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From Gin Girls to Scavengers: Women in Raniganj Collieries

January 2001
Economic and Political Weekly 36(44):4213-4221

Authors:

Australian National University

In the beginning, the coal mining industry employed women from the adivasi and lower caste communities in various stages of production. Their role continued to be significant as long as technology remained labour-intensive and collieries were small and surface-bound. The expansion of the industry and increasing mechanisation saw a decline in women's participation. This paper based on research in the Raniganj coalbelt in eastern India describes how the work of resource extraction becomes gendered, the growing marginalisation of women, and their increasing alienation from access to environmental resources and their transformation into illegitimate and invisible beings.

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DIGGING TO SURVIVE: WOMEN’S

LIVELIHOODS IN SOUTH ASIA’S

SMALL MINES AND QUARRIES

Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt

The global trend of the informalisation of women’s work is also evident in what is commonly

known as artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) practices. Small mines and quarries are

extremely diverse in nature, but comprise a repository of extremely poor people. This article

focuses on the gender and livelihood issues and concerns in small mines and quarries of South

Asia. In view of the lack of ofﬁ cial quantitative data, the research presented here is based on

proxy indicators and ﬁ eld surveys. It addresses a gap in existing knowledge in ASM and makes

visible gender roles in the informal work in the mines and quarries. The article provides the

necessary backdrop, relevant information and interpretation of livelihood needs with a view

to sensitising policy makers to the issues rooted in gender.

Over 20 million people in the world depend on mineral resource extraction on an

informal basis for their living, an astounding ﬁ gure that is much more than the number

of workers employed in formal mining industries.1 For many of these people, informal

mineral extraction forms a continuation of traditional modes of life, but there are

also those seeking seasonal cash incomes, those turned jobless by economic changes

brought about by reforms and also those displaced by big project developments. Inter-

nationally, these informal modes of mineral extraction practices are collectively known

South Asian Survey 15 : 2 (2008): 217–244

SAGE Publications Los Angeles/London/New Delhi/Singapore

DOI: 10.1177/097152310801500204

Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt is Fellow, Resource Management in Asia Paciﬁ c Program, Research School of Paciﬁ c

and Asian Studies, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.

Acknowledgements: I thank the institutions with whose help the study was undertaken: Communities

and Small Mines (CASM), Australia South Asia Research Centre and Resource Management in Asia Paciﬁ c

Program of The Australian National University, Canberra, and the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Contemporary

Studies, New Delhi. Grateful thanks also to the people who shared their knowledge on the ﬁ eld: Fr Tony

Herbert of Prerana Resource Centre, Xavier Dias, Swami Agnivesh of Bandhua Mukti Morcha, Rana

Sengupta of Mine Labour Protection Campaign, Ravi Rebapragada and Bhanumati Kalluri of mines,

minerals & PEOPLE, Bulu Imam of INTACH, Jayalakshmi of NIRD, Hyderabad, S.A. Azad of Prasaar

and Nitish Priyadorshi of Ranchi University. This article presents a revised version of my earlier study

(Lahiri-Dutt 2007b). I am thankful to an anonymous referee from South Asian Survey for constructive

suggestions in revising this article.

South Asian Survey 15, 2 (2008): 217–244

218/Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt

as artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM; see Hentschel et al. 2002). Estimates of the

number of people involved in ASM depend on what is precisely meant by ASM, the

focus often being on gold, diamonds and other high value materials, but, when bulk

commodities are included such as coal, limestone, sand and gravel, the numbers can

skyrocket. In South Asia, no singular deﬁ nition of ASM exists, as ‘artisanal’ is equated

with traditional practices such as panning or gemstone mining. The term ‘quarry’

implies shallow inclines or surface workings whereas ‘small mines’ may also mean deep

or even underground but largely unmechanised operations. Most of these quarries

are generally licensed and described as ‘small-scale mining’ operations. In this article,

I have used ‘small mines and quarries’ as well as ‘ASM’ broadly to mean all licensed

small, medium and some large mechanised enterprises, unlicensed and unregulated

and small operations, scavenging operations and ﬁ nally non-legal (beyond the legal

domain) practices of small-scale mining. Collectively, these mining operations pro-

duce a large range of minerals in the region, but excepting the gemstones industry of

Sri Lanka and some scattered gold and diamond extractions in India and Pakistan,

the largest segment of the minerals are low value, building/construction/industrial

materials (such as stones of various sort, gravels, sands and clays and limestone) and

coal; there are exceptions such as some export-oriented marble and mica.

