudges along. They are going to...&#039;,
	&#039;disp&#039; =&gt; &#039;-The Economic Times&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;5:20 am. Twelve-year-old Sandeep rubs his eyes. Prodded by his mother Savitri, he reluctantly steps out of his two-room mud house. Together, they head out in the darkness. Savitri walks purposefully, Sandeep trudges along. They are going to the opencast coal mine that is a 10-minute walk from their village Ghansaddi. On the way, they are joined by scores of people. In a curving file, they descend the slippery foot-trail without much effort. Some children, still sleepy, are chided to hurry up. By 5:30 am, they are inside the mine where it is still difficult to see beyond a few metres, the darkness blackened further by the plumes rising from the coal burning beneath their feet, and the haze of methane smoke and coal dust. It is a surreal vista.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Every morning, in open-cast mines around Jharia in Dhanbad, Jharkhand, thousands of people &amp;quot;pick&amp;quot; coal to sell it and make a living. They do it illegally and that&#039;s why early mornings are suitable to dig out coal and carry it up to a strip of land that overlooks the main mining area. The process is simple: women and men break coal with their picks and shovels, fill their cane baskets and carry them on their heads up to the stocking area; the children help in carrying the coal. This goes on till the sun goes down.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Dumpers belonging to a private company that operates this particular mine ply nonstop, going deep around the spiral and then coming up again. The supervisors in their 4x4 air-conditioned vehicles take rounds but ignore the villagers. Like the opening hour of a stock exchange, everybody is busy. A teenage girl fills her basket with small pieces; a man plays music on his phone while digging with his pick. In the background the drone of heavy engines of bulldozers and trucks remains a constant.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;6:30 pm. The summer sun that has been searing one&#039;s eyes looks emasculated, denuded of its energy and heat. Soon, it disappears in the dusty toxic mist. Aren&#039;t you scared that you might be caught, I ask Sandeep&#039;s mother. &amp;quot;I am, and people have been arrested before, but what options do I have to make a living here?&amp;quot; she asks, and resumes digging. Later, she recalls how she used to be a vegetable seller till their village was literally gobbled up by the earth. With no fields left, and the new settlement reduced to a tiny number of families, she had to start picking coal. Her husband Mandal is old and people call him crazy, leaving Savitri to take the burden of running the household.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Every day, she picks five-six sacks of coal; each sack containing around 45 kg of coal. Sandeep, who just topped his Class IV exams, helps his mother out. Her husband also pitches in and &amp;quot;prepares&amp;quot; the coal by burning off the impurities. Later, a buyer will carry this &amp;quot;prepared&amp;quot; coal on his cycle to sell it in the nearby townships. A day&#039;s effort of picking, preparing and selling coal gets the family about Rs 200. This kind of coal is used mainly by small eateries and people who cannot afford or don&#039;t have LPG; a large portion of it also finds its way to coal dumps from where it is transported to neighbouring states like West Bengal and Bihar.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Assuming that around 10,000 families, with five members each, fill around five sacks every day, the daily turnover comes to Rs 50 lakh, as one tonne of coal is sold for Rs 2,500. But this money is made by the coal mafia and not by the likes of Savitri. Like with any other natural product, value is added at each step and the real producer gets the lowest price. For her, one kilo of coal fetches nothing more than Rs 1.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Why Open-cast Mining? &amp;quot;Open-cast mining is disastrous for both the environment and the people living in the region but it requires less investment and less time to extract coal. Here, in Jharia, coal seams occur at a shallow depth, so it is the best way for us to mine,&amp;quot; says a senior Coal India official, with 2,000 people working for him in the Jharia area. He didn&#039;t wish to be named nor his designation revealed. In a freewheeling chat over an hour, he emphasised that Coal India is determined to fulfil the Narendra Modi government&#039;s dream of doubling India&#039;s coal production to 1.5 billion tonnes by 2020. Around 90% of this is likely to come from open-cast mines. Today, the government behemoth, through its numerous subsidiaries, extracts around 490 million tonnes out of the total 565 million tonnes India produces annually.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/lethal-gases-from-jharias-coalfields-fire-continue-to-wreck-havoc-a-century-later/articleshow/52705763.cms?from=mdr&quot; title=&quot;http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/lethal-gases-from-jharias-coalfields-fire-continue-to-wreck-havoc-a-century-later/articleshow/52705763.cms?from=mdr&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to read more. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;(The writer is a freelance journalist)&lt;/em&gt;&#039;,
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	&#039;title&#039; =&gt; &#039;Lethal gases from Jharia&amp;#039;s coalfields fire continue to wreck havoc a century later -Valay Singh&#039;,
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	&#039;description&#039; =&gt; &#039;-The Economic Times&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
5:20 am. Twelve-year-old Sandeep rubs his eyes. Prodded by his mother Savitri, he reluctantly steps out of his two-room mud house. Together, they head out in the darkness. Savitri walks purposefully, Sandeep trudges along. They are going to the opencast coal mine that is a 10-minute walk from their village Ghansaddi. On the way, they are joined by scores of people. In a curving file, they descend the slippery foot-trail without much effort. Some children, still sleepy, are chided to hurry up. By 5:30 am, they are inside the mine where it is still difficult to see beyond a few metres, the darkness blackened further by the plumes rising from the coal burning beneath their feet, and the haze of methane smoke and coal dust. It is a surreal vista.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Every morning, in open-cast mines around Jharia in Dhanbad, Jharkhand, thousands of people &amp;quot;pick&amp;quot; coal to sell it and make a living. They do it illegally and that&#039;s why early mornings are suitable to dig out coal and carry it up to a strip of land that overlooks the main mining area. The process is simple: women and men break coal with their picks and shovels, fill their cane baskets and carry them on their heads up to the stocking area; the children help in carrying the coal. This goes on till the sun goes down.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Dumpers belonging to a private company that operates this particular mine ply nonstop, going deep around the spiral and then coming up again. The supervisors in their 4x4 air-conditioned vehicles take rounds but ignore the villagers. Like the opening hour of a stock exchange, everybody is busy. A teenage girl fills her basket with small pieces; a man plays music on his phone while digging with his pick. In the background the drone of heavy engines of bulldozers and trucks remains a constant.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
