Monirul Molla
Home: Minakhan
Cause of death: Silicosis

Mujaffar Molla
Home: Minakhan
Cause of death: Silicosis

Abul Paik
Home: Minakhan
Cause of death: Silicosis

Biswajit Mandal
Home: Minakhan
Cause of death: Silicosis

Mijanur Molla
Home: Minakhan
Cause of death: Silicosis

Ruhul Amin Gain
Home: Minakhan
Cause of death: Silicosis

The procession of death since 2012 is bound together not just by Minakhan, located not more than 40km from Calcutta in North 24-Parganas, and silicosis, a lung disease.

All the six had worked at stone-crushing units in Burdwan's Asansol-Ranigunj belt, choking their lungs with stone dust that killed them when most were in their 20s and 30s.

Out of the about 200 men from the Minakhan area who worked in these factories, 13 are dead and 14 are critical. About 50 others are under treatment at local hospitals or hospitals in and around Calcutta, an investigation conducted by The Telegraph and supported by the Centre for Science and Environment has found.

The rest, even if "less ill", suffer from respiratory distress in some form and live in fear. Many have been diagnosed with the lung disease caused by the inhalation of silica dust, to which they were constantly exposed at work.

The compulsion that forced young people to shift from North 24-Parganas to the dust-spewing factories of Burdwan tells a larger tale of poor returns from farmland and dearth of choice in industry-starved Bengal.

After Cyclone Aila ravaged Minakhan six summers ago, some 150 men from two villages went to the Asansol-Ranigunj belt and joined others who had earlier taken up jobs in the units that crush stones into chips that go into construction of roads and buildings.

They worked for private establishments - in most conversations and complaints, names of three units kept surfacing.

Since two of the stone-crushing units are not registered, according to government officials, they are treated as illegal. In the roster of the third unit, the names of the silicosis-affected workers could not be found, which purportedly made them unregistered workers.

In case of registered factories and their registered workers, it's the employer who must pay compensation but if the unit is illegal or the workers are not registered, the state government must pay up.

But the Bengal government has done little to help, activists say, apart from acknowledging eight deaths from silicosis and silico-tuberculosis (a combination of silicosis and tuberculosis) - that too after repeated strictures from the rights commission to send a report.

"The fear of shelling out money is stopping the government from paying attention to a series of unending deaths," said activist Naba Dutta of the Nagarik Mancha.

"It fears that once it accepts one demand for compensation, the floodgates will open in a state with about 1,500 stone-crushing units, at least 90 per cent of them illegal and almost all flouting prescribed safety norms."

The Bengal government acknowledged the eight deaths only after the commission threatened to unilaterally act on the violation of human rights norms (that is, unilaterally fix the compensation, which could have cost the state a huge amount).

Nor does the government appear ready to tackle the root of the problem: a system of almost forced migration that feeds fly-by-night business practices at the cost of the lives of the faceless poor.

Minakhan's earth is unyielding: it allows just one reasonable crop. A large slice of its farmland is being converted into fisheries, which eschew local labour. So does the other industry that flourishes in Minakhan and its neighbourhood: brick kilns.

These units all hire migrant labourers who can be sacked at will and who are hardly in any position to protest poor conditions or pay, or to force accountability on the employers.

As part of the cycle, the youths of Minakhan are forced to migrate to find work that leaves them similarly vulnerable. Aila alone did not drive the youths out.

The factories

The Minakhan men had found jobs mainly in three units: Lakhi Stone Factory in Ranigunj, Tarama Minerals Factory in Jamuria and Balkrishna Factory in Kulti.

According to the state government report on the deaths, the first two units were not registered and were, therefore, illegal. No trace remains of them: they apparently shut down by themselves. Usually, smaller crushing units mushroom on local requirement and close once the demand ebbs.

In June, Sujit Shah, the proprietor of Lakhi Stone Factory, had claimed he did not know of any deaths. "I have no idea about anyone suffering or having died after working in the factory," Shan had told this reporter. "The factory has been closed for some time."

No information to contact Tarama officials was available.