These small mines and quarries are part of the burgeoning informal or ‘unorganised’

sector of third world economies. In South Asia, however, they have often remained

invisible to developmental planners and policy makers. For example, the recent Report

on Conditions of Work and Promotion of Livelihoods in the Unorganised Sector in India

deﬁ nes the unorganised sector as consisting of ‘all unincorporated private enterprises

owned by individuals or households engaged in the sale and production of goods and

services operated on a proprietary or partnership basis and with less than ten total

workers’ (NCEUS 2007: 3), and unorganised or informal employment as those work-

ing without employment/social security beneﬁ ts provided by the employers. These

deﬁ nitions should have necessitated the inclusion of small mines and quarries within the

purview of this report, which unfortunately was not the case. This invisibility, despite

a long artisanal mining tradition in many parts of the region, is possibly because of

the poor social understanding of the South Asian mining bureaucracy, which often

leads to the equation of everything ‘informal’2 with ‘illegal’. Such synonymy between

informality and illegality also reﬂ ects the little explored issue of mineral ownership

by the state and the corporatisation of mineral enterprises. Even most civil society

activism has tended to see mining as tantamount with environmental destruction, and

rightfully so; the cumulative effects of ASM on environmental health are undeniably

negative and have indeed been the focus of a great amount of research internationally.

Strong anti-mining movements in South Asia led by pro-environment groups have

generally focused on these negative impacts of unregulated mineral extraction, without

differentiating between ASM and large-scale mining and neglecting to problematise the

question of livelihoods of the large numbers of people involved in ASM (for examples

from India see Bhanumathi 2003; Vagholikar et al. 2003).

South Asian Survey 15, 2 (2008): 217–244

Women’s Livelihoods in South Asia’s Small Mines and Quarries/219

The signiﬁ cant contribution of small mines to the world mineral production

was recognised early (see, for example, Argall 1978; Carman 1985; Noestaller 1987,

1994). Internationally, although it is recognised that small and artisanal mining forms

a crucially important part of the country’s mineral production,3 ofﬁ cial policies have

been either to regulate or to regularise and formalise the supply chains and links espe-

cially in high value mineral products such as gold and diamonds (CASM 2005). The

focus of one set of environmental experts has been on the negative environmental

impacts, deforestation and related destabilisation of the earth’s surface amongst others

(see Baluda 2000; Murao et al. 2000). Multi-country efforts such as UNIDO’s Global

Mercury Project (GMP) have addressed speciﬁ c issues—controlling the unsafe use

of mercury in gold amalgamation—to improve local ecology and environmental

health (UNIDO n.d.). Yet, since the late 1980s high prices of almost all minerals, but

particularly gold, have resulted in a series of ‘new gold rushes’ in several locations in the

Asia-Paciﬁ c such as Kalimantan or Mount Kare in Papua New Guinea. Burke points

out (2006: 231) that the attention of policy makers has been on the illegality rather

than on investigating policy options that could work for people, the state’s exchequer

and the environment. The earliest policy intervention was in the pre-Harare days—late

1980s and early 1990s—in the Philippines, where the Department of Environment

and Natural Resources developed a plan for small centres to hire out equipment and

train miners in safe work practices. The other example of policy intervention was in

Papua New Guinea where, unlike the Philippines, ASM is legal because minerals are

owned by the land owners, enabling projects to be attached to local ofﬁ ces of the Mines

Department. Burke notes (2006: 233) that both projects seem to have originated as

‘mercury awareness’ education programmes, albeit in two different contexts of legality

and resource ownership. Although both projects had a ‘people-focused’ approach in

their respect for miners and their livelihoods, and in making them efﬁ cient and safe,

there have been only a few such projects in the Asia-Paciﬁ c region since then. An

emerging policy approach is from Africa where ‘partnerships’ between the mining

companies and local mineral producers have been effective in the cases of gold and

diamonds, giving rise to fair trade concepts in ASM, formalisation of supply chains

and supporting locally-based initiatives to help communities develop alternative skills

and employment generation activities.

In spite of these initiatives, comparatively little attention has been paid to

understanding gender in mineral-based livelihoods worldwide. Since women comprise

a signiﬁ cant part of the labour force in the informal income-generating activities, it

can be expected that they would constitute a large segment of workers in informal

mines. Women, also as wives of miners, would form the most vulnerable amongst the

mining communities, necessitating a better understanding of gender in these mines.

In a review of the emerging issues related to livelihoods and gender roles around

mines and quarries in South Asia, this article addresses a gap in existing knowledge

on ASM in the informal mining sector.4 Although a large number of lives depend

on the incomes generated from small-scale mineral extraction, and women perform

South Asian Survey 15, 2 (2008): 217–244

220/Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt

a range of productive or income-generating activities around these mines including

those at home, this article focuses only on women as compared to men working in

ASM. Women workers in ASM form the proverbial ‘poorest of the poor’, in urgent

need of interventions to improve their freedom and abilities, and also a group with

signiﬁ cant agency and ability to choose alternatives. I have used the livelihood approach5

with special emphasis on understanding gender roles and relations in the mines, and

on understanding the gender needs and interests amongst ASM workers. It has been

pointed out that the ways women and men seek and sustain a livelihood are different;

just as gender roles are different, livelihoods too are gendered activities (Valdivia and

Gilles 2001). Earlier studies of ASM communities in Africa, by Labonne and Gilman

(1999) and Carnegie (2002), have used this approach, whilst Jennings (1999) brought

the attention on labour and social issues in global ASM to the foreground.

