Telangana's village of widows (Silicosis killed mining workers, but no compensation offered)

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 Telangana's village of widows (Silicosis killed mining workers, but no compensation offered)

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• The Villages of Widows : In Andhra Pradesh's Mahbubnagar district (now Ranga Reddy of Telangana), several villages have seen a huge death toll of men working in quartz mining firms, in the 1980s. These mines ran from 1965 to 1974, under the AP Mineral Development Corporation.
• Silicosis, the killer : It is an incurable disease and in AP it went undiagnosed for a long time. Locally known as "guttala bimari", it means "disease from the hills". Workers in APMDC mines succumbed en masse to silicosis!
• Primitive methods : In early 1970s, the mining methods were primitive, and massive silica dust exposure was common daily. Quartz was mined, then crushed, then heated to 1000 degrees C in a kiln, broken into pieces, and turned into fine dust in a closed shed.
• The shed of death : It was this shed where the odourless silica dust went into workers' lungs leading to cough.
• Liabilities and suppression of truth : To avoid liabilities under Section 25-O of Industrial Disputes Act of 1947 and Section 6 of Metalliferous Mines Regulations, 1961, the mines were abandoned in 1974, though licenses were valid till 1985.
• Complete neglect : The govt. firm neglected paying any meaningful compensation at all. No one questioned it either.
• Clueless doctors : Patients were treated for TB, and not the symptomatic treatment needed for incurable silicosis. The fight for compensation continued, led by an NGO called BDS (Banjara Development Society). Nothing concrete has happened till date.
• Passing the buck : In this battle, many patients got checked by private doctors, who confirmed silicosis. But govt. departments passed the buck constantly, and the ESIC (Employees' State Insurance Corporation) refused to get involved. The NIOH also refused to take up the matter (National Institute of Occupational Health).
• Long fight continued : Patients and activists kept presenting their case to MLAs and MPs. The ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research) finally sent a team in 1997 to check. The report simply washed its hands off the crisis, mentioning no authentic records with any authority.
• NHRC petitioned : The BDS went to NHRC (National Human Rights Commission) in 1995 which issued notices asking why nothing was done. Fresh round of testing was done on people in 2000. Nothing happened here too.
• Andhra Pradesh H.C. under Article 226 : Then BDS went to AP HC, and case went on for 10 years. The writ was changed to a PIL in 2012, and order issued in 2013. The APMDC gave a scheme for safeguarding the life and liberty of the patients.
• Five more years : But nothing happened on compensation. In December 2018, a survey of villages was commenced, but victims are cynical.
• The most inhuman state : This saga of bureaucratic apathy over decades, and no compensation for a genuine tragedy, shows the dark face of Indian state.
• Summary : The quartz mines of APMDC specialised in making widows, and never compensating them, even after decades have passed by.

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