The third unit, Balkrishna, is registered but no official was available for comment despite repeated attempts by this reporter.

'Cloud of dust'

Sarajit Mandal, 28, who worked in a crushing unit, said: "We worked 10 hours or more inside a cloud of stone dust. Within months we were coughing and feeling breathless after the slightest effort. We suffered bouts of fever."

His younger brother Biswajit and father Bankim had accompanied him. Silicosis killed Biswajit last year and has affected Sarajit and Bankim too. The Christian Medical College, Vellore, had diagnosed both brothers with "occupational lung disease -silicosis".

The law requires factories whose workers are at risk of silicosis - such as stone crushing or ceramic units, mines, quarries or foundries - to ensure the employees wear masks and are not exposed beyond a reasonable period.

But the illegal units do not care, nor do most of the legal ones in the absence of proper monitoring.

The commission has said that illegal crushing is impossible without the connivance of labour department and PCB officials and ordered the closure of illegal stone-crushing units. The state hasn't acted.

Although the medical documents of all the 13 dead could not be accessed, circumstantial evidence suggests that all of them died of silicosis or silico-tuberculosis. (The six names mentioned at the beginning of this report were based on specific documents this reporter had seen. Such documents were not available in all the 13 cases.)

The men were from Goaldaha and Debitala villages in the Minakhan block. Since 2001, about 150 men had gone to the stone-crushing units from Goaldaha, a village of about 500 families, and 50 from Debitala. Young widows, with no one to look after their toddlers, are a common sight now in Goaldaha.

The first to die, in August 2012, was 30-year-old Hussain Molla. Four more died in 2013. That year, all the remaining men returned to Minakhan. But eight more deaths have been reported since.

Compensation chase

Activists are looking to the rights commission - mandated by the Supreme Court in 2009 to fix compensation for silicosis deaths - and Calcutta High Court to nudge the Bengal government into action.

They are encouraged by the commission's award of Rs 4 lakh as compensation to the kin of each of 24 men who died of silicosis in Jharkhand.

Last September, after receiving a petition from Samir Carr of the Jharkhand based NGO, Occupational Safety and Health Association of Jharkhand (Oshaj), the commission had asked the Bengal government for a report on the Minakhan deaths. By then eight deaths had occurred.

In February this year, the commission reminded the Bengal chief secretary to send a report or face action. The report came in May, with B.K. Sikdar, deputy chief inspector of factories (medical), confirming the eight silicosis-related deaths (as cited in the petition) based on circumstantial evidence.

"I wrote to various senior state officials more than a year ago about the deaths but the matter is being passed from one department to another even now," said Biswajit Mukherjee, secretary with the legal aid centre of the non-profit Sabujer Avijan who had retired from the state pollution control board (PCB) as its as chief law officer.

On a petition from Mukherjee, the high court last year asked the PCB for a report. Mukherjee says the PCB is yet to submit one.

Ironically, Bengal was the first state where silicosis victims had been compensated.

Following a Supreme Court order on a petition moved by the Nagarik Mancha and supported by the PCB, a stone-crushing unit in Chichurgeria, Purulia, had in the mid-1990s paid Rs 1 lakh to the kin of each of 19 employees who had died of silicosis. Twelve others afflicted with the disease received Rs 50,000 each.

'Evasive' tactics

Activists say the state tries to pass off silicosis as plain tuberculosis to evade the issue.

"Silicosis patients are 15 times more prone to contracting tuberculosis, so it's wrong to exclude silicosis because a tuberculosis infection has been found," said Dr Kunal Dutta, occupational health expert and former medical superintendent with the ESI Hospital in Belur.

"The lack of infrastructure to identify silicosis patients, more by design than by default, helps the government," said Carr of Oshaj.

He was referring to the state's lack of doctors trained to match silicosis patients' X-ray plates with the International Labour Organisation's benchmarked silicosis X-ray plates for a definite diagnosis.

Mukherjee and Naba Dutta have moved the rights commission afresh, demanding an immediate order to the state to provide treatment and food to the patients and for an investigation by a medical team so that the patients receive proper compensation.