6:30 pm. The summer sun that has been searing one&#039;s eyes looks emasculated, denuded of its energy and heat. Soon, it disappears in the dusty toxic mist. Aren&#039;t you scared that you might be caught, I ask Sandeep&#039;s mother. &amp;quot;I am, and people have been arrested before, but what options do I have to make a living here?&amp;quot; she asks, and resumes digging. Later, she recalls how she used to be a vegetable seller till their village was literally gobbled up by the earth. With no fields left, and the new settlement reduced to a tiny number of families, she had to start picking coal. Her husband Mandal is old and people call him crazy, leaving Savitri to take the burden of running the household.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Every day, she picks five-six sacks of coal; each sack containing around 45 kg of coal. Sandeep, who just topped his Class IV exams, helps his mother out. Her husband also pitches in and &amp;quot;prepares&amp;quot; the coal by burning off the impurities. Later, a buyer will carry this &amp;quot;prepared&amp;quot; coal on his cycle to sell it in the nearby townships. A day&#039;s effort of picking, preparing and selling coal gets the family about Rs 200. This kind of coal is used mainly by small eateries and people who cannot afford or don&#039;t have LPG; a large portion of it also finds its way to coal dumps from where it is transported to neighbouring states like West Bengal and Bihar.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Assuming that around 10,000 families, with five members each, fill around five sacks every day, the daily turnover comes to Rs 50 lakh, as one tonne of coal is sold for Rs 2,500. But this money is made by the coal mafia and not by the likes of Savitri. Like with any other natural product, value is added at each step and the real producer gets the lowest price. For her, one kilo of coal fetches nothing more than Rs 1.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Why Open-cast Mining? &amp;quot;Open-cast mining is disastrous for both the environment and the people living in the region but it requires less investment and less time to extract coal. Here, in Jharia, coal seams occur at a shallow depth, so it is the best way for us to mine,&amp;quot; says a senior Coal India official, with 2,000 people working for him in the Jharia area. He didn&#039;t wish to be named nor his designation revealed. In a freewheeling chat over an hour, he emphasised that Coal India is determined to fulfil the Narendra Modi government&#039;s dream of doubling India&#039;s coal production to 1.5 billion tonnes by 2020. Around 90% of this is likely to come from open-cast mines. Today, the government behemoth, through its numerous subsidiaries, extracts around 490 million tonnes out of the total 565 million tonnes India produces annually.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/lethal-gases-from-jharias-coalfields-fire-continue-to-wreck-havoc-a-century-later/articleshow/52705763.cms?from=mdr&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to read more. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;(The writer is a freelance journalist)&lt;/em&gt;&#039;,
	&#039;credit_writer&#039; =&gt; &#039;The Economic Times, 12 June, 2016, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/lethal-gases-from-jharias-coalfields-fire-continue-to-wreck-havoc-a-century-later/articleshow/52705763.c&#039;,
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5:20 am. Twelve-year-old Sandeep rubs his eyes. Prodded by his mother Savitri, he reluctantly steps out of his two-room mud house. Together, they head out in the darkness. Savitri walks purposefully, Sandeep trudges along. They are going to...&#039;
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They do it illegally and that&#039;s why early mornings are suitable to dig out coal and carry it up to a strip of land that overlooks the main mining area. The process is simple: women and men break coal with their picks and shovels, fill their cane baskets and carry them on their heads up to the stocking area; the children help in carrying the coal. This goes on till the sun goes down.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Dumpers belonging to a private company that operates this particular mine ply nonstop, going deep around the spiral and then coming up again. The supervisors in their 4x4 air-conditioned vehicles take rounds but ignore the villagers. Like the opening hour of a stock exchange, everybody is busy. A teenage girl fills her basket with small pieces; a man plays music on his phone while digging with his pick. In the background the drone of heavy engines of bulldozers and trucks remains a constant.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;6:30 pm. The summer sun that has been searing one&#039;s eyes looks emasculated, denuded of its energy and heat. Soon, it disappears in the dusty toxic mist. Aren&#039;t you scared that you might be caught, I ask Sandeep&#039;s mother. &amp;quot;I am, and people have been arrested before, but what options do I have to make a living here?&amp;quot; she asks, and resumes digging. Later, she recalls how she used to be a vegetable seller till their village was literally gobbled up by the earth. With no fields left, and the new settlement reduced to a tiny number of families, she had to start picking coal. Her husband Mandal is old and people call him crazy, leaving Savitri to take the burden of running the household.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Every day, she picks five-six sacks of coal; each sack containing around 45 kg of coal. Sandeep, who just topped his Class IV exams, helps his mother out. Her husband also pitches in and &amp;quot;prepares&amp;quot; the coal by burning off the impurities. Later, a buyer will carry this &amp;quot;prepared&amp;quot; coal on his cycle to sell it in the nearby townships. A day&#039;s effort of picking, preparing and selling coal gets the family about Rs 200. This kind of coal is used mainly by small eateries and people who cannot afford or don&#039;t have LPG; a large portion of it also finds its way to coal dumps from where it is transported to neighbouring states like West Bengal and Bihar.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Assuming that around 10,000 families, with five members each, fill around five sacks every day, the daily turnover comes to Rs 50 lakh, as one tonne of coal is sold for Rs 2,500. But this money is made by the coal mafia and not by the likes of Savitri. Like with any other natural product, value is added at each step and the real producer gets the lowest price. For her, one kilo of coal fetches nothing more than Rs 1.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Why Open-cast Mining? &amp;quot;Open-cast mining is disastrous for both the environment and the people living in the region but it requires less investment and less time to extract coal. Here, in Jharia, coal seams occur at a shallow depth, so it is the best way for us to mine,&amp;quot; says a senior Coal India official, with 2,000 people working for him in the Jharia area. He didn&#039;t wish to be named nor his designation revealed. In a freewheeling chat over an hour, he emphasised that Coal India is determined to fulfil the Narendra Modi government&#039;s dream of doubling India&#039;s coal production to 1.5 billion tonnes by 2020. Around 90% of this is likely to come from open-cast mines. Today, the government behemoth, through its numerous subsidiaries, extracts around 490 million tonnes out of the total 565 million tonnes India produces annually.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/lethal-gases-from-jharias-coalfields-fire-continue-to-wreck-havoc-a-century-later/articleshow/52705763.cms?from=mdr&quot; title=&quot;http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/lethal-gases-from-jharias-coalfields-fire-continue-to-wreck-havoc-a-century-later/articleshow/52705763.cms?from=mdr&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to read more. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;(The writer is a freelance journalist)&lt;/em&gt;&#039;
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5:20 am. Twelve-year-old Sandeep rubs his eyes. Prodded by his mother Savitri, he reluctantly steps out of his two-room mud house. Together, they head out in the darkness. Savitri walks purposefully, Sandeep trudges along. They are going to..."/>
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                <strong>Lethal gases from Jharia&#039;s coalfields fire continue to wreck havoc a century later -Valay Singh</strong></h1>
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                -The Economic Times<br /><br />5:20 am. Twelve-year-old Sandeep rubs his eyes. Prodded by his mother Savitri, he reluctantly steps out of his two-room mud house. Together, they head out in the darkness. Savitri walks purposefully, Sandeep trudges along. They are going to the opencast coal mine that is a 10-minute walk from their village Ghansaddi. On the way, they are joined by scores of people. In a curving file, they descend the slippery foot-trail without much effort. Some children, still sleepy, are chided to hurry up. By 5:30 am, they are inside the mine where it is still difficult to see beyond a few metres, the darkness blackened further by the plumes rising from the coal burning beneath their feet, and the haze of methane smoke and coal dust. It is a surreal vista.<br /><br />Every morning, in open-cast mines around Jharia in Dhanbad, Jharkhand, thousands of people &quot;pick&quot; coal to sell it and make a living. They do it illegally and that's why early mornings are suitable to dig out coal and carry it up to a strip of land that overlooks the main mining area. The process is simple: women and men break coal with their picks and shovels, fill their cane baskets and carry them on their heads up to the stocking area; the children help in carrying the coal. This goes on till the sun goes down.<br /><br />Dumpers belonging to a private company that operates this particular mine ply nonstop, going deep around the spiral and then coming up again. The supervisors in their 4x4 air-conditioned vehicles take rounds but ignore the villagers. Like the opening hour of a stock exchange, everybody is busy. A teenage girl fills her basket with small pieces; a man plays music on his phone while digging with his pick. In the background the drone of heavy engines of bulldozers and trucks remains a constant.