The Predicament of Women Labourers in a Particular Colliery

Dr. Mousumi Ghosh

1. Introduction

Pramila ,Hiramuni, Sumitra, Jaharun, Kailashi, Ramani, Sajani, Sauri and Uma  are the women labourers of a colliery in the Raniganj coalbelt. They perform heavy and unskilled works.  The present author has visited a colliery in the Raniganj coal belt to get a first-hand knowledge of the status of women labourers in the nationalised collieries today. That was the objective.

2. Methodology

The colliery that she visited has now twenty women labourers aworking in a total workforce of ninety. And it was learnt there that the Eastern Coalfield Limited is no longer recruiting fresh women labourers. The women that are working over here are also being encouraged to take voluntary retirement. The present author met some fifteen women labourers at the colliery she visited and interviewed ten members of the targeted population.   By the grace of God, a rapport could be forged between the author and the labourers that she interviewed in spite of the language barrier. Maybe this was possible as because the author herself is a woman. Consequently it seems that they unlocked their hearts and shared their secrets and predicaments with the author. . Surely what each one of them said is a narrative  Thus semi structured  interview method and case studies  were the  major tools in our micro research. A visit to a colliery, interviews with different stakeholders and a quest for authentic narratives from the lips of the few workers that still work with the colliery are the methods with which the present author seeks to outline a pen picture of the few women labourers who are lingering in the collieries .Secondary data are being used as fillers in the pen picture wherever required.  

Below we recall some of the narratives in brief.

3. Narratives

Pramila Singh was a native of Giridh district, now in the state of Jharkhand. She came in the Raniganj coalbelt after her marriage in 1972. Pramila’s husband came here as an Tendel/ mechanic in electrical department in 1965.She has two daughters and two sons. Her husband died in 1984.She got a job on compensatory ground in 1985 as wagon loader. Her father came from her native village to look after her children .She had to carry coal basket on head and she was paid at piece rate.   Her income was around Rs.3000 per month. Later she has been employed at time rate as a CC maker making small earthen balls required for blasting. Time rate payment reduced her earning at the outset (Category 1-Rs.2000). According to her, family pension has also been decreased from five hundred forty rupees to two hundred seventy rupees per month. She is in category three since 2003 but she is drawing salary in consonance with category two. Though illiterate, she is aware of this anomaly. She has also preserved all the old pay slips. Her income at present is Rs.33, 737 per month .Her duty time period is from eight in the morning to four in the afternoon .She used to make one thousand earthen balls per day.  However, for the last one and a half year, blasting has been stopped as the coal mine is on the verge of closure. Production of earthen balls is no longer required. Now, she has no work at hand. She will retire after four years.  She wants to stay here though none of her children is employee of ECL at present.

Hiramuni Mejhan stays in the neighbourhood of the colliery. She is a wagon loader and kamin[1]. She breaks the large chunk of coal into smaller pieces .she is also entrusted with the job of sweeping, cutting and cleaning shrubs. She was employed on compassionate ground after the death of her husband .Her husband died eighteen years ago in cancer. He was a haulage khalashi[2] in a colliery in the Raniganj coal belt. Their native place was Jharkhand.  She has three sons and a daughter. Her eldest son was then only twelve years old. She got the job after one year of her husband’s death. Her duty hour is from eight in the morning to four in the afternoon. However, during slack time, duty ends earlier. Since, the mine is on the verge of closure, production is practically nil. Her starting salary was three thousand and now she earns twenty six thousand. She is illiterate but has a fair idea about the gross, net salary, income tax she has to give. She complained about the hard task of coal breaking. The hammer, with which she breaks coal, weighs one kilogram.

Sumitra Meijhan does not know her age and she does not remember how long she works here. She is employed from the time of Bengal Coal Company. Though her father was an employee here, but probably she was not employed on compassionate ground. She got her job first and got married later. Her husband is unemployed and she has a daughter. She lives in the colliery quarter. Her net salary is twenty thousand rupees per month. She said that it is very laborious to break stone. This colliery is on the verge of closure. The coals are mainly known as fall coals which are left in the underground. When these activities are not available, these workers are entrusted with the job of forestry clearing. It is a risky job due to the steep slope of the coalpit. The chance of physical injury is high. Moreover, they need to clean the shrub sometimes with their bare hands She complained that sometimes it would injure her hands. She confessed that she drinks haria, a local liquor made from rice, sometimes. The price is Rs.5 per bottle. She has justified her drinking by saying that the hard work pattern needs drinking. She lives in a single quarter. She referred it as a half quarter. It has no toilet and she has to go to the field. There is no electricity as the company has cut off the line. It has well for water.