The article aims at providing the necessary backdrop, relevant information and

interpretation of women’s livelihood needs in the informal mining industry in South

Asia. It aims to sensitise stakeholders to the issues rooted in gender and for developing

policy measures. The more speciﬁ c objectives of the research are to investigate women’s

roles and participation in a range of informal mining practices in the region. The article

ﬁ rst gives an approximate indication of numbers based on existing information on small

mines and quarries, reviews the livelihoods and forms and structures of production

examining the position of women and men in ASM and outlining the gender concerns

thereof. Short ﬁ eld surveys during 2005–2006 primarily in India, Sri Lanka, Nepal

and Bhutan provide the basis of many observations, although India rightly receives

the greatest attention.

I EMPLOYMENT DATA ON SMALL MINES AND QUARRIES IN SOUTH ASIA

The foremost problem affecting research on the ASM sector anywhere in the world

is the paucity of data—or even literature—on the subject. This stems from a mix

of reasons: the sector is omitted from ofﬁ cial data because of its smallness; record

keeping is poor on account of the informality and unorganised nature of the sector;

confusion over exact categorisation as either primary or secondary activity and, in

case of unlicensed operations, the fear of government interference (Heemskerk 2005:

84–85). In South Asia, all this is applicable; in addition, the blurring of children and

women’s labour also is an impediment. For secondary sources of quantitative data,

some earlier works exist, including Chakraborty (2002), Chakravorty (2001), Ghose

(1986, 1991, 1994), Ghosh (1996), Rudra (2002) and Sahu (1992). Special mention

must be made of the work done by National Institute of Small Mines (NISM) on the

Orissa manganese mines and the stone quarries of West Bengal.

Chakravorty (2001) indicates that just over 12 per cent of ASM workers were

women. His data were derived from the incomprehensive Annual Report 2002 of

the Directorate General of Mines Safety (DGMS), which notes that only 166,000

South Asian Survey 15, 2 (2008): 217–244

Women’s Livelihoods in South Asia’s Small Mines and Quarries/221

people were employed in non-energy mines in India. He points out that in one part of

West Bengal alone (Pacami-Hatgacha), there are an estimated 38,000 people working in

the (basalt) stone quarries, which is over seven times the number given in the DGMS all-

India list for stone quarries. Pacami-Hatgacha is not the only cluster of stone quarries in

the state of West Bengal, which is primarily a ﬂ at plain consisting of Gangetic alluvium.

Other quarries exist particularly in the Birbhum district near the Rajmahal fringe, and

a large number of people are engaged in sedimentary stones and gravel quarrying in

the Himalayan foothills in the north of the state as well as gravel collection from river

beds in North Bengal. Assuming that there are only 100,000 quarry workers provid-

ing for the 80 million population of West Bengal, and demand for such a bulk product

is driven by population, there would be about 1.25 million such workers in all of

India. That this is a conservative estimate can be appreciated from the fact that the

Tamil Nadu Commissioners in 1995 noted that there were 750,000 quarry workers

in that state alone (Srivastava 2005: 24). With a population of 62 million in 2001,

this would lead, using West Bengal as the basis for calculation, to an estimate of more

than 12 million workers in the quarries for the whole of India.

According to the recently released 2001 Census of India data on workers, women

comprise around 14 per cent of all full-ﬂ edged workers in India in the mining and

quarrying sector. However, the extent of informalisation of women’s labour is evident

from the much higher proportion—33 per cent of all workers—being women amongst

those deﬁ ned as ‘marginal workers’.6 For example, in state-owned coal mining, women

comprise around 5.6 per cent of the workers, but around 17 per cent of marginal

workers in the same sector are women. The participation of women is highest in

dolomite mining (33 per cent), mica mining (25 per cent), clays mining (23 per

cent), stone quarrying (23 per cent), salt extraction (23 per cent), manganese ore

mining (21 per cent) and gemstones mining (19 per cent), indicating that women’s

labour is concentrated in the small-scale or informal mining sector. Even within these

sectors, women’s participation is higher as marginal workers in dolomite mining

(40 per cent), mica mining (40 per cent), clays mining (35 per cent), stone quarrying

(38 per cent), salt extraction (59 per cent), manganese ore mining (40 per cent) and

gemstones mining (34 per cent). In gold ore mining, women comprise 57 per cent of

marginal workers, with chromium ore mining also employing women as 38 per cent

of the marginal workers. The total number of marginal workers in the mining and

quarrying occupational category is slightly over 225,000, which clearly is nowhere

near reﬂ ecting the reality.

