Barak job crisis pushing youths into Meghalaya’s deadly mines

Silchar: Crushing unemployment and decades of stalled development in Assam’s Barak Valley are pushing hundreds of young men into hazardous and often illegal work in neighbouring Meghalaya, a migration route that has repeatedly ended in death, injury and long-term hardship for families back home.With limited livelihood options in Cachar, Sribhumi and Hailakandi districts, daily-wage workers cross a porous border to work in coal mines, stone quarries, brick kilns, construction sites and factories, often without contracts, safety gear or legal protection. Activists say Meghalaya has become a last resort for workers from the Valley amid prolonged economic stagnation.The region’s industrial decline has deepened the pressure to migrate.

The Cachar Paper Mill at Panchgram is defunct, the Chargola Sugar Mill shut years ago, and agriculture has struggled to become profitable due to poor irrigation, small landholdings and recurring floods. Hydrocarbon exploration has not produced large-scale employment, while a multimodal logistics park announced for Silchar in 2020 has yet to take shape.“People don’t migrate because they want to; they migrate because they are cornered,” said Nabendu Shekhar Nath, a social worker from Katigorah.

“When earning Rs 300 a day becomes impossible at home, even a dangerous mine begins to look like hope. Too often, that hope returns as a coffin.”Activists cite Meghalaya’s demand for cheap, unskilled labour as a key pull factor, particularly in illegal rat-hole coal mines in East Jaintia Hills. Despite a National Green Tribunal ban, unscientific mining continues, with migrant workers entering narrow, waterlogged tunnels.“The victims are mostly invisible,” said Biswajit Das, another Katigorah-based activist. “Many workers are undocumented. When accidents happen, names don’t enter records, compensation doesn’t reach families, and widows are left to fend for themselves. We hear of the big tragedies, but countless smaller ones go unnoticed.”Fatal accidents have recurred over the years. In May 2021, five miners were trapped and killed in a flooded mine in Umpleng.

In Jan 2021, six miners died when a crane snapped while lowering them into a deep shaft. In Dec 2018, 15 miners were trapped in a flooded illegal mine in Ksan village; only two bodies were recovered after months of rescue efforts. Similar incidents in 2012 and 2019 claimed dozens of lives.“Every few months, there’s news of a blast, collapse or flooding,” said Manjur Ahmed, a community organiser from Katigorah. “The dead are usually from poor villages in Barak Valley.

Families lose their sole earners, children drop out of school and poverty deepens.”Many labourers also remain outside the ambit of Meghalaya’s migrant worker registration law, activists said, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation and unsafe conditions.Social workers and activists have called for revival of closed industries, time-bound execution of promised projects, skill development programmes and coordination between the two states to improve worker safety and accountability.“Until jobs are created here,” Nath warned, “Meghalaya will continue to be a death trap for Barak Valley’s unemployed youth — and the tragedies will keep repeating.”