Jaharun Bibi is also in wagon loading and kamin job. After her husband’s death , she got the job fifteen years ago. Earlier she was a piece rated labourer and now she is a time rated labourer. She said that she had to toil very hard earlier. She has three sons and a daughter. Her daughter has been married to a well off family but for that Jaharun Bibi spent rupees five lakhs during her marriage. Her daughter has studied in local school and knows Urdu, English and Hindi.  Her sons are also now doing jobs like tailoring and working in the shopping mall. Though she has cordial relation with them, but they do not give any financial support to their mother. Her gross salary is around Rs. 23, 000 and her net salary after tax deduction is Rs. 18,000. Her expenditure for food- Khoraki in her language is Rs.6000-7000 per month. She took loan from two money lenders for her daughter’s marriage and has to give interest of total Rs. 10,000 per month. She has multiple corns in her both palm. They are the injury from using hammer. She also complained about the risk of cutting trees from the jungle along the steep khadan or pit. She said that they have conveyed their fear of death from falling to the manager and the manager allotted them other jobs. According to her, there were more kamins around 10-12 two years earlier. Some of them have retired and son of a few were given job by ECL in place of their mother’s job. She will retire after ten months. She is hopeful that the youngest son will get a welder’s job but she has not submitted the requisite form. She is Mohammedan. She does not face any difficulty for being a minority. She lives in staff quarter. It is a full quarter, i.e. family quarter having two rooms, a verandah, kitchen, and toilet. However, she disclosed that she has constructed the latrine and spent Rs. 50,000 as the colliery is short of fund. Water is free but for electricity use, 1% is deducted from the salary. They get free coal, which is known as domestic coal. Those who not want that get money for cooking gas. Most of the employees want cooking gas instead of domestic coal as fuel and ECL also encourages that. It is alleged that huge coal is looted in the  name of domestic coal.

Kailashi Devi is a fan operator. There are two fan operators in this incline. Their time of operation is from 8am to 4 pm. They are in time rate from the beginning. They are technical staff .Kailashievi has come from Gorakhpur, UP and is working here for 5-6years since her husband’s death. Her husband was a habitual drinker. He died after having suffered from paralysis.  She is a Kahar[3]. Her four sons are labourers in Gorakhpur.  She lives alone in a quarter. She will retire after 3-4 years. She lamented that this job has no prestige. Since the coal mine is on the verge of closure, there is a persistent tension and restlessness among all.  Her starting salary was Rs. 2000 per month and now she earns Rs. 20,000 per month.  After paying tax of Rs. 5000, she receives a net income of Rs. 15,000. She needs to send money to her native place Gorakhpur where her sons stay. She will return there after retirement. Some three to four women labourers stay at the quarter premises where Kailashi Devi stays.

4. A close reading of the narratives and inferences thereof

A close reading of the narratives might throw a light on the status of women labourers in the collieries belonging to the ECL. Firstly, most of the narratives above, over and over again say that the colliery is on the verge of being closed. That is a refrain. This is not only true of the very colliery that the author visited. But in fact the other collieries in the ECL are also facing decline. This is evident on two counts. Firstly, the recruitment of women labourers  in the colliery has been fully stopped. Moreover, the ECL has been kind enough to offer voluntary retirement to those few women who are still working with the collieries.  In times to come collieries will be sans women labour force. Besides the total labour of the ECL is declining in count. But may be the decline in the count of the workforce might be due to the introduction of modern technology in the colliery. Because the ECL thinks that its profit has been escalating ever since its inception.

 Be that as it may since the very colliery we visited is rather unproductive, the women labour force as well as its men does not have much work at hand. They could be transferred to other collieries. But that is not the case. It seems therefore that collieries are in general are saturated with enough labour force and they do not have the room for anyone transferred to them or for new recruits. Besides as one of the ladies lamented there is no status now a days in working with coal mines She told the present author that she and her fellowmen and fellow women suffer from some kind of tension because of the dismal state of the collieries. Now as to the ladies excepting one, the rest of them were recruited on compensatory ground. That shows that the recruitment of women labourers unless on compensatory grounds was stopped decades back. In a flashback we can digress into the history of coal industry in India and especially in the Raniganj belt.

