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| The approach road to Tata Steel’s Noamundi mine is free of vehicles, symbolic of the inaction inside. (Animesh Sengupta) |
The bituminous Noamundi-Badajamda Road is silent, a marked departure from the loud Vishwakarma Puja celebrations for days on end in the iron-ore mining township of Noamundi, West Singhbhum, 131km from Jamshedpur.
With some 15,000 residents spread across 10sqkm, Noamundi in West Singhbhum is sombre since the start of September. Set up in 1925, the town’s economy depended on Tata Steel’s sole iron ore mine in Jharkhand. Small wonder, its shutdown, along with that of 11 other mines in the same district at the state’s directive on September 3, has come as a huge shock.
The low-key Vishwakarma Puja festivities on September 17 were an indication that fear had seeped inside the small town’s skin. Till the clamp, the mine, with a yearly ore production of 7MT, employed 1,000 people and gave livelihood to 3,000 casual and contract labourers. Indirectly, the mine drove the town’s economy — its grocers, cloth merchants, electronic goods dealers and so on — though those better-off depended on Jamshedpur’s more glitzy options.
Job fears aside, the biggest worry of residents is losing the Tata Steel Hospital, part of the steel major’s corporate social responsibility since 1925 itself.
“We have read about the Centre’s July 18 directive, asking states to clamp down on mines operating under second or third deemed renewals. It is our bad luck that Noamundi is hit,” said Ravi Rao, a Noamundi-based liaison officer of Jamshedpur-based M/s Kabra Transport.
He is, like thousands of other Noamundi residents, thinking about the Tata Steel hospital.
With the state silent on the fate of the mine, rumour, conjecture and gossip are on a roll.
A trader at Noamundi Market, Bijoy Kumar echoes Rao. “Mine ke employees ko to vetan mil jayega aur band hone par unko doosre jagah bhej diya jayega. Par hum log ko ache illaaj ke liye bahut dur Jamshedpur jana padega kyonki koi bhi private company mine band hone par jyada din ke liye itna bada hospital nahin chalaiga. Sarkari hospital ka halat bahut kharab hai (Mining employees will get salaries. Even if it shuts down, Tata employees will be relocated. But we will have to go all the way to Jamshedpur for treatment. No private firm will run a big hospital if its mine is shut. And the state hospital here is pathetic),” he said.
The concern for quality healthcare is understandable as the entire mining belt of Saranda and Porahat lacks quality healthcare facility. If people fall ill, they come to Jamshedpur.
Noamundi is privileged because of its 70-bed single storied (G+1) Tata Steel Hospital. It witnesses an annual footfall of over 50,000 at its OPD and has a fairly modern blood bank.
Villagers near the tribal-dominated town — nearly a quarter of the population is Ho; Gope and Tantis are also significant — are also worried about losing the hospital’s free treatment facility.
There are nearly 30 revenue villages in and around the Noamundi township. Residents walk to the hospital or bring their ill on bicycles, pushcarts, rickshaws, autos or minivans.
“Manki Munda ke likhne par ya BPL card hone par hum ko free ilaaj milta hai. Yeh hospital band ho jayega to hum kahan jayenge (We get free treatment if our village head Manki Munda writes a note or if we produce a BPL card. If the hospital shuts down where will we go?)” asked Santosh Dhosai, a cook at a roadside hotel and resident Belajor village, 15km from Noamundi on Noamundi-Hatgamharia road. He was speaking for everyone he knew.