With regard to numbers, women undoubtedly constitute a large segment of workers

in the artisanal, small and informal mines all over the world (WMMF 2000). In most

cases the quarry workers come from rural and agricultural backgrounds, about 30 per

cent of whom are women in India (Krishnaraj and Shah 2004: 44–45). Thus, the

proportion of women in mines and quarries is likely to reﬂ ect a similar percentage. In

fact, of all female workers, about 85 per cent are employed in primary sector activities

South Asian Survey 15, 2 (2008): 217–244

222/Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt

in India (Krishnaraj and Shah 2004: 46). The Global Report by the Mining, Minerals

and Sustainable Development (MMSD) Project on Artisanal and Small Scale Mining

(Hentschel et al. 2002: 21) pointed out that ‘[in] contrast to large-scale mining, the

involvement of women in small-scale mining activities is generally high.’ The number

of women participating in informal mining activities has increased over time. Hinton

et al. (2003) estimated that approximately 30 per cent are women, but in Asia the

proportion is less than 10 per cent. This ﬁ gure is widely referred to, although it is not

based on ofﬁ cial information. It is also unclear if women and children are lumped

together in this ﬁ gure, a practice not uncommon in ASM (see CASM 2004). Given

the high rate of participation of women in informal work, especially in the primary

sector, the proportion of women is higher than just 10 per cent as noted by Chakravorty

(2001), and following the international trend, may well be growing (as observed by

ILO 1999: 25).

For Sri Lanka some ofﬁ cial statistics are available (Government of Sri Lanka 2003),

which list 1,689 mining and quarrying operations with an average of 10 employees

each in 2000. These statistics include those activities with more than ﬁ ve employees.

The Census of Industries (2004) in Sri Lanka counted 21,388 workers in 5,414 small

mines and quarries, each employing 10 or fewer workers in 2003. However, besides

these larger and formal sites, many operations are small, individual or family-run, and

hence unreported. If the number of operations are assessed at a conservative 2,000,

with an average number of labourers as 10 as per the report, we get a ﬁ gure of 20,000

people in actual digging and quarrying operations in Sri Lanka. In Sri Lanka, women’s

labour is mainly concentrated in servicing and assisting the artisanal gemstone miners

as against the mainland roles of cutting and carrying, but also in the industrial cutting

and polishing of gemstones (Herath 2003).

For Pakistan, ofﬁ cial statistics estimated that about 23,000 persons were employed

in mining and quarrying for 2003–04 (State Bank of Pakistan 2005). However, this

is a country where the mining sector is yet to develop along modern lines and most

mining, including that of semi-precious stones, is undertaken artisanally in the remote

and inaccessible areas of Baluchistan and the North West Frontier Province where

governance structures are loose. If we take the Indian situation as a rough guide, then

of Pakistan’s workforce of 53 million, nearly 400,000 would be in the ASM sector.

In the case of Nepal, the labour force survey carried out for 1998–99 made no

mention of mining and quarrying, but UNESCAP (2003: 5) estimated that 0.08 per

cent of the active male population and 0.04 per cent of women over ten years of age

were employed in the mining and quarrying (M&Q) sector. According to the ILO

(2003), the labour participation rate of those in the 16–64 years age group in Nepal

is high (almost 90 per cent). These data lead to an estimate of approximately 120,000

in the M&Q census category in Nepal.

No statistics are available from Bhutan, although ﬁ eld visits have revealed a large

number of stone quarries along the Himalayan foothills. In the north-eastern corner

of Bangladesh, bordering Assam, at least 100,000 people are involved in dredging the

South Asian Survey 15, 2 (2008): 217–244

Women’s Livelihoods in South Asia’s Small Mines and Quarries/223

river beds and quarrying the foothills for stones and gravel in Sylhet, based on ﬁ eld

observations. Some of these gravel quarries are licensed but including the unlicensed,

along with the scavengers, the total employment ﬁ gure would probably be much higher.

Similarly, there are gravel miners and sand miners all over India digging out low value

stone products as industrial or building material from dried up river beds and hills.

Since many of these would be pursued as seasonal livelihoods, it is appropriate to adopt

a conservative approach in arriving at the approximate estimation of 3 million workers

toiling away in small mines and quarries in the South Asian region.

II MINERAL-BASED LIVELIHOODS IN SOUTH ASIA

In the national economies of South Asia, mineral revenues constitute only a small

part. For example, although India is currently one of the major miners of the world,

this fact does not show up in the breakdown of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

This is because of low capital accumulation from many of these mines and the fact

that the small quarries and traditional mineral processing activities are part of the

‘informal sector’ of the Indian economy which, according to an expert view, comprises

around 88 per cent of the total economy (Harriss-White 2003). The large number of

people surviving on mineral extraction use low levels of technology. In many of these

mines only simple tools are used, with every stage of processing being done by the

human hand. Whereas low-value products like stone and gravel are meant primarily

for local or domestic consumption, some of the minerals can have high values and

serve non-local markets such as marble from Rajasthan or the gemstones of Pakistan.

Even low-value products such as stones may be exported although the exact amount

of revenue earned by them is unrecorded.

Mining Traditions

Many of the mineral-based livelihoods are a direct continuation from traditional

artisanal mining. The long history of mining is evidenced from old texts such as

Kautilya’s Arthashastra, written in circa 250 BCE (Shamasastry 1956: 82–89), which

gave instructions on methods of gem-testing and of extracting minerals from hard and

soft ore bodies, and of making gold and silver coins from the metals thus obtained.