<br /><br />6:30 pm. The summer sun that has been searing one's eyes looks emasculated, denuded of its energy and heat. Soon, it disappears in the dusty toxic mist. Aren't you scared that you might be caught, I ask Sandeep's mother. &quot;I am, and people have been arrested before, but what options do I have to make a living here?&quot; she asks, and resumes digging. Later, she recalls how she used to be a vegetable seller till their village was literally gobbled up by the earth. With no fields left, and the new settlement reduced to a tiny number of families, she had to start picking coal. Her husband Mandal is old and people call him crazy, leaving Savitri to take the burden of running the household.<br /><br />Every day, she picks five-six sacks of coal; each sack containing around 45 kg of coal. Sandeep, who just topped his Class IV exams, helps his mother out. Her husband also pitches in and &quot;prepares&quot; the coal by burning off the impurities. Later, a buyer will carry this &quot;prepared&quot; coal on his cycle to sell it in the nearby townships. A day's effort of picking, preparing and selling coal gets the family about Rs 200. This kind of coal is used mainly by small eateries and people who cannot afford or don't have LPG; a large portion of it also finds its way to coal dumps from where it is transported to neighbouring states like West Bengal and Bihar.<br /><br />Assuming that around 10,000 families, with five members each, fill around five sacks every day, the daily turnover comes to Rs 50 lakh, as one tonne of coal is sold for Rs 2,500. But this money is made by the coal mafia and not by the likes of Savitri. Like with any other natural product, value is added at each step and the real producer gets the lowest price. For her, one kilo of coal fetches nothing more than Rs 1.<br /><br />Why Open-cast Mining? &quot;Open-cast mining is disastrous for both the environment and the people living in the region but it requires less investment and less time to extract coal. Here, in Jharia, coal seams occur at a shallow depth, so it is the best way for us to mine,&quot; says a senior Coal India official, with 2,000 people working for him in the Jharia area. He didn't wish to be named nor his designation revealed. In a freewheeling chat over an hour, he emphasised that Coal India is determined to fulfil the Narendra Modi government's dream of doubling India's coal production to 1.5 billion tonnes by 2020. Around 90% of this is likely to come from open-cast mines. Today, the government behemoth, through its numerous subsidiaries, extracts around 490 million tonnes out of the total 565 million tonnes India produces annually.<br /><br />Please <a href="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/lethal-gases-from-jharias-coalfields-fire-continue-to-wreck-havoc-a-century-later/articleshow/52705763.cms?from=mdr" title="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/lethal-gases-from-jharias-coalfields-fire-continue-to-wreck-havoc-a-century-later/articleshow/52705763.cms?from=mdr">click here</a> to read more. <br /><br /><em>(The writer is a freelance journalist)</em>               </font>
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&lt;br /&gt;
5:20 am. Twelve-year-old Sandeep rubs his eyes. Prodded by his mother Savitri, he reluctantly steps out of his two-room mud house. Together, they head out in the darkness. Savitri walks purposefully, Sandeep trudges along. They are going to the opencast coal mine that is a 10-minute walk from their village Ghansaddi. On the way, they are joined by scores of people. In a curving file, they descend the slippery foot-trail without much effort. Some children, still sleepy, are chided to hurry up. By 5:30 am, they are inside the mine where it is still difficult to see beyond a few metres, the darkness blackened further by the plumes rising from the coal burning beneath their feet, and the haze of methane smoke and coal dust. It is a surreal vista.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Every morning, in open-cast mines around Jharia in Dhanbad, Jharkhand, thousands of people &amp;quot;pick&amp;quot; coal to sell it and make a living. They do it illegally and that&#039;s why early mornings are suitable to dig out coal and carry it up to a strip of land that overlooks the main mining area. The process is simple: women and men break coal with their picks and shovels, fill their cane baskets and carry them on their heads up to the stocking area; the children help in carrying the coal. This goes on till the sun goes down.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Dumpers belonging to a private company that operates this particular mine ply nonstop, going deep around the spiral and then coming up again. The supervisors in their 4x4 air-conditioned vehicles take rounds but ignore the villagers. Like the opening hour of a stock exchange, everybody is busy. A teenage girl fills her basket with small pieces; a man plays music on his phone while digging with his pick. In the background the drone of heavy engines of bulldozers and trucks remains a constant.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
6:30 pm. The summer sun that has been searing one&#039;s eyes looks emasculated, denuded of its energy and heat. Soon, it disappears in the dusty toxic mist. Aren&#039;t you scared that you might be caught, I ask Sandeep&#039;s mother. &amp;quot;I am, and people have been arrested before, but what options do I have to make a living here?&amp;quot; she asks, and resumes digging. Later, she recalls how she used to be a vegetable seller till their village was literally gobbled up by the earth. With no fields left, and the new settlement reduced to a tiny number of families, she had to start picking coal. Her husband Mandal is old and people call him crazy, leaving Savitri to take the burden of running the household.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Every day, she picks five-six sacks of coal; each sack containing around 45 kg of coal. Sandeep, who just topped his Class IV exams, helps his mother out. Her husband also pitches in and &amp;quot;prepares&amp;quot; the coal by burning off the impurities. Later, a buyer will carry this &amp;quot;prepared&amp;quot; coal on his cycle to sell it in the nearby townships. A day&#039;s effort of picking, preparing and selling coal gets the family about Rs 200. This kind of coal is used mainly by small eateries and people who cannot afford or don&#039;t have LPG; a large portion of it also finds its way to coal dumps from where it is transported to neighbouring states like West Bengal and Bihar.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Assuming that around 10,000 families, with five members each, fill around five sacks every day, the daily turnover comes to Rs 50 lakh, as one tonne of coal is sold for Rs 2,500. But this money is made by the coal mafia and not by the likes of Savitri. Like with any other natural product, value is added at each step and the real producer gets the lowest price. For her, one kilo of coal fetches nothing more than Rs 1.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Why Open-cast Mining? &amp;quot;Open-cast mining is disastrous for both the environment and the people living in the region but it requires less investment and less time to extract coal. Here, in Jharia, coal seams occur at a shallow depth, so it is the best way for us to mine,&amp;quot; says a senior Coal India official, with 2,000 people working for him in the Jharia area. He didn&#039;t wish to be named nor his designation revealed. In a freewheeling chat over an hour, he emphasised that Coal India is determined to fulfil the Narendra Modi government&#039;s dream of doubling India&#039;s coal production to 1.5 billion tonnes by 2020. Around 90% of this is likely to come from open-cast mines. Today, the government behemoth, through its numerous subsidiaries, extracts around 490 million tonnes out of the total 565 million tonnes India produces annually.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/lethal-gases-from-jharias-coalfields-fire-continue-to-wreck-havoc-a-century-later/articleshow/52705763.cms?from=mdr&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to read more. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
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5:20 am. Twelve-year-old Sandeep rubs his eyes. Prodded by his mother Savitri, he reluctantly steps out of his two-room mud house. Together, they head out in the darkness. Savitri walks purposefully, Sandeep trudges along. They are going to...&#039;,
