India's Children of the Inferno | Unreported World

we arrived in the Jharia coal fields in India's eastern state of Jharkhand I can see a hillside that seems to be perform'd fire in this opencast mine seems of pure cold you can see that there are flames all around us spreading deep what the mining company is trying to do is put out a fire that has ignited the entire hillside here what causes this coal to catch fire the cause is the only the one isn't their God is their oxidation ship shrinky an engineer with the state company BC CL that explains how the chemical properties of the coal in this part of India cause it to heat up on contact with open air and then catch fire in areas where there are old coal mine shafts it oxidizes on contact with the air eventually it reaches a critical temperature and then spontaneously combusts and how many fires have you got in your coal mines this is under fan particularly Jerry opus 67 567 567 fires so that's an area of hundreds of square kilometers 360 square kilometers yeah affected by fire incredibly the fires have raged for nearly a hundred years soon after the first coal mines were opened here India extracts 400 million tons of coal a year Jarius mines are part of this massive industry that fuels India's powerhouse economy be CCL the state-owned Bharat coking coal limited allowed us to go down one of its underground mines moving on down into the darkness towards the coalface these guys are asking that this machine is hot it's humid and it's dangerous off of India's messy feeding electricity and steel industries for the economy BCC owns Jory is main employer with more than 75,000 workers in its mines netiquette anger at the coalface I meet one of the 300 Sanjay against a legend Sanjay says that it's very challenging they're working against nature but he really enjoys it we prick through a maze of underground tunnels that extends for miles before we reach the surface what we realize back on the surface is that all of this is happening under a town and it's the tunnels that are the cause of the subterranean fires mining provides a livelihood for Jharia but the underground Inferno also threatens the health and homes of millions this is baka party village where hundreds of families live above the fires you can see the intense heat coming up from the earth here it's so hot that the a piece of paper look at that okay that is how hot the ground beneath our feet is and everywhere there are these little fissures and cracks with smoke bubbling up and sulfurous gases it's quite amazing the stench and people are living right here all around us looking through the village we find one family cooking a meager breakfast yards away from cracks belching heat and poisonous fumes the mother gauge shows us her family home where eight people live in a tiny Hut that is collapsing around Rock this is as a result of subsidence you can see these huge cracks in the wall going through why don't you take your family to live in a slightly safer place isn't there somewhere that's that's better for you to live a tree tells me they're so poor they have no choice but to stay in the village because it's near the cold that gives them an income she says that if they lived anywhere else they wouldn't be able to make a living out of the mine as they do and it's as a result of of living here that they're able to eat and this is their livelihood coal scavenging in this vast open Eccl mine next to baka party we find hundreds of villagers stealing cold people are rushing in before the slag is even being deposited to try to find the best bits of coal it's an incredibly dangerous job it's hot people are breathing poisonous fumes and the walls of this pole areare on fire feels as if we're in the middle of an oven these are the conditions that people have to work in here it's a vision of hell and many of those toiling in the mine are just children we find the gate please daughter Dali working amongst the rubble do you ever take days off would you work every day dolly says they work here every day all year round without a break none of the people in her family have attended school this is the only life that they can make dolly says she knows it's dangerous for her and her family to live here but they have no alternative except to stay working in the mines this is really back-breaking work dolly doesn't have any shoes she's walking across sharp stones and boiling hot coals now she's got this steep hill this is what she does all day every day once dolly has collected her coal she prepares it for sale this involves partially burning it a process known as coking so that it does not smoke it's just after dawn in book a party and the sunrise is obscured by all of the smoke in the air but all around us you can see plumes of smoke rising from the mines where the coal has been burning when Dolly's coal is ready she bags it up and then starts the journey into town every morning dolly and her friends go house to house trying to sell their coal most people in Jarius still use coal for cooking and that's another reason why the atmosphere is so polluted here dolly has made less than a pound the fruit of a day's labor that is enough to eat once for the family in