The history of coal industry in India is symbolic. It could be looked upon as a comment on the industrialisation of the eighteenth century. It was in the eighteenth century that England underwent industrial revolution. Impact of the same was felt in India too. As early as during 1774, the first coal mine was explored in the Raniganj coal belt by Suetonius Grant Heatley and John Sumner, the employees of East India Company. For a time the British capitalist stood in the way and the mining industry here in India was not profitable. But the Sepoy Mutiny or the Battle for Freedom in 1857 opened eyes of the British government. Exploring coal mines in the Raniganj belt became their priority. The local zaminders and private initiatives were given fillip. Capitalists from far and wide Gujaraties, Marwaries , Armenions , Englishmen participated in the coal industry as entrepreneurs . The first Coal Company was established by M/s. Alexander & Company in 1820.  Prince Dwarakanath Tagore purchased the coal mines at Raniganj from Alexander & Co and in 1835 first Indian Enterprise M/s.Carr &Tagore Company was formed in collaboration with one Mr William Carr. In 1843 the first joint stock Coal Company , M/s.Bengal Coal Company was formed by amalgamating the concerns of Carr, Tagore &Co and that of Gilmore, Humphrey and Co.

Industrialisation needed labourers. In England lot of the common men in the villages under the rule of the barons was dismal and hence they rushed to the industries to rid themselves of the shackles of feudalism. But the situation in India was not like that. So the people had to be seduced to work in the industry. Rails were set up to reach the adivasi areas where from the adivasis[4] were brought to the collieries. Whole families were transported to colliery belts. They were given land so that they could perform cultivation to which they were used since time immemorial. At the same time, both the husband and the wife used to go into the coal pit and retrieve coal thereof. That was the nascent phase of industrialisation. The coal generated by the colliery belt was distributed all over India and different kinds of industries raise their heads being fuelled by coal. The march of technology however change the production system . In the 1920s, emergent technology was brought   to coal industries . It were the men who were taught the knowhow of technology while the women were left out . Thus women were disempowered and men were empowered. Technology is a male device . With the advent of technology all over the globe, the equality of male and women became tilted. So since 1920s, it was the men who could go into the pit whereas women could work on the surface of a colliery. Time rolled on.

With independence in 1947, the welfare state of India felt that speculation must not be the order in the realm of coal market. Coal is the basic industry and it must be used to the end of the welfare of the masses.  Finally the coking coal collieries and the non-coking ones were  nationalised in 1971 and in 1973. Thanks to nationalisation, there were no individual capitalists to grapple with the surplus value of coal production. Surplus value if any is distributed among the very employees of the coal mine. Because who distinguishes labour from capital? It is the labour who produces the capital. It is the seeds that produce the plants. So on a level every plant whatever is a seed. Capital whatever is labour. Consequently the pay-packets of the nationalised sector became heavy. Their salaries shot up. But everybody’s business is nobody’s. In fact industries are built space or space created artificially. It seems that there is no innate love for working in the industries and there must be somebody who must drive the employees to work. But nationalised sectors failed on that count. Because unless it is the state, no one else owns the mines and it is the owner only who wants to keep his hens in good health so that the hens could lay eggs regularly. But the government all of a sudden being aware of management principles promised incentives to those who lift up more coal. And all over the coal belt a tournament started among the agents of the collieries. The man who would produce highest coal would be awarded. This incentive led them to unscientific coalmining. Consequently underground coalmining has become more difficult than ever and coal mining industry has traced its steps back to unsustainable open cast mining. The table below gives an estimate of the productivity of the underground mines , nearly three decades after nationalisation.

Table 1

Year	1974-75	2002-03
Open Cast	2.66 MT (11%)	16.226 MT (59%)
Underground	20.50 MT ( 89%)	10.953 MT (41%)
Total	23.16 MT	27.18 MT

 Source: Journal Udyog(Asansol)

The highly qualified and the highly paid agents of the collieries could not look beyond their lifetime. These great men felt that it was enough if they had won the necessary award. Who bothers for the future? They must live in luxury and prosperity. Who cares that their children get their daily bread or not? So history is not one long story of progress. History is not linear. It becomes retrograde now and then.

Coal industry and especially Eastern Coalfields Limited is rather panting for breath now a day. In the year 2007, there were one hundred and seven operating coal mines in the Eastern Coalfields Limited and now they are ninety eight.  Moreover, it seems that there is an agenda to shell out the nationalised collieries to private hand again. The nationalisation act of 1973 was amended to pave way for the entry of the captive mines and that of the emergence of the private sectors.   We have to go back to the place where we began. But that is perhaps the faith of all the industries that shot up during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Thanks to technology jute cannot be marketed any longer and the jute mills in Bengal are now suffering from market crunch. The tea industry has lost its glory and it is decadent. It is in this backdrop that we must study the women in the colliery industry.

We have already noted that earlier women were working hand in hand with their male counterparts. But with the introduction of technology in coal production, the women were debarred from getting into the pits. Thus the process of eliminating the women from the coal industry started. And of late the women workers in the coal industry have to be descried with a microscope. The table below gives the statistics of total employment in coal sector in India.