	&#039;disp&#039; =&gt; &#039;-The Economic Times&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;5:20 am. Twelve-year-old Sandeep rubs his eyes. Prodded by his mother Savitri, he reluctantly steps out of his two-room mud house. Together, they head out in the darkness. Savitri walks purposefully, Sandeep trudges along. They are going to the opencast coal mine that is a 10-minute walk from their village Ghansaddi. On the way, they are joined by scores of people. In a curving file, they descend the slippery foot-trail without much effort. Some children, still sleepy, are chided to hurry up. By 5:30 am, they are inside the mine where it is still difficult to see beyond a few metres, the darkness blackened further by the plumes rising from the coal burning beneath their feet, and the haze of methane smoke and coal dust. It is a surreal vista.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Every morning, in open-cast mines around Jharia in Dhanbad, Jharkhand, thousands of people &amp;quot;pick&amp;quot; coal to sell it and make a living. They do it illegally and that&#039;s why early mornings are suitable to dig out coal and carry it up to a strip of land that overlooks the main mining area. The process is simple: women and men break coal with their picks and shovels, fill their cane baskets and carry them on their heads up to the stocking area; the children help in carrying the coal. This goes on till the sun goes down.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Dumpers belonging to a private company that operates this particular mine ply nonstop, going deep around the spiral and then coming up again. The supervisors in their 4x4 air-conditioned vehicles take rounds but ignore the villagers. Like the opening hour of a stock exchange, everybody is busy. A teenage girl fills her basket with small pieces; a man plays music on his phone while digging with his pick. In the background the drone of heavy engines of bulldozers and trucks remains a constant.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;6:30 pm. The summer sun that has been searing one&#039;s eyes looks emasculated, denuded of its energy and heat. Soon, it disappears in the dusty toxic mist. Aren&#039;t you scared that you might be caught, I ask Sandeep&#039;s mother. &amp;quot;I am, and people have been arrested before, but what options do I have to make a living here?&amp;quot; she asks, and resumes digging. Later, she recalls how she used to be a vegetable seller till their village was literally gobbled up by the earth. With no fields left, and the new settlement reduced to a tiny number of families, she had to start picking coal. Her husband Mandal is old and people call him crazy, leaving Savitri to take the burden of running the household.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Every day, she picks five-six sacks of coal; each sack containing around 45 kg of coal. Sandeep, who just topped his Class IV exams, helps his mother out. Her husband also pitches in and &amp;quot;prepares&amp;quot; the coal by burning off the impurities. Later, a buyer will carry this &amp;quot;prepared&amp;quot; coal on his cycle to sell it in the nearby townships. A day&#039;s effort of picking, preparing and selling coal gets the family about Rs 200. This kind of coal is used mainly by small eateries and people who cannot afford or don&#039;t have LPG; a large portion of it also finds its way to coal dumps from where it is transported to neighbouring states like West Bengal and Bihar.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Assuming that around 10,000 families, with five members each, fill around five sacks every day, the daily turnover comes to Rs 50 lakh, as one tonne of coal is sold for Rs 2,500. But this money is made by the coal mafia and not by the likes of Savitri. Like with any other natural product, value is added at each step and the real producer gets the lowest price. For her, one kilo of coal fetches nothing more than Rs 1.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Why Open-cast Mining? &amp;quot;Open-cast mining is disastrous for both the environment and the people living in the region but it requires less investment and less time to extract coal. Here, in Jharia, coal seams occur at a shallow depth, so it is the best way for us to mine,&amp;quot; says a senior Coal India official, with 2,000 people working for him in the Jharia area. He didn&#039;t wish to be named nor his designation revealed. In a freewheeling chat over an hour, he emphasised that Coal India is determined to fulfil the Narendra Modi government&#039;s dream of doubling India&#039;s coal production to 1.5 billion tonnes by 2020. Around 90% of this is likely to come from open-cast mines. 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	&#039;subheading&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;description&#039; =&gt; &#039;-The Economic Times&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
5:20 am. Twelve-year-old Sandeep rubs his eyes. Prodded by his mother Savitri, he reluctantly steps out of his two-room mud house. Together, they head out in the darkness. Savitri walks purposefully, Sandeep trudges along. They are going to the opencast coal mine that is a 10-minute walk from their village Ghansaddi. On the way, they are joined by scores of people. In a curving file, they descend the slippery foot-trail without much effort. Some children, still sleepy, are chided to hurry up. By 5:30 am, they are inside the mine where it is still difficult to see beyond a few metres, the darkness blackened further by the plumes rising from the coal burning beneath their feet, and the haze of methane smoke and coal dust. It is a surreal vista.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Every morning, in open-cast mines around Jharia in Dhanbad, Jharkhand, thousands of people &amp;quot;pick&amp;quot; coal to sell it and make a living. They do it illegally and that&#039;s why early mornings are suitable to dig out coal and carry it up to a strip of land that overlooks the main mining area. The process is simple: women and men break coal with their picks and shovels, fill their cane baskets and carry them on their heads up to the stocking area; the children help in carrying the coal. This goes on till the sun goes down.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Dumpers belonging to a private company that operates this particular mine ply nonstop, going deep around the spiral and then coming up again. The supervisors in their 4x4 air-conditioned vehicles take rounds but ignore the villagers. Like the opening hour of a stock exchange, everybody is busy. A teenage girl fills her basket with small pieces; a man plays music on his phone while digging with his pick. In the background the drone of heavy engines of bulldozers and trucks remains a constant.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
6:30 pm. The summer sun that has been searing one&#039;s eyes looks emasculated, denuded of its energy and heat. Soon, it disappears in the dusty toxic mist. Aren&#039;t you scared that you might be caught, I ask Sandeep&#039;s mother. &amp;quot;I am, and people have been arrested before, but what options do I have to make a living here?&amp;quot; she asks, and resumes digging. Later, she recalls how she used to be a vegetable seller till their village was literally gobbled up by the earth. With no fields left, and the new settlement reduced to a tiny number of families, she had to start picking coal. Her husband Mandal is old and people call him crazy, leaving Savitri to take the burden of running the household.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Every day, she picks five-six sacks of coal; each sack containing around 45 kg of coal. Sandeep, who just topped his Class IV exams, helps his mother out. Her husband also pitches in and &amp;quot;prepares&amp;quot; the coal by burning off the impurities. Later, a buyer will carry this &amp;quot;prepared&amp;quot; coal on his cycle to sell it in the nearby townships. A day&#039;s effort of picking, preparing and selling coal gets the family about Rs 200. This kind of coal is used mainly by small eateries and people who cannot afford or don&#039;t have LPG; a large portion of it also finds its way to coal dumps from where it is transported to neighbouring states like West Bengal and Bihar.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Assuming that around 10,000 families, with five members each, fill around five sacks every day, the daily turnover comes to Rs 50 lakh, as one tonne of coal is sold for Rs 2,500. But this money is made by the coal mafia and not by the likes of Savitri. Like with any other natural product, value is added at each step and the real producer gets the lowest price. For her, one kilo of coal fetches nothing more than Rs 1.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Why Open-cast Mining? &amp;quot;Open-cast mining is disastrous for both the environment and the people living in the region but it requires less investment and less time to extract coal. Here, in Jharia, coal seams occur at a shallow depth, so it is the best way for us to mine,&amp;quot; says a senior Coal India official, with 2,000 people working for him in the Jharia area. He didn&#039;t wish to be named nor his designation revealed. In a freewheeling chat over an hour, he emphasised that Coal India is determined to fulfil the Narendra Modi government&#039;s dream of doubling India&#039;s coal production to 1.5 billion tonnes by 2020. Around 90% of this is likely to come from open-cast mines. Today, the government behemoth, through its numerous subsidiaries, extracts around 490 million tonnes out of the total 565 million tonnes India produces annually.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/lethal-gases-from-jharias-coalfields-fire-continue-to-wreck-havoc-a-century-later/articleshow/52705763.cms?from=mdr&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to read more. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