From the documentation, it can be assumed that mining was a well-accepted livelihood

activity.7 The introduction of scientiﬁ c knowledge through engineering institutions and

modern legal frameworks of resource governance in the British period meant that many

of the old systems were destroyed. In their place, a new understanding of mining, as an

area of work requiring a range of licenses and permits, as well as a formal knowledge of

geology and production, emerged. The legal frameworks established during the colonial

times aimed at the control of mineral resources by the British state. Colonial mining

also brought in European models of labour relations and management techniques.

Consequently, traditional artisanal mining gradually ended up outside the legalised

South Asian Survey 15, 2 (2008): 217–244

224/Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt

sphere of resource governance, becoming invisible and in many cases even illegal as

per the current mode of mineral classiﬁ cation. In addition to traditional mining, there

are also unclear and non-legal spaces in mining created once again by deﬁ nitional

problems. For example, Meghalaya is a ‘ﬁ fth schedule’ state in the northeast of India,

where mineral resources belong to local landowners. However, coal, which is abundant

there, is classiﬁ ed as a ‘major mineral’ meaning that technically it can only be mined

by the state or major players. Consequently the 30,000 or so workers engaged in coal

mining in Meghalaya fall in the vacuum of this ‘non-legal’ space.

Legal Complexities

In general, small mine operators complain about the lengthy legal procedures (see

Goyal 2005) and demand a ‘one-stop shop’ for government clearance. A range of

interest groups are involved in administering small mines and quarries in the South

Asian countries: various government departments,8 mine (or quarry) owners or the

lessees, contractors, managers, supervisors, account keepers, mine workers, local cus-

tomers/buyers, manufacturing exporters and their agents for higher value products

such as some marble or mica, registered or unregistered workshops and house-

hold industries for processing. However, from ﬁ eld observations it can be noted that

these categories are not mutually exclusive, and may not be present in all quarries.

Mine workers have the least bargaining power amongst these groups, and include

three kinds of workers: those who dig, those who carry loads, and those who process.

Work is usually conducted on a piece-rate basis, leading to relentless exploitation.

Women’s labour is usually concentrated in the two latter sub-groups. In the case of

many illegal and non-legal mines, the main cutter may have the responsibility of selling

the dug or panned products to local customers after semi-processing (Lahiri-Dutt and

Williams 2005).

Production Relations

From ﬁ eld surveys it becomes apparent that production relations in small mines and

quarries are characterised by semi-feudal and pre-capitalist forms as well as capitalist

wages, making exploitation easier partly due to the remote locations of the mine sites

and partly by virtue of the unorganised nature of production. Living and working

conditions are deplorable by any standard; it is common for shelters to be no more

than small and low temporary huts with plastic sheets for rooﬁ ng. There is usually no

clean and safe accessible drinking water supply, no electricity, no health services and no

educational facilities. For the children to naturally join in mining activities to support

the family at times of ill-health of the elders is neither uncommon nor infrequent.

A common feature in labour organisation in small mines and quarries is sub-

contracting. The mine owner sub-contracts a thekedar (contractor) for the regular supply

and control of labour. Small mines and quarries have permanent, casual, contract, self-

employed producers, dependent producers and unpaid family members. Permanent

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Women’s Livelihoods in South Asia’s Small Mines and Quarries/225

workers may be protected by labour legislation but casual labourers, recruited on a

short-term basis, are not. Contract labourers are recruited either for certain numbers of

days or for certain amount of work (piece-rate) and are paid accordingly without being

covered by any sort of legislation. The unregistered processing plants or workshops are

run by self-employed producers with hired labour as dependent producers. Unpaid

family labour may include women and children who are extending a helping hand to

improve the family’s chances of survival. It is notable that women are never recruited

as long-term wage workers. The casualisation of work occurs more where parts of

the production process are sub-contracted to smaller units by the larger production

units. The work is casual and also highly seasonal; most quarries either shut down or

reduce production during the monsoon months. The workers either choose to work

in agricultural ﬁ elds or are forced to seek other jobs. This seasonality in production

inﬂ uences all aspects of production including the recruitment of casual and contract

workers. In illegal mines and quarries, the male head of the household can be described

as a self-employed producer. In household production units women may also participate

as home-based workers, with girls helping or training as unpaid family labour.

Migration and Production Relations in ASM

Small mines and quarries employ both migrants and members of local communities.

Migration can play different roles in the livelihoods of poor households of ASM

workers; it is a part of normal livelihood and survival strategies of the poor and does

not occur only during times of emergencies in the districts of India, although the

rate of migration increases at times of socio-economic distress, political crisis and/or

natural disasters. Women commonly migrate with their families and provide a family

unit of labour, including young children who are able to work. Seasonality of mobility

implies that many small mining and quarrying workers are poor landless farmers or

other rural workers seeking additional and cash income on a temporary basis during the

non-farming seasons. Such seasonal migrations from poorer rural areas to economically

better-off areas or to mineral-rich tracts for cash incomes at times of agricultural stress

or quiescence are not uncommon.