Table 2

Employment in Coal Sector in India, 2005-2010

Category	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010
Total Employment	3,98890	3,85,705	3,79,456	3,69,414	3,73,950	3,28,864
Women Employment	12,065	13,027	12,355	11,252	11,475	11,276
Percentage Share	3.02	3.37	3.25	3.04	3.07	3.05

Source: Statistical profile of women 2012-2013

It shows that within five years from 2005 to 2010, total employment has been decreased and employment of women has been decreased from 12,065 to 11,276. The percentage of women employed in the coal mines in India in 2010 is only 3.05% of the total work force. Moreover, the reduction of women is significant within a gap of three years from 2007 to 2010.  

The percentage of the women workers constitute only 3% of the work force is a staggering figure. That eloquently announces the attitude of the industry towards women. As we have already pointed out after 1921, the women were allowed to go into the coal pit. On the surface this speaks of how caring the society is towards the women. And may be the same attitude persisted through the decades till the number of women labourers have declined to 3% of the workforce only.  But on another level, we could surmise that since 1920s if it were the women who learnt the technical knowhow of working in the coal pits , then it would be the women who could dominate in the coal industry. Although the equal opportunity for women in every field of economic activity has been acknowledged, that acknowledgement seems to be a leap service only. Even during the second decade of the twenty first century, no woman is allowed to study mining engineering in any acknowledged mining college in India. On the contrary  during a chat with a colliery officer of high echelon told us that he saw women hailing from China extraordinarily skilled in blasting –one of the most difficult tasks in raising coal .

Be that as it may, the women we interviewed lamented that breaking coal with hammer and uprooting shrubs are too difficult for them. That is after all women are not at par with men in our country. But the women working with coal are rather self-dependent. They do not lament that their children are not with them. Furthermore, they do not look forward to becoming dependent on their children after their retirement.  They hailed from remote villages. But thanks to colliery they could afford lakhs of rupees to spend during the marriage of their daughters. This shows that even when working women earn quite a lot from the nationalised sector, they cannot trust that their daughters could be given away in marriage without dowry. The decadence state of the collieries is evident from their comments on the quarters they reside in. One of them got a toilet built on her own as an appendage to the quarters of the ECL. This tells us that even in collieries after decades of nationalisation, there is not enough sanitation. And the collieries cannot afford any longer the facelift of the quarters.

5. Conclusion

In fine the widows of working women –lonely figures indeed- in the foreground, against the background of the denudating landscape of the colliery   is a sad sight that could function as a theme for paintings of Van Gogh or Cezanne.

Acknowledgement

The author is indebted to Dr. Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya , retired College teacher, B.B. College Asansol, Shri Anup Kumar Mukhopadhyaya, social worker and Dr. Mahalaya Chatterjee , Director, Centre for Urban Economic Studies, Department of Economics University of Calcutta for this write up.

References

Das Gupta, Ranajit (1985). Migrants in Coal Mines: Peasants Proletarians, 1850s-1947, Social Scientist, Vol13, No12.

Ghosh, Mausumi (2007): “Asansol er Nagarayan(in Bengali) - Urbanisation in Asansol” in Mukhopadhyaya, Ramesh Chandra [ed], Nagarayan, Kolkata, Underground Literature.

Mukherjee, N. and Banerjee, R (Dec 2003): Privatisation of Coal Industry: A Review Udyog, Special Number, Asansol, West Bengal.

Rothermund, Dietmar (2000): An Economic History of India, 2nd Ed., London and New York, 1^st published in 1988, Routledge.

Sinha, N.K. (1968): The Economic History of Bengal, Vol-II, Calcutta, Firma K.L.M

 Ghosh, Mousumi (2011): An interaction between spatial and economic changes in a city: A case study of Asansol, Ph.D.Thesis, University of Calcutta, Calcutta

Web Resources

Labourbureau.nic.in  Statistical Profile of Women Labour 2012-13, Labour Bureau, Ministry of Labour and Employment, Government of India, Chandigarh/Shimla(

www. revolutionarydemocracy.org : Journal Udyog (Asansol) Privatisation of Coal Industry: A Review

http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/csas20 Lahiri-Dutt , Kuntala (2011), The Shifting Gender of Coal: Feminist Musings on Women’s Work in Indian Collieries

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[1] Kamins are  the Indian  mine workers working at manual jobs in the mines  

[2] Haulage operator

[3] They are mainly concentrated in the North India. Their main occupation is to officiate at the various holy occasions which occur along the banks of the river Ganga. With changing times this community has shifted to new avenues of modern living ( Kahar- Wikipedia).

[4] Aboriginal tribal peoples living in India