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5:20 am. Twelve-year-old Sandeep rubs his eyes. Prodded by his mother Savitri, he reluctantly steps out of his two-room mud house. Together, they head out in the darkness. Savitri walks purposefully, Sandeep trudges along. They are going to...&#039;
$disp = &#039;-The Economic Times&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;5:20 am. Twelve-year-old Sandeep rubs his eyes. Prodded by his mother Savitri, he reluctantly steps out of his two-room mud house. Together, they head out in the darkness. Savitri walks purposefully, Sandeep trudges along. They are going to the opencast coal mine that is a 10-minute walk from their village Ghansaddi. On the way, they are joined by scores of people. In a curving file, they descend the slippery foot-trail without much effort. Some children, still sleepy, are chided to hurry up. By 5:30 am, they are inside the mine where it is still difficult to see beyond a few metres, the darkness blackened further by the plumes rising from the coal burning beneath their feet, and the haze of methane smoke and coal dust. It is a surreal vista.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Every morning, in open-cast mines around Jharia in Dhanbad, Jharkhand, thousands of people &amp;quot;pick&amp;quot; coal to sell it and make a living. They do it illegally and that&#039;s why early mornings are suitable to dig out coal and carry it up to a strip of land that overlooks the main mining area. The process is simple: women and men break coal with their picks and shovels, fill their cane baskets and carry them on their heads up to the stocking area; the children help in carrying the coal. This goes on till the sun goes down.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Dumpers belonging to a private company that operates this particular mine ply nonstop, going deep around the spiral and then coming up again. The supervisors in their 4x4 air-conditioned vehicles take rounds but ignore the villagers. Like the opening hour of a stock exchange, everybody is busy. A teenage girl fills her basket with small pieces; a man plays music on his phone while digging with his pick. In the background the drone of heavy engines of bulldozers and trucks remains a constant.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;6:30 pm. The summer sun that has been searing one&#039;s eyes looks emasculated, denuded of its energy and heat. Soon, it disappears in the dusty toxic mist. Aren&#039;t you scared that you might be caught, I ask Sandeep&#039;s mother. &amp;quot;I am, and people have been arrested before, but what options do I have to make a living here?&amp;quot; she asks, and resumes digging. Later, she recalls how she used to be a vegetable seller till their village was literally gobbled up by the earth. With no fields left, and the new settlement reduced to a tiny number of families, she had to start picking coal. Her husband Mandal is old and people call him crazy, leaving Savitri to take the burden of running the household.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Every day, she picks five-six sacks of coal; each sack containing around 45 kg of coal. Sandeep, who just topped his Class IV exams, helps his mother out. Her husband also pitches in and &amp;quot;prepares&amp;quot; the coal by burning off the impurities. Later, a buyer will carry this &amp;quot;prepared&amp;quot; coal on his cycle to sell it in the nearby townships. A day&#039;s effort of picking, preparing and selling coal gets the family about Rs 200. This kind of coal is used mainly by small eateries and people who cannot afford or don&#039;t have LPG; a large portion of it also finds its way to coal dumps from where it is transported to neighbouring states like West Bengal and Bihar.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Assuming that around 10,000 families, with five members each, fill around five sacks every day, the daily turnover comes to Rs 50 lakh, as one tonne of coal is sold for Rs 2,500. But this money is made by the coal mafia and not by the likes of Savitri. Like with any other natural product, value is added at each step and the real producer gets the lowest price. For her, one kilo of coal fetches nothing more than Rs 1.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Why Open-cast Mining? &amp;quot;Open-cast mining is disastrous for both the environment and the people living in the region but it requires less investment and less time to extract coal. Here, in Jharia, coal seams occur at a shallow depth, so it is the best way for us to mine,&amp;quot; says a senior Coal India official, with 2,000 people working for him in the Jharia area. He didn&#039;t wish to be named nor his designation revealed. In a freewheeling chat over an hour, he emphasised that Coal India is determined to fulfil the Narendra Modi government&#039;s dream of doubling India&#039;s coal production to 1.5 billion tonnes by 2020. Around 90% of this is likely to come from open-cast mines. 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5:20 am. Twelve-year-old Sandeep rubs his eyes. Prodded by his mother Savitri, he reluctantly steps out of his two-room mud house. Together, they head out in the darkness. Savitri walks purposefully, Sandeep trudges along. They are going to..."/>
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                <strong>Lethal gases from Jharia&#039;s coalfields fire continue to wreck havoc a century later -Valay Singh</strong></h1>
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                -The Economic Times<br /><br />5:20 am. Twelve-year-old Sandeep rubs his eyes. Prodded by his mother Savitri, he reluctantly steps out of his two-room mud house. Together, they head out in the darkness. Savitri walks purposefully, Sandeep trudges along. They are going to the opencast coal mine that is a 10-minute walk from their village Ghansaddi. On the way, they are joined by scores of people. In a curving file, they descend the slippery foot-trail without much effort. Some children, still sleepy, are chided to hurry up. By 5:30 am, they are inside the mine where it is still difficult to see beyond a few metres, the darkness blackened further by the plumes rising from the coal burning beneath their feet, and the haze of methane smoke and coal dust. It is a surreal vista.<br /><br />Every morning, in open-cast mines around Jharia in Dhanbad, Jharkhand, thousands of people &quot;pick&quot; coal to sell it and make a living. They do it illegally and that's why early mornings are suitable to dig out coal and carry it up to a strip of land that overlooks the main mining area. The process is simple: women and men break coal with their picks and shovels, fill their cane baskets and carry them on their heads up to the stocking area; the children help in carrying the coal. This goes on till the sun goes down.<br /><br />Dumpers belonging to a private company that operates this particular mine ply nonstop, going deep around the spiral and then coming up again. The supervisors in their 4x4 air-conditioned vehicles take rounds but ignore the villagers. Like the opening hour of a stock exchange, everybody is busy. A teenage girl fills her basket with small pieces; a man plays music on his phone while digging with his pick. In the background the drone of heavy engines of bulldozers and trucks remains a constant.<br /><br />6:30 pm. The summer sun that has been searing one's eyes looks emasculated, denuded of its energy and heat. Soon, it disappears in the dusty toxic mist. Aren't you scared that you might be caught, I ask Sandeep's mother. &quot;I am, and people have been arrested before, but what options do I have to make a living here?&quot; she asks, and resumes digging. Later, she recalls how she used to be a vegetable seller till their village was literally gobbled up by the earth. With no fields left, and the new settlement reduced to a tiny number of families, she had to start picking coal. Her husband Mandal is old and people call him crazy, leaving Savitri to take the burden of running the household.