- Panna, a region in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, is known for its diamond mines. Behind that glitter lurks the dark reality of the locals facing poverty, malnutrition, unemployment and migration.
- According to social organisations and experts working in the area, many of the women associated with the mining activities in the region are anemic, and their children are malnourished.
- In Panna, collection of minor forest produce, and mining of stone and diamond are the most popular means to earn a livelihood. These avenues are shrinking, leading to an increase in migration and poverty.
On a sunny winter afternoon in January, Kusum Bai (name changed), a 40-year-old diamond mine labourer from Kalyanpur village of the Panna district of Madhya Pradesh, had just returned from the mine very early. Despite losing the day’s wage, she was still praising her luck sitting on a cot in her small house made of mud and stones. The day could have ended up in jail had the forest officers caught her.
Kusum faces this situation once or twice every week as she works in an illegal diamond mine.
There are many labourers like her in the Panna region who are forced to do illegal jobs and lose wages in case of a raid by the forest department. An illegal mine means the mine owner did not take permission from the administration for the mining work and several of these mines often fall within Panna Tiger Reserve or the forest area.
“A year ago, I used to work in a legal mine, but now it is difficult to find diamonds in old mines. My mine owner stopped the mine after he incurred a lot of losses. After losing my job, I had to work in an illegal mine just to survive,” she told Mongabay-India.
Panna is about 400 kilometres away from the state capital, Bhopal, and is in the Bundelkhand, a region that faces much distress due to factors such as water woes, migration, and malnutrition. Rich in minor forest produce such as tendu leaves and mahua, the place is also a natural habitat for wildlife including tigers, leopards, Indian fox, sloth bear, and many more.
“It is our duty to protect forest areas from mining and other harmful activities within the Panna Tiger Reserve. Our patrol teams are vigilant day and night to make forest area mining free,” U.K. Sharma, field director of the Panna Tiger Reserve, told Mongabay-India.
Collecting minor forest produce, mining for stone and diamond, and agriculture are the key livelihood opportunities in the region. However, due to environmental regulations and the water crisis, all livelihood opportunities are shrinking in the area.
For 3,000 years, India was the only source of diamonds globally until diamond deposits were located in Brazil and South Africa. Panna’s mines have been supplying precious diamonds for thousands of years. In India, the state-controlled National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC) is the only organised producer of diamonds from its Majhgawan mine in the Panna region.
In India, the diamond resources are concentrated only in three states. Of these, Madhya Pradesh has 90.17 percent at 28,709,136 carats, followed by Andhra Pradesh has 5.73 percent with 1,822,955 carats and Chhattisgarh has 4.10 percent with 1,304,000 carats, according to Indian Bureau of Mines (IBM) inventory report.
“The total resources of diamond in the country as on 1.4.2015 are estimated at 31,836,091 carats with 756,765 carats gem grade, 840,823 carats industrial grade and 30,238,503 carats unclassified grade. Of these, 959,659 carats (3.01 percent) fall under the reserve category, and balance 30,876,432 carats (96.98 percent) are remaining resources,” the report said.
The mining capacity of the NMDC in the region is currently 84,000 carats per year. The NMDC claims that approximately 1,005,064 carat diamonds have been recovered from diamond mining in the area so far. NDMC Panna is the only diamond mine in the country with more than 74 hectares of mechanised mining. However, small mines of Panna are open cast mines that use traditional techniques and hand tools.
“The process in the small open cast mines involves four steps – digging, collecting soil mixed with small stones, washing the soil away with a lot of water, and finding diamonds from those small stones. We need to break big rocks with hand tools to get small stones. Finding a diamond is not easy, and it may take a lifetime for a person to find a single piece of the most precious stone,” Kishori Yadav, who operates a small mine in Krishna Kalyanpur village, explained to Mongabay-India.
Read more: [Video] Is mining in India ‘just’ for the environment and communities?
Diamond Dreams: A tale of luck, labour and loss
Thousands of workers and hundreds of mine owners are involved in diamond mining in Panna. One needs to pay Rs 200 a year to administration to get a lease for one year at the designated mine site. There are around a dozen mine sites designated by the district mineral department.
Govind Raikwad, 37, who hails from Khajuraho, which is 40-km away from Panna, has been mining for a few weeks. Earlier, he worked as an auto-rickshaw driver in Khajuraho but after losing his livelihood during the Covid-19 lockdown, he came to Panna to try his luck.
“I have not got anything yet. Driving an auto is far easier than mining for diamonds. I do not have much stamina and patience. I heard that people spend years finding diamonds in these mines. I start my day digging. There is a water crisis as well, so I’m collecting soil mixed stones. I’m planning to wash them during monsoon,” Raikwad told Mongabay-India while he was making space in the small makeshift hut that he has built at his mine to stay at night.
The opencast mines are a place full of small and big pits where some pits are so deep that they can result in a fatal accident or serious injury if someone falls into them. Miners from outside the Panna region make a small hut from local materials such as Ipomoea cairica (Besharam) plant and plastic sheets to stay within the mines.
“The most difficult part of mining is staying at night in the small huts that too on cold winter nights. I need to walk a few kilometres to bring water for cooking. I have installed a solar panel to charge my mobile phone so that I can stay connected with my family,” Raikwad said.
The rush for diamond mining has impacted many lives even though not everyone is lucky enough to find one. In fact, many are clueless about their future that what they would do for livelihood once the rush for the diamonds is over and the mines stop spewing them out or are closed down.