one day she says that she doesn't know what they'll do this evening this is the only thing that keeps dolly and her family from starvation until a few years ago this wasteland was a place of forests and farms but his mining destroys the environment farmers are forced to become artists and coal miners we've just arrived in this artisanal mining area and the activity is illegal and as soon as we arrived we saw lots of people running men women and also children we meet Devanand who works in a nearby mine with his father where's he taking the coal I'm a Luger Oh this kid Devanand is rolling two lumps of coal down the hill he says that he's taking at home and there aren't any houses here for a long distance Devon and is only eight years old it's going to take him all day at this rate and he moves ahead about five feet and then he goes back to collect his Tiffin can and then comes back to roll the coal again it really is very difficult to watch this in this mind west of Jharia hundreds of people are not just scavenging for coal they're digging their own shafts into the rock what's extracted the coal is loaded onto bikes and this bike alone is carrying a hundred 120 kilos of coal and they've got a journey that will take them a couple of miles to town entire families work together in these minds they all used to be farmers and this was their land then it was destroyed by large-scale mining and so they were forced to follow suit and extract coal themselves we squeeze down a narrow underground shaft where miners are hacking away with picks and shovels there's particles of coal flying everywhere and I can see there no safety measures being taken at all the little boy Devon Ann's father Sanjay he says that they don't have light they don't have proper shoes and they don't have helmets and that makes them vulnerable to collapses in the mines why don't you get a job in the official mines isn't this a very dangerous way to make a living he says there aren't enough jobs in the official mines so he has no choice making around a pound a day coal is a means of survival but people are still imprisoned on a cycle of poverty beneath their feet is immense wealth but above ground people are crowding into slums we visit Busta Cola village with dr. Manoj Singh who helps the poor here we learn how pollution from billions causes widespread yes we arrive residents what are you you the villagers are coming to the doctor with all of their health problems and they're not just respiratory illnesses to do with pollution there all of the ailments related to poverty dr. Singh lists a battery of lung diseases caused by air pollution from bronchitis to asthma he says that respiratory illness in this part of India is twice the rate that it is elsewhere in the country dr. Singh takes us to meet one of his regular patients Parvati Devi says her family spent their lives working in the coal fields her husband and a daughter were killed by respiratory illnesses now she is sick and her surviving daughter is getting nosebleeds Harper could rule Kyung's our Karnataka state company BC silica vines free but the rest of the period is fend for themselves the doctor thinks that BC CL and the coal companies should do more to alleviate the pollution and environmental damage here which is the cause of people's health problems Eccl says it is concerned about people's health and safety but that the best thing for them is to move out of the danger zone we had seen BC CL trying to extinguish coal fires but some mining experts claim that BC CL has let the fire spread to populated areas and so made things even worse we visit the village of doctor beroun Mitra just two years ago everything was Green that place there you see it's completely black today it was completely green it's in a Dilek Indian village but cracks are opening in homes and the fires are advancing beneath it's like an oven down here I got my hand just under this bench made out of mud and it is really hot hot it's extraordinary steel recently came and by way of compensation they've been offered 2,000 rupees that's about 25 pounds per household explained it's not enough for his family to fight Babloo roy says that he has no alternative but to stay here if the coal company can't offer them alternative land dr. Metra's family has pleaded with B CCL and its chief managing director to tackle the advancing fires they claim the company's only response has been to warn them to evacuate yeah here are some of the letters that we have given to the positional Authority including the CMV and how long do these letters go back how many years this letter is given in the year 1979 to the general manager busy seal area number six I've got a sheaf of letters that go back nearly 30 years attempting to alert the authorities of the problem of a subterranean coal fire none of these letters sue BC CL the government coal company have ever been answered BC Ciel's master plan is to move 500,000 people out of the fire affected areas it claims to offer not just money to these people but is also constructing new homes we're driving to a place called Bulgaria this is a housing scheme funded by B CCL to accommodate people it wants to move out of Jharia it's about ten