<br /><br />Every day, she picks five-six sacks of coal; each sack containing around 45 kg of coal. Sandeep, who just topped his Class IV exams, helps his mother out. Her husband also pitches in and &quot;prepares&quot; the coal by burning off the impurities. Later, a buyer will carry this &quot;prepared&quot; coal on his cycle to sell it in the nearby townships. A day's effort of picking, preparing and selling coal gets the family about Rs 200. This kind of coal is used mainly by small eateries and people who cannot afford or don't have LPG; a large portion of it also finds its way to coal dumps from where it is transported to neighbouring states like West Bengal and Bihar.<br /><br />Assuming that around 10,000 families, with five members each, fill around five sacks every day, the daily turnover comes to Rs 50 lakh, as one tonne of coal is sold for Rs 2,500. But this money is made by the coal mafia and not by the likes of Savitri. Like with any other natural product, value is added at each step and the real producer gets the lowest price. For her, one kilo of coal fetches nothing more than Rs 1.<br /><br />Why Open-cast Mining? &quot;Open-cast mining is disastrous for both the environment and the people living in the region but it requires less investment and less time to extract coal. Here, in Jharia, coal seams occur at a shallow depth, so it is the best way for us to mine,&quot; says a senior Coal India official, with 2,000 people working for him in the Jharia area. He didn't wish to be named nor his designation revealed. In a freewheeling chat over an hour, he emphasised that Coal India is determined to fulfil the Narendra Modi government's dream of doubling India's coal production to 1.5 billion tonnes by 2020. Around 90% of this is likely to come from open-cast mines. Today, the government behemoth, through its numerous subsidiaries, extracts around 490 million tonnes out of the total 565 million tonnes India produces annually.<br /><br />Please <a href="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/lethal-gases-from-jharias-coalfields-fire-continue-to-wreck-havoc-a-century-later/articleshow/52705763.cms?from=mdr" title="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/lethal-gases-from-jharias-coalfields-fire-continue-to-wreck-havoc-a-century-later/articleshow/52705763.cms?from=mdr">click here</a> to read more. <br /><br /><em>(The writer is a freelance journalist)</em>               </font>
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		'description' => '-The Economic Times<br />
<br />
5:20 am. Twelve-year-old Sandeep rubs his eyes. Prodded by his mother Savitri, he reluctantly steps out of his two-room mud house. Together, they head out in the darkness. Savitri walks purposefully, Sandeep trudges along. They are going to the opencast coal mine that is a 10-minute walk from their village Ghansaddi. On the way, they are joined by scores of people. In a curving file, they descend the slippery foot-trail without much effort. Some children, still sleepy, are chided to hurry up. By 5:30 am, they are inside the mine where it is still difficult to see beyond a few metres, the darkness blackened further by the plumes rising from the coal burning beneath their feet, and the haze of methane smoke and coal dust. It is a surreal vista.<br />
<br />
Every morning, in open-cast mines around Jharia in Dhanbad, Jharkhand, thousands of people &quot;pick&quot; coal to sell it and make a living. They do it illegally and that's why early mornings are suitable to dig out coal and carry it up to a strip of land that overlooks the main mining area. The process is simple: women and men break coal with their picks and shovels, fill their cane baskets and carry them on their heads up to the stocking area; the children help in carrying the coal. This goes on till the sun goes down.<br />
<br />
Dumpers belonging to a private company that operates this particular mine ply nonstop, going deep around the spiral and then coming up again. The supervisors in their 4x4 air-conditioned vehicles take rounds but ignore the villagers. Like the opening hour of a stock exchange, everybody is busy. A teenage girl fills her basket with small pieces; a man plays music on his phone while digging with his pick. In the background the drone of heavy engines of bulldozers and trucks remains a constant.<br />
<br />
6:30 pm. The summer sun that has been searing one's eyes looks emasculated, denuded of its energy and heat. Soon, it disappears in the dusty toxic mist. Aren't you scared that you might be caught, I ask Sandeep's mother. &quot;I am, and people have been arrested before, but what options do I have to make a living here?&quot; she asks, and resumes digging. Later, she recalls how she used to be a vegetable seller till their village was literally gobbled up by the earth. With no fields left, and the new settlement reduced to a tiny number of families, she had to start picking coal. Her husband Mandal is old and people call him crazy, leaving Savitri to take the burden of running the household.<br />
<br />
Every day, she picks five-six sacks of coal; each sack containing around 45 kg of coal. Sandeep, who just topped his Class IV exams, helps his mother out. Her husband also pitches in and &quot;prepares&quot; the coal by burning off the impurities. Later, a buyer will carry this &quot;prepared&quot; coal on his cycle to sell it in the nearby townships. A day's effort of picking, preparing and selling coal gets the family about Rs 200. This kind of coal is used mainly by small eateries and people who cannot afford or don't have LPG; a large portion of it also finds its way to coal dumps from where it is transported to neighbouring states like West Bengal and Bihar.<br />
<br />
Assuming that around 10,000 families, with five members each, fill around five sacks every day, the daily turnover comes to Rs 50 lakh, as one tonne of coal is sold for Rs 2,500. But this money is made by the coal mafia and not by the likes of Savitri. Like with any other natural product, value is added at each step and the real producer gets the lowest price. For her, one kilo of coal fetches nothing more than Rs 1.<br />
<br />
Why Open-cast Mining? &quot;Open-cast mining is disastrous for both the environment and the people living in the region but it requires less investment and less time to extract coal. Here, in Jharia, coal seams occur at a shallow depth, so it is the best way for us to mine,&quot; says a senior Coal India official, with 2,000 people working for him in the Jharia area. He didn't wish to be named nor his designation revealed. In a freewheeling chat over an hour, he emphasised that Coal India is determined to fulfil the Narendra Modi government's dream of doubling India's coal production to 1.5 billion tonnes by 2020. Around 90% of this is likely to come from open-cast mines. Today, the government behemoth, through its numerous subsidiaries, extracts around 490 million tonnes out of the total 565 million tonnes India produces annually.<br />
<br />
Please <a href="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/lethal-gases-from-jharias-coalfields-fire-continue-to-wreck-havoc-a-century-later/articleshow/52705763.cms?from=mdr">click here</a> to read more. <br />
<br />
<em>(The writer is a freelance journalist)</em>',
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	'metaTitle' => 'LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Lethal gases from Jharia&#039;s coalfields fire continue to wreck havoc a century later -Valay Singh',
	'metaKeywords' => 'Open-cast mining,Coal Mining,Mining,Health hazards,Health Hazard,Public Health',
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5:20 am. Twelve-year-old Sandeep rubs his eyes. Prodded by his mother Savitri, he reluctantly steps out of his two-room mud house. Together, they head out in the darkness. Savitri walks purposefully, Sandeep trudges along. They are going to...',