Ram Pyare, a 42-year-old mine owner from Panna district, believes that old mines do not have diamonds as it had earlier. ‘
“I’ve been involved in mining since I was a 15-year-old. I found my first diamond 20 years ago. I found another diamond ten years ago. Both times I was not the mine owner, so I got some reward from the mine owner. Nowadays, I’m operating my mines but not finding a good diamond, but some tiny particles of the diamond which are worth a few thousand. With that income, I’m barely surviving and most of the time making losses,” said Pyare, as he wiped the sweat on the forehead and walked away.
A similar story of lost hope is of Chhotu Lal Ahirwar who claims to have lost thousands of rupees in diamond mining without getting a single diamond. “My brother Chanchal and I have been digging for seven months. Now I have lost my hope and am leaving this work,” said Ahirwar.
Another miner Chhastrasal Patel said: “My family has been mining for three generations. My younger brother got a diamond worth Rs 5,000 last year and that is the only diamond in three-generations.”
But it is not just the monetary loss, the time families or their generations lose and the impact on the health of the mineworkers, especially women, are important areas which require attention.
“Last year, I fell to the ground while working due to weakness. Mining involves a lot of hard work and uncertain routine, especially when someone works in illegal mines. We need to go to work very early in the morning to avoid raids by the forest department,” said Kusum Bai.
Moreover, “women workers are facing the most brunt of mining, as they often skip breakfast,” said Ravi Pathak, a Panna-based social worker.
“We observed that the women mineworkers are anaemic, and their children are malnourished. They barely make Rs two hundred a day, which is not enough to meet nutrition requirements,” Pathak told Mongabay-India.
Around 48.7 percent of women between 15 to 49 age group are anaemic in Panna district, according to the latest National Family Health Survey-4 (NFHS). The survey revealed that 42 per cent of children under five years are stunted, and 24 per cent are wasted, which is a prominent sign of malnutrition in children.
“Not only anaemia and malnutrition, but mine workers also caught deadly diseases such and silicosis,” Pathak added.
Read more: Ignored and invisible: The burden of mining on women
Ram Lal Gond, a resident of Kalyanpur village, said: “I’m just 40-year-old and have been suffering from silicosis for the last 15 years. I used to work in a stone mine. Since then, I’ve been out of work.”
Yousuf Beg, an activist working for mineworkers who heads Panna Patthat Khadan Majdoor Sangh, an association which has about 20,000 mineworkers as members, said that “a silicosis patient cannot work for his livelihood, but the government is still not interested in providing them financial support.”
“Government provides financial aid only after the death of the silicosis patients, but not when they are alive. Even these patients do not get proper medical treatment,” Beg told Mongabay-India.
It is not only the small miners but the NMDC as well who is making a loss in diamond mining. The Comptroller and Auditor General of India audit revealed that the diamond mining project’s net loss at the end of 2016-17 was Rs 27.16 crore (Rs. 271.6 million). “In respect of diamond mining at Panna, Madhya Pradesh, a considerable quantity of unsold stock of diamonds ranging between 39 percent and 80 percent of their production was lying at the end of each year during 2012-13 to 2016-17. The average production cost of diamonds remained higher than the net realisable value during all these years. Because of this, the loss is Rs 27.16 crore in the year 2016-17,” the report said.
Read more: Kolar Gold fields: From fields of gold to a dust bowl
Tiger reserve v/s mining
The Panna Tiger Reserve (PTR) is one of the most critical habitats of tigers in India. In 2009, there were no tigers left in the PTR but after a series of measures now, the tiger reserve has around 50 tigers in it. For protecting the tiger habitat, authorities are curbing mining activities in the forest by imposing fines.
“We have been struggling to renew the lease and permission of our mines. The forest department is not allowing us to mine near forests. As a result, the mineworkers are unemployed,” Padam Ahirwar, a stone mine owner told Mongabay-India.
“I’m jobless since the discontinuation of a stone mine in Panna. I do not have agricultural land, the forest department also does not allow us to enter the forest to collect produce, so mining is my only livelihood option,” said Biju Adivasi, a mine worker.
The NMDC’s diamond mine is also under pressure to phase out its operation. The operation was suspended as the mine’s environmental clearance came to an end on December 31, 2020, but later resumed after state government intervention.
The Madhya Pradesh forest department has allowed the NMDC to continue its diamond mines operation for more than 20 years. In 2005, the Madhya Pradesh’s state wildlife protection board had given mining clearance to NMDC with the condition that it should phase out its operations by 2020.
But the social workers argue that it is not just the ban but the issue of transition or livelihoods of people involved in mining work that needs attention.
“Ban on mining is not the solution as there is no other employment option in the region. People need other employment options. Instead of banning mining, the government needs to utilise the District Mineral Fund (DMF) to generate employment in the region,” said Yousuf Beg. He alleged the government of diverting the DMF funds to state-level big projects.
The mines also generate indirect employment for hundreds of local dwellers who will be severely affected if the mines are closed.
“In the absence of employment, people are forced to do illegal mining. This may lead to an increase in wildlife and forest crimes in the near future,” added Beg.
Read more: Tigers and their habitats under threat from the boost to the mining sector
Banner image: Mineworkers at a diamond mining site located in Panna. Photo by Manish Chandra Mishra/Mongabay.
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