Sudden shocks to livelihoods such as droughts, also force the rural poor to seek jobs

outside of the farming economy, and small mines and quarries are often the primary

absorbers of such labour. Consequently, if they live in a mineral-rich tract, local

communities tend to fall back upon working in quarries or scavenging from old and

abandoned, or even operational, large mines. If they live in agricultural areas, groups

and families often migrate in search of such jobs to mining areas. For example, the

largest segment of workers in the collieries of northeastern India comes from Nepal.

Linkage between Displacement and Vulnerability of Livelihoods

Natural disasters or environmental hazards also encourage a large number of displaced

rural landless to join mines and quarries. In a region where agriculture is still intended

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226/Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt

primarily for subsistence and is heavily dependent on monsoon rains, a couple of

successive years of drought often forces rural labourers out of the villages. Similarly,

ﬂ oods or storms, earthquakes and location-speciﬁ c hazards such as river-bank erosion

in the ﬂ ood plains often drive poor people into small mines and quarries seeking

jobs. In many large mining areas, lack of attention to preserving ecological integrity

has caused the decay of farming and destruction of local natural resources, and the

involvement of peasants in what is often seen as illegitimate practices by the state

authorities. Persistent conﬂ icts including low-key violence and the exercise of muscle

power based on local politics or ethnic and religious identities threaten the well-being

of poor, causing their ﬂ ight not only to the big cities but also into mining-quarrying

jobs (Amarasinghe 1999). Ethnic violence in Sri Lanka and political instability in rural

Nepal have been crucial in ensuring a steady supply of cheap labour into the artisanal

gemstone quarries and the stone quarries along the Himalayan foothills. Above all,

displacement due to large-scale developmental projects, particularly large dams and

mining-power generation schemes, have been well-known to drive poor peasants into

informal, risky and insecure forms of occupations such as those in small mines and

quarries (Rao 2005). Women as new migrants move into small mines and quarries as

workers, with little or no support networks that were useful in looking after children,

in facing harassments, in tackling discrimination, and in preventing physical integrity.

New vulnerabilities, that are nearly impossible to deal with alone, are created for women

migrants in mines and quarries.

III WOMEN IN ARTISANAL AND SMALL MINES AND QUARRIES

The proportion of women among the workers in small mines and quarries varies

from country to country, according to location, nature and value of the mineral,

processing techniques used, marketing systems, local social milieu, availability of

alternative occupations and other factors. In actual mining jobs, panning, processing,

transportation and related jobs on the ﬁ elds, the percentage of women can vary from

as low as 10 per cent to a high of 50 per cent (Hinton et al. 2003). It has been noted

(for example in a report on women ninja miners of Mongolia by Appel 2005) that

often ASM is a dangerous and physically demanding activity, leading to a gender

division of labour in which men undertake the ‘heavy jobs’ and women take care of

most day-to-day chores.

Moretti (2005: 5), however, observed that limited female participation is not

exclusively a matter of personal preference but the outcome of men’s nearly complete

domination of the contemporary space of production and social reproduction.

Moretti’s work gives the example of Mount Kaindi’s (Papua New Guinea) extractive

landscape where in accordance with ‘traditional’ principles of land ownership almost

all registered mining leases, tributary rights and customary land are held by men and

transmitted patrilineally.

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Women’s Livelihoods in South Asia’s Small Mines and Quarries/227

Even in matrilineal societies such as the Maroons of Suriname, Heemskerk (2000: 7)

noted that the apparent autonomy hides gender inequality in relative access of women

and men to political power, money, capital assets and contacts with the outside world.

Amutabi and Lutta-Mukhebi (2001: 5) explain this disempowered status in terms of

lack of land rights in the mining areas in Kenya:

... women have only access to but do not control land. This does not make it possible

for women to have full control over the mining activities effectively. The traditional

social system deprives women control of mining pits and only allows them access

through men. Thus, their overall status in the production process is low.

A similar pattern may be observed in Latin American ASM communities; women

occupy a number of roles as labourers undertaking the most labour-intensive and

informal jobs in Bolivia (as palliris), or are associated with subsistence activities such

as those in Colombia (Veiga 1997).

Hilson (2001, 2002) documented the involvement of women in Ghanaian small-

scale mining showing that women comprise approximately 15 per cent of the legal

small-scale metal mining labour force and about 50 per cent of the ASM or galampsey

industry. Women are represented more heavily in lower value industrial minerals, the

proportion rising to over 75 per cent in salt mining. Hinton et al. (2003: 13) noted

that the key factors in determining gender roles and status of women in ASM include

‘women’s and men’s access to and control of, resources; their ability to attain knowledge

of resources, their decision-making capacity or political power; and beliefs or attitudes

that support or impede the transformation of gender roles.’ Observing the gender roles,

Amutabi and Lutta-Mukhebi (2001: 15) comment: ‘at Mukibira, it was noticeable

that women do most of the work. They help in digging pits, panning, washing and

selection using mercury. They also do the marketing, as they seem to be preferred

by buyers. This is because women are generally regarded as being more honest then

men’. Yakovleva (2007), whilst examining the causes of female participation in ASM

in Ghana, highlighted the lack of alternative economic opportunities, and focussed

on the risks faced by women in low-skilled jobs. In the mining frontiers of Brazilian

Amazon, Graulau (2006: 299) put women’s labour as the core of capital accumulation:

‘Vulnerability of women’s labour in garimpagen is inscribed in broader processes of

capital accumulation in the Amazon region…. Women’s labour has been crucial in

the expansion of capitalism and the reproduction of its modes of production in the

mining frontier.’