	'disp' => '-The Economic Times<br /><br />5:20 am. Twelve-year-old Sandeep rubs his eyes. Prodded by his mother Savitri, he reluctantly steps out of his two-room mud house. Together, they head out in the darkness. Savitri walks purposefully, Sandeep trudges along. They are going to the opencast coal mine that is a 10-minute walk from their village Ghansaddi. On the way, they are joined by scores of people. In a curving file, they descend the slippery foot-trail without much effort. Some children, still sleepy, are chided to hurry up. By 5:30 am, they are inside the mine where it is still difficult to see beyond a few metres, the darkness blackened further by the plumes rising from the coal burning beneath their feet, and the haze of methane smoke and coal dust. It is a surreal vista.<br /><br />Every morning, in open-cast mines around Jharia in Dhanbad, Jharkhand, thousands of people &quot;pick&quot; coal to sell it and make a living. They do it illegally and that's why early mornings are suitable to dig out coal and carry it up to a strip of land that overlooks the main mining area. The process is simple: women and men break coal with their picks and shovels, fill their cane baskets and carry them on their heads up to the stocking area; the children help in carrying the coal. This goes on till the sun goes down.<br /><br />Dumpers belonging to a private company that operates this particular mine ply nonstop, going deep around the spiral and then coming up again. The supervisors in their 4x4 air-conditioned vehicles take rounds but ignore the villagers. Like the opening hour of a stock exchange, everybody is busy. A teenage girl fills her basket with small pieces; a man plays music on his phone while digging with his pick. In the background the drone of heavy engines of bulldozers and trucks remains a constant.<br /><br />6:30 pm. The summer sun that has been searing one's eyes looks emasculated, denuded of its energy and heat. Soon, it disappears in the dusty toxic mist. Aren't you scared that you might be caught, I ask Sandeep's mother. &quot;I am, and people have been arrested before, but what options do I have to make a living here?&quot; she asks, and resumes digging. Later, she recalls how she used to be a vegetable seller till their village was literally gobbled up by the earth. With no fields left, and the new settlement reduced to a tiny number of families, she had to start picking coal. Her husband Mandal is old and people call him crazy, leaving Savitri to take the burden of running the household.<br /><br />Every day, she picks five-six sacks of coal; each sack containing around 45 kg of coal. Sandeep, who just topped his Class IV exams, helps his mother out. Her husband also pitches in and &quot;prepares&quot; the coal by burning off the impurities. Later, a buyer will carry this &quot;prepared&quot; coal on his cycle to sell it in the nearby townships. A day's effort of picking, preparing and selling coal gets the family about Rs 200. This kind of coal is used mainly by small eateries and people who cannot afford or don't have LPG; a large portion of it also finds its way to coal dumps from where it is transported to neighbouring states like West Bengal and Bihar.<br /><br />Assuming that around 10,000 families, with five members each, fill around five sacks every day, the daily turnover comes to Rs 50 lakh, as one tonne of coal is sold for Rs 2,500. But this money is made by the coal mafia and not by the likes of Savitri. Like with any other natural product, value is added at each step and the real producer gets the lowest price. For her, one kilo of coal fetches nothing more than Rs 1.<br /><br />Why Open-cast Mining? &quot;Open-cast mining is disastrous for both the environment and the people living in the region but it requires less investment and less time to extract coal. Here, in Jharia, coal seams occur at a shallow depth, so it is the best way for us to mine,&quot; says a senior Coal India official, with 2,000 people working for him in the Jharia area. He didn't wish to be named nor his designation revealed. In a freewheeling chat over an hour, he emphasised that Coal India is determined to fulfil the Narendra Modi government's dream of doubling India's coal production to 1.5 billion tonnes by 2020. Around 90% of this is likely to come from open-cast mines. Today, the government behemoth, through its numerous subsidiaries, extracts around 490 million tonnes out of the total 565 million tonnes India produces annually.<br /><br />Please <a href="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/lethal-gases-from-jharias-coalfields-fire-continue-to-wreck-havoc-a-century-later/articleshow/52705763.cms?from=mdr" title="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/lethal-gases-from-jharias-coalfields-fire-continue-to-wreck-havoc-a-century-later/articleshow/52705763.cms?from=mdr">click here</a> to read more. <br /><br /><em>(The writer is a freelance journalist)</em>',
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	'title' => 'Lethal gases from Jharia&#039;s coalfields fire continue to wreck havoc a century later -Valay Singh',
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	'description' => '-The Economic Times<br />
<br />
5:20 am. Twelve-year-old Sandeep rubs his eyes. Prodded by his mother Savitri, he reluctantly steps out of his two-room mud house. Together, they head out in the darkness. Savitri walks purposefully, Sandeep trudges along. They are going to the opencast coal mine that is a 10-minute walk from their village Ghansaddi. On the way, they are joined by scores of people. In a curving file, they descend the slippery foot-trail without much effort. Some children, still sleepy, are chided to hurry up. By 5:30 am, they are inside the mine where it is still difficult to see beyond a few metres, the darkness blackened further by the plumes rising from the coal burning beneath their feet, and the haze of methane smoke and coal dust. It is a surreal vista.<br />
<br />
Every morning, in open-cast mines around Jharia in Dhanbad, Jharkhand, thousands of people &quot;pick&quot; coal to sell it and make a living. They do it illegally and that's why early mornings are suitable to dig out coal and carry it up to a strip of land that overlooks the main mining area. The process is simple: women and men break coal with their picks and shovels, fill their cane baskets and carry them on their heads up to the stocking area; the children help in carrying the coal. This goes on till the sun goes down.<br />
<br />
Dumpers belonging to a private company that operates this particular mine ply nonstop, going deep around the spiral and then coming up again. The supervisors in their 4x4 air-conditioned vehicles take rounds but ignore the villagers. Like the opening hour of a stock exchange, everybody is busy. A teenage girl fills her basket with small pieces; a man plays music on his phone while digging with his pick. In the background the drone of heavy engines of bulldozers and trucks remains a constant.<br />
<br />
6:30 pm. The summer sun that has been searing one's eyes looks emasculated, denuded of its energy and heat. Soon, it disappears in the dusty toxic mist. Aren't you scared that you might be caught, I ask Sandeep's mother. &quot;I am, and people have been arrested before, but what options do I have to make a living here?&quot; she asks, and resumes digging. Later, she recalls how she used to be a vegetable seller till their village was literally gobbled up by the earth. With no fields left, and the new settlement reduced to a tiny number of families, she had to start picking coal. Her husband Mandal is old and people call him crazy, leaving Savitri to take the burden of running the household.<br />
<br />
Every day, she picks five-six sacks of coal; each sack containing around 45 kg of coal. Sandeep, who just topped his Class IV exams, helps his mother out. Her husband also pitches in and &quot;prepares&quot; the coal by burning off the impurities. Later, a buyer will carry this &quot;prepared&quot; coal on his cycle to sell it in the nearby townships. A day's effort of picking, preparing and selling coal gets the family about Rs 200. This kind of coal is used mainly by small eateries and people who cannot afford or don't have LPG; a large portion of it also finds its way to coal dumps from where it is transported to neighbouring states like West Bengal and Bihar.<br />
<br />
Assuming that around 10,000 families, with five members each, fill around five sacks every day, the daily turnover comes to Rs 50 lakh, as one tonne of coal is sold for Rs 2,500. But this money is made by the coal mafia and not by the likes of Savitri. Like with any other natural product, value is added at each step and the real producer gets the lowest price. For her, one kilo of coal fetches nothing more than Rs 1.<br />
<br />
Why Open-cast Mining? &quot;Open-cast mining is disastrous for both the environment and the people living in the region but it requires less investment and less time to extract coal. Here, in Jharia, coal seams occur at a shallow depth, so it is the best way for us to mine,&quot; says a senior Coal India official, with 2,000 people working for him in the Jharia area. He didn't wish to be named nor his designation revealed. In a freewheeling chat over an hour, he emphasised that Coal India is determined to fulfil the Narendra Modi government's dream of doubling India's coal production to 1.5 billion tonnes by 2020. Around 90% of this is likely to come from open-cast mines. Today, the government behemoth, through its numerous subsidiaries, extracts around 490 million tonnes out of the total 565 million tonnes India produces annually.<br />
<br />
Please <a href="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/lethal-gases-from-jharias-coalfields-fire-continue-to-wreck-havoc-a-century-later/articleshow/52705763.cms?from=mdr">click here</a> to read more. <br />
<br />
<em>(The writer is a freelance journalist)</em>',
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5:20 am. Twelve-year-old Sandeep rubs his eyes. Prodded by his mother Savitri, he reluctantly steps out of his two-room mud house. Together, they head out in the darkness. Savitri walks purposefully, Sandeep trudges along. They are going to...'
