Home

Why Subscribe ?

Popularise CC

Join News Letter

Twitter

Face Book

Editor's Picks

Feed Burner

Read CC In Your
Own Language

India Burning

Mumbai Terror

Financial Crisis

Iraq

AfPak War

Peak Oil

Alternative Energy

Climate Change

US Imperialism

US Elections

Palestine

Latin America

Communalism

Gender/Feminism

Dalit

Globalisation

Humanrights

Economy

India-pakistan

Kashmir

Environment

Book Review

Gujarat Pogrom

WSF

Arts/Culture

India Elections

Archives

Links

Submission Policy

About CC

Disclaimer

Fair Use Notice

Contact Us

Search Our Archive

 



Our Site

Web

Subscribe To Our
News Letter

Name: E-mail:

Printer Friendly Version

Water Merchants Of Jaintia Hills

By Sonata G Dkhar

25 May, 2010
Countercurrents.org

“I have been making several rounds up and down daily to Kongong to sell water”, says Training Phawa, 20, a resident of Tuber, a village situated 3kilometres from Kongong, one of the biggest coal dumping areas adjacent to National Highway 44 in Jaintia Hills, Meghalaya.

The coal rich region of Jaintia Hills is a befouled and squalid land, an aberration from the usually picturesque hill terrain of Meghalaya, India. Heaps or ‘hillocks’ of coal conceal the rolling grasslands. Coal laden trucks congest the roadway as loading of coal into more trucks continue. The air heavy, the land black, upstanding dead pines, reddish rivulets and traces of what was once a stream.

Water has now become scarce in this coal rich region and potable water a rarity.

Training says that water is so dear to everyone now that what once was free and in abundance now has a going rate of Rs 10 for a 20 litre bucket. His work requires him to drive from his employers water supply shed which is in the non coal mining area of Tuber, to any place where there is a demand, whether at the coal dumps for the stone crusher to function, or the migrant labour camps or by the local people for drinking, bathing, washing or any other purpose.

The shortage of water in the area has been brought upon by the rampant mining activities that started as far back as 1975. According to the Directorate of Mineral Resources, Government of Meghalaya, coal production in the Jaintia hills district annually contributes to nearly 75% of the total coal production of the state, while the coal deposits are attributed at only 7% of the state’s total deposits. The nationalised mineral coal is being mined privately in this part of the country. And because of this very contradiction, the coal industry seems to have engulfed the land and its people.

While Training is a small cog in this lucrative water selling business, several ‘Water Merchants’ have emanated, who are making a fortune out of this untoward scarcity. The business is simple. Water is resourced from the natural springs that are still present in the non coal mining areas. It is then filled into water tankers, which travel to places where there is a requirement and then sold.

In So kilo, a village in the Sutnga elaka of Jaintia hills, several water tankers are seen lined up just behind the market. H Lyngdoh, the man who owns the tankers is one of the many water merchants who are capitalizing on the situation. Like others, his tanks are filled from the non mining areas and are brought to the market from where drums are filled for the sale of water to the coal dumps at Rs 500 per drum. Many of the locals informed, that he also ran a public bath abaft the market, where he charges Rs 5 for having a bath, a significant amount for both the locals as well as the labourers.

For the many people residing in Sutnga and other coal mining areas, the idea of purchasing water is not only new but a reality they are being forced to confront. “We poor people have to buy water little by little, we can’t afford to buy entire drums” says Kong Heh (name changed), a resident of Sutnga who along with other women had walked several kilometres to Wah Kwai (a river) to wash their clothes because it was more feasible for them to walk the distance rather than buy a few more buckets. Ironically Wah Kwai itself is unclean because of the widespread mining and quarrying in close proximity to it.

While Kong heh has to buy water or wait and collect rain water in the summer months she says “the rich just have to dig deep for water”. The disparity between the rich and the poor may be apparent, yet both sides are being affected by the scarcity. The rich in their respective compounds may have managed to penetrate the earth with the bore wells for their water supply, yet they are constantly confronted with the problem of going deeper and deeper in search of water. So the palatial houses of Sutnga’s rich maybe a symbol of their wealth, yet their lack of occupancy is a harbinger of the times to come.

“Everything has changed. Everyone is interested in coal now” says Rita Bareh a resident of Tluh, a village in the Sutnga elaka, which has emerged as one of the major coal mining areas. According to a recent study, where 420km sq (Kilometre square) area of Jaintia hills was selected with Lad Rymbai as the centre of the area of study, the mining area increased three fold from 13.76 Km sq in 1975 to 47.04 Km sq in 2007, while the area under forest has decreased by about 12%. Though many of the locals are worried many have no say in the situation. As they haplessly look on at the degradation of the land, they confront their woe’s one day at a time, bucket by bucket.

The decline in rainfall is adding to the stress. Training says “there has hardly been any rainfall this year.” In January of the years 2007 and 2008, there was 100 percent departure of rainfall from the long averages of rainfall for the district. With the lack of rainfall and the decrease in the water table, the water shortage has spread to the non coal mining regions as well. In Tuber, where life and land seems more at ease untouched by coal mining, many springs are drying up. The government established PHE tank is just a concrete skeleton, with the tap absolutely dry.

What seemed to be a prosperous business is now being challenged, with many of the water merchants having to withstand the water crisis. The industrious H Lyngdoh’s empty tankers line the market. Training Phawa’s rounds to Kongong have stopped. While sipping a cup of tea in a dukan sha (tea stall) on the highway in the afternoon, Training says “I am unemployed...there is no more water to sell”, while this 20 year old’s wife and 8 month old child wait for him at home.

Sonata G Dkhar, 25
A documentary Film maker, currently based in Shillong.
Panos South Asia Fellow 2010 whose current work deals with conflict and environmental changes in Jaintia Hills, Meghalaya.

Email - [email protected]