In Asia, even in countries like the Philippines, where traditionally ASM has provided

livelihood to a large number of people as the primary occupation with some shifting

cultivation, the number of women in ASM has been rising (Caballero 2006). Only

sparse data are available on China, but according to Shen Li of the Chinese Academy

of Sciences, the number of people could reach 100 million if cheap industrial minerals

such as sand, stone and gravels are included.9 In South Asia, like everywhere else, there

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228/Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt

is a rise in the number of quarries and decline in alternative occupations. Given the

seasonality of these jobs, insecurity and low wages, and the global trend of feminisation,

informalisation and casualisation of women’s labour, it can safely be assumed that

the work participation of women in ASM will also rise. UNIFEM (2005: 59) notes

that three dimensions of work and arrangements are relevant in determining the na-

ture, costs and beneﬁ ts of informal work: place of work, employment relations and

production systems.

IV WOMEN’S STATUS AND POSITION IN ASM

The small mining and quarrying sector in South Asia is a repository of concentrated

poverty and extreme forms of exploitation of the workers, both women and men.

CASM (2002: 22) does not see artisanal mining as strictly a mining problem ‘but

rather as a poverty issue which must be addressed by a comprehensive approach.’ As

people move back and forth between the informal mining sector and farming, or take

ASM up as an alternative to subsistence agriculture, families may have marginally better

incomes. Mining work is commonly done on a contract basis, often at piece-rates, but

also for daily wages. Jobs in small mines and quarries are sexually segregated, reﬂ ecting

what is often referred to as horizontal segregation, offering women-and men-restricted

entry to particular jobs. For example, local transportation of materials is almost always

done in head loads of baskets by women, whereas technical jobs requiring skill or use

of machines are almost always reserved for men. As mine owners put it, women are

docile, possessing the proverbial ‘nimble ﬁ ngers’, and are not supposed to do heavy

work. However, in almost all small mines and quarries, it is women who head load

the cut mineral ores from the mine site to the crusher, factory or the truck stop.

Chakravorty (2001: 38) notes:

… employment of women is very popular in opencast mines because they are more

regular and dependable and do not indulge in excessive drinking…. Women are in

demand also for hand sorting and blending for improving the quality of extracted

minerals which can not be gainfully carried out mechanically.

This observation fully reveals the gender-blindness of scholarship on ASM, because it

neglects to enquire into why women might be concentrated in the more arduous job

of hand-sorting and ignores their concentration in the more manual job of loading

baskets and carrying head loads. My observation is that most women in ASM are

from indigenous and similarly marginal ethnic communities including the low castes

(Lahiri-Dutt 2003b), that they work mostly in the more risky and manual jobs in the

mines, with little or no safety or security, at low wages and often as part of family labour.

The sexual division of labour in small mines and quarries presented by Chattopadhyay

(2002) for mica factories in Giridih in eastern India clearly shows that men tend to do

more specialised and skilled jobs that often involve the use of machines. Obviously,

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head loading of 20–30 kilograms is not considered to be unsuitable for women within

the mine but this is one area that needs immediate policy intervention.

Women’s lack of ownership of productive resources probably is the most crucial

factor in ensuring their low status in almost all land-based production systems

(Agarwal 1994). Lack of land ownership leads to the non-identiﬁ cation of women

as legitimate ‘miners’ in many countries: Susapu and Crispin (2001: 14) noted this

phenomenon in Papua New Guinea. In the absence of collateral, the lack of access to

credit becomes a signiﬁ cant problem; even in South Africa (where women’s mining

associations have attempted to overcome barriers such as lack of collaterals for loans)

poor education and negative attitudes of bankers towards women miners means that

only 6 per cent women have access to loans. In South Asia, women most commonly

do not own small or artisanal mines, nor even cut the minerals themselves, but work

as transporters or loaders, and as processors of minerals. The culturally rooted gender

bias is then reinforced in South Asia through legal instruments that limit women’s

labour to speciﬁ c jobs in speciﬁ c places and times.

In ASM in South Asia, women are not owner–entrepreneurs, having no control

over the land or the mineral resource contained therein; they are employed as casual

workers usually by labour contractors, in low-technology, labour-intensive processes.

This gives rise to high direct and indirect costs of ASM work: long hours and

unscheduled overtime, lack of beneﬁ ts and social protection, occupational health

hazards, high indebtedness and periodic/seasonal shocks to work, insecurity of work

and incomes, variability and volatility of income, lack of training, and lack of legal

status, organisation and voice.