$disp = '-The Economic Times<br /><br />5:20 am. Twelve-year-old Sandeep rubs his eyes. Prodded by his mother Savitri, he reluctantly steps out of his two-room mud house. Together, they head out in the darkness. Savitri walks purposefully, Sandeep trudges along. They are going to the opencast coal mine that is a 10-minute walk from their village Ghansaddi. On the way, they are joined by scores of people. In a curving file, they descend the slippery foot-trail without much effort. Some children, still sleepy, are chided to hurry up. By 5:30 am, they are inside the mine where it is still difficult to see beyond a few metres, the darkness blackened further by the plumes rising from the coal burning beneath their feet, and the haze of methane smoke and coal dust. It is a surreal vista.<br /><br />Every morning, in open-cast mines around Jharia in Dhanbad, Jharkhand, thousands of people &quot;pick&quot; coal to sell it and make a living. They do it illegally and that's why early mornings are suitable to dig out coal and carry it up to a strip of land that overlooks the main mining area. The process is simple: women and men break coal with their picks and shovels, fill their cane baskets and carry them on their heads up to the stocking area; the children help in carrying the coal. This goes on till the sun goes down.<br /><br />Dumpers belonging to a private company that operates this particular mine ply nonstop, going deep around the spiral and then coming up again. The supervisors in their 4x4 air-conditioned vehicles take rounds but ignore the villagers. Like the opening hour of a stock exchange, everybody is busy. A teenage girl fills her basket with small pieces; a man plays music on his phone while digging with his pick. In the background the drone of heavy engines of bulldozers and trucks remains a constant.<br /><br />6:30 pm. The summer sun that has been searing one's eyes looks emasculated, denuded of its energy and heat. Soon, it disappears in the dusty toxic mist. Aren't you scared that you might be caught, I ask Sandeep's mother. &quot;I am, and people have been arrested before, but what options do I have to make a living here?&quot; she asks, and resumes digging. Later, she recalls how she used to be a vegetable seller till their village was literally gobbled up by the earth. With no fields left, and the new settlement reduced to a tiny number of families, she had to start picking coal. Her husband Mandal is old and people call him crazy, leaving Savitri to take the burden of running the household.<br /><br />Every day, she picks five-six sacks of coal; each sack containing around 45 kg of coal. Sandeep, who just topped his Class IV exams, helps his mother out. Her husband also pitches in and &quot;prepares&quot; the coal by burning off the impurities. Later, a buyer will carry this &quot;prepared&quot; coal on his cycle to sell it in the nearby townships. A day's effort of picking, preparing and selling coal gets the family about Rs 200. This kind of coal is used mainly by small eateries and people who cannot afford or don't have LPG; a large portion of it also finds its way to coal dumps from where it is transported to neighbouring states like West Bengal and Bihar.<br /><br />Assuming that around 10,000 families, with five members each, fill around five sacks every day, the daily turnover comes to Rs 50 lakh, as one tonne of coal is sold for Rs 2,500. But this money is made by the coal mafia and not by the likes of Savitri. Like with any other natural product, value is added at each step and the real producer gets the lowest price. For her, one kilo of coal fetches nothing more than Rs 1.<br /><br />Why Open-cast Mining? &quot;Open-cast mining is disastrous for both the environment and the people living in the region but it requires less investment and less time to extract coal. Here, in Jharia, coal seams occur at a shallow depth, so it is the best way for us to mine,&quot; says a senior Coal India official, with 2,000 people working for him in the Jharia area. He didn't wish to be named nor his designation revealed. In a freewheeling chat over an hour, he emphasised that Coal India is determined to fulfil the Narendra Modi government's dream of doubling India's coal production to 1.5 billion tonnes by 2020. Around 90% of this is likely to come from open-cast mines. Today, the government behemoth, through its numerous subsidiaries, extracts around 490 million tonnes out of the total 565 million tonnes India produces annually.<br /><br />Please <a href="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/lethal-gases-from-jharias-coalfields-fire-continue-to-wreck-havoc-a-century-later/articleshow/52705763.cms?from=mdr" title="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/lethal-gases-from-jharias-coalfields-fire-continue-to-wreck-havoc-a-century-later/articleshow/52705763.cms?from=mdr">click here</a> to read more. <br /><br /><em>(The writer is a freelance journalist)</em>'
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Lethal gases from Jharia's coalfields fire continue to wreck havoc a century later -Valay Singh

-The Economic Times 5:20 am. Twelve-year-old Sandeep rubs his eyes. Prodded by his mother Savitri, he reluctantly steps out of his two-room mud house. Together, they head out in the darkness. Savitri walks purposefully, Sandeep trudges along. They are going to the opencast coal mine that is a 10-minute walk from their village Ghansaddi. On the way, they are joined by scores of people. In a curving file, they descend the slippery foot-trail without much effort. Some children, still sleepy, are chided to hurry up. By 5:30 am, they are inside the mine where it is still difficult to see beyond a few metres, the darkness blackened further by the plumes rising from the coal burning beneath their feet, and the haze of methane smoke and coal dust. It is a surreal vista. Every morning, in open-cast mines around Jharia in Dhanbad, Jharkhand, thousands of people "pick" coal to sell it and make a living. They do it illegally and that's why early mornings are suitable to dig out coal and carry it up to a strip of land that overlooks the main mining area. The process is simple: women and men break coal with their picks and shovels, fill their cane baskets and carry them on their heads up to the stocking area; the children help in carrying the coal. This goes on till the sun goes down. Dumpers belonging to a private company that operates this particular mine ply nonstop, going deep around the spiral and then coming up again. The supervisors in their 4x4 air-conditioned vehicles take rounds but ignore the villagers. Like the opening hour of a stock exchange, everybody is busy. A teenage girl fills her basket with small pieces; a man plays music on his phone while digging with his pick. In the background the drone of heavy engines of bulldozers and trucks remains a constant. 6:30 pm. The summer sun that has been searing one's eyes looks emasculated, denuded of its energy and heat. Soon, it disappears in the dusty toxic mist. Aren't you scared that you might be caught, I ask Sandeep's mother. "I am, and people have been arrested before, but what options do I have to make a living here?" she asks, and resumes digging. Later, she recalls how she used to be a vegetable seller till their village was literally gobbled up by the earth. With no fields left, and the new settlement reduced to a tiny number of families, she had to start picking coal. Her husband Mandal is old and people call him crazy, leaving Savitri to take the burden of running the household. Every day, she picks five-six sacks of coal; each sack containing around 45 kg of coal. Sandeep, who just topped his Class IV exams, helps his mother out. Her husband also pitches in and "prepares" the coal by burning off the impurities. Later, a buyer will carry this "prepared" coal on his cycle to sell it in the nearby townships. A day's effort of picking, preparing and selling coal gets the family about Rs 200. This kind of coal is used mainly by small eateries and people who cannot afford or don't have LPG; a large portion of it also finds its way to coal dumps from where it is transported to neighbouring states like West Bengal and Bihar. Assuming that around 10,000 families, with five members each, fill around five sacks every day, the daily turnover comes to Rs 50 lakh, as one tonne of coal is sold for Rs 2,500. But this money is made by the coal mafia and not by the likes of Savitri. Like with any other natural product, value is added at each step and the real producer gets the lowest price. For her, one kilo of coal fetches nothing more than Rs 1. Why Open-cast Mining? "Open-cast mining is disastrous for both the environment and the people living in the region but it requires less investment and less time to extract coal. Here, in Jharia, coal seams occur at a shallow depth, so it is the best way for us to mine," says a senior Coal India official, with 2,000 people working for him in the Jharia area. He didn't wish to be named nor his designation revealed. In a freewheeling chat over an hour, he emphasised that Coal India is determined to fulfil the Narendra Modi government's dream of doubling India's coal production to 1.5 billion tonnes by 2020. Around 90% of this is likely to come from open-cast mines. Today, the government behemoth, through its numerous subsidiaries, extracts around 490 million tonnes out of the total 565 million tonnes India produces annually. Please click here to read more. (The writer is a freelance journalist)