kilometres out of town this is the housing some people will get by way of compensation for losing their homes in the fire affected mining zones at the estate we find no work going on and nobody from BC CL the Jerry a resident a shock egg well shows us around so here here are the quarters that are being provided to the people will be relocated here this will be the kitchen and this will be the master bedroom how many people was supposed to be accommodated here there are families having members of around ten seven six that is the type of membership that a family has surprised around it is nationally and they've got daughters sons daughter-in-laws so all of them will have to be implemented in this one room residents like a shock say BCC L is increasing the pressure for people to move out of the fire prone area now it's 3,000 flats that doesn't even begin to accomodate the 500,000 people who need to be moved in anyway they're not finished and people have so far refused to come here we visit bcc LS headquarters to meet the chief executive tap a theory I want to ask him about westerns concerns including those of the Mitra family are you controlling the fires but wherever possible we are controlling but wherever it is not possible there is no approach where is there is no means then we are not but we we had an intention and we tried our best and put our all effort to control and that's why it is still oxidation rate has been controlled what we've discovered is that the residents are very willing to move but they fear that if they move that accommodation will be inadequate because the rooms at Bulgaria are 9 feet by 11 feet this is the part of master plan we cannot money we cannot make any comments on it whatever the size in whatever the size 27 square meter it is the provision of master plan and the houses have been made as per the design of master plan give me the letters it's not based on the financial compensation which the profit raised now I understand you've offered them 2,000 rupees each household does that make sense to you and if whatever being a public sector we do we do only as per our policies as per our decision as per one guideline The Stray cases or the complaint which may not have germinated this only all can be said only after examination if there is there is genuine et justice will definitely be done great because we are doing as I said we are doing these things for thousands and thousands of people every year so and we be in the public sector we cannot do anything beyond the law while BC CL and the residents bicker over compensation the relentless advance of the fires will burn people out of their homes anyway we've arrived on the edge of a massive opencast coal mine and up here on top of the slopes are the remains of what was once a village this settlement has been turned into a ghost town I've just met Muhammad in the village of curse under or what's left of it everything is coated in coal dust it's a dying landscape it's completely dried out uninhabited now and you can see what looks to be the remains of houses here so what happened here pulled out Nord bipedal Mohammed says two years just collapsed seven seas were engulfed he and his family survived but his brother and six others of his family were all killed in the accident I'm looking bullet as a mother explains now the accident the grasses will burn it's being turned to dusty dead black we can smell fumes of burning gases it's a really eerie scary environment as we walk across ground that might collapse at any second muhannad tells me this was once a thriving place with 500 houses a school and a temple within two weeks of the accident it was abandoned irska bottom look bad evaru look bad I in England Mohammed says that it was hard luck that they were born here in cos under and ever since the accident that killed his brothers family he says life has been incredibly hard meanwhile this place is just burning and subsiding into the earth everywhere we go in Doria the fires are burning this entire seam is burning all the way around the opencast mine millions of tons of coal ignited these are fires that are completely out of control over a huge area there is expanding its massive coal industry to food Ruth but it is doing this at enormous cost to its own people and the environment thanks for watching this classic unreported world episode click the logo to subscribe for more award-winning documentaries from the unreported world team we upload videos every Wednesday and Sunday keeping you up to date with content from all over the world

Channel: Unreported World

Views: 380,031

Rating: 4.8480725 out of 5

Keywords: jharia coal, jharia, mining in india, jharkhand, india, indian coal, india coal, coal india, coal mining in india, underground coal mining in india, coal mines burning, jharia coal mines burning, jharia coal mines, child coal miners, coal mining children, child labour, child coal mining labour, aidan hartley, indian coal mining documentary, unreported world india coal mining, unreported world india's coal miners, unreported world, channel 4 unreported world, channel 4

Id: frZW2m-Kpgo

Length: 23min 33sec (1413 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 07 2018