The range of ASM practices is illustrated in Diagram 1. It depicts the economic

organisation, production relations and levels of capital accumulation on the horizontal

axis as a function of legal status. The diagram shows the increased use of machines

with increasing legality factor and capitalist mode of production. The maximum

concentration of women’s labour is to be broadly found in the non-legal and manual,

subsistence mining practices. By pointing out the concentration of women in

subsistence level, unmechanised and in non-legal mining practices, the diagram clearly

illustrates the need for relating gender and development policies in the ASM sector.

Gendered Livelihoods in ASM

Women working in small mines and quarries are often at the mercy of petty contractors

who tend to subordinate them through direct and indirect means of oppression in-

cluding physical exploitation. Food insecurity of the family, direct responsibility of

providing food for young children and the non-availability of better paid and regular

jobs drive them to take up work in the quarries. Small mines and quarries are plagued

with numerous problems including a high degree of health, safety and environmental

risks and sometimes conﬂ icts with large mining companies. The workers have only

limited access to credit, equipment and appropriate technology. Although gender

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230/Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt

crosscuts each of these factors, it is not commonly recognised as such. Given below is a

brief outline of the livelihood issues; if informal mining is to develop into a sustainable

activity, these individual issues need to be examined through a gender lens.

Working Conditions and Safety

Women in ASM in South Asia are working in three different categories of jobs:

(a) in the extractive process as diggers, sorters, panners, stone breakers and in crushing

and preparing of minerals; (b) as transporters and carriers commonly working in

head loading; and (c) as cleaners, and as suppliers of food and beverages, clerks and

secretaries, peons and carers. In small mines and quarries, it is the ﬁ rst two groups that

are the most common. These women are in most cases from extremely poor, from the

adivasi (indigenous) or dalit (downtrodden/lower castes) communities, with low levels

of literacy, usually in younger age categories (age groups 5–30 years). The working

days are extremely long and tiresome. Parthasarathy (2004: 217–18) describes the life

of a woman in an Indian quarry:

A typical day of a woman mineworker starts at 6 a.m.… At the mine site they work

continuously till noon, after which they take an hour’s break and return to work till

4 p.m.… Many of the women mineworkers of Bondaniya were contract labourers

and only a few were directly employed by the companies. Indeed the women

complained that one of the companies actively discourages any direct employment

and would rather hire a contractor, who in turn prospers by engaging cheap labour

Diagram 1

Placing Women in Small Mines and Quarries in South Asia

Source: Author’s estimation.

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who are denied beneﬁ ts accruing to the women mineworkers directly employed

by the company, like bonus, wage increments, provident fund etc.… Due to the

piece rate women and men are paid differential wages: Padmini Koi gets Rs 70 a

day for the same eight-hour working day as a man who gets Rs 75 because women

are said to be slower than the men in ﬁ lling up the boxes.

Women tend to accept poorer working conditions: lower wages than men, no equip-

ment or safety gear or safety education, no toilets or living facilities within close

proximity, rare and unpaid holidays and unpaid pregnancies. Often this is associated

with physical and sexual exploitation by the contractors, co-workers and other local

men. Major accidents mostly claim the lives of men as they are the ones present in the

underground jobs. Minor accidents due to blasting or falls are common for both women

and men. Simple safety gear such as shoes, masks and helmets is not supplied, nor is

training in their use provided. Snake bites and inundations can also claim lives.

Occupational Health Related Issues

Occupational diseases range from ill-health such as respiratory problems, silicosis,

tuberculosis, leukaemia, arthritis, poor vision and deafness to reproductive tract prob-

lems. They occur due to constant exposure to dust and noise and poor water supply

and sanitation. Occupational health issues arising out of poor working conditions

lead to dust-related diseases of the respiratory tract such as tuberculosis and silicosis,

which reduce the working ability and lifespan of the workers.10 Surveys conducted by

the Indian Council of Medical Research have reported incidence rates between 16 to

57 per cent of silicosis amongst stone quarry workers in different parts of the country.

The incidence is high in Rajasthan, where mining and quarrying is second only to

agriculture as a source of employment, according to another study conducted by the

Department of Chest Diseases of the Medical College in Jodhpur, and the NGO

Gramin Vikas Vigyan Samiti (GRAVIS n.d.). Radiological investigations showed that

56 per cent of mine workers in Rajasthan are affected with silicosis or silica-tuberculosis.

If these numbers are indicative of the general incidence of such diseases, then at least

800,000 workers in small mines and quarries might be affected just in the state of

Rajasthan. Air pollution—primarily the presence of suspended particulate matter

(PM) in the air—also affects surrounding village residents; indeed, silica dust is just

one component of airborne PM. The Supreme Court Guideline of 1997 rules out the

location of a stone crusher within a kilometre radius of human habitation, but this

guideline has not been strictly implemented.

Water-borne diseases are also extremely common, including frequent outbreaks of

enteric diseases amongst all workers. The average lifespan of a quarry worker, according

to a civil society group (Prasaar) working on occupational health issues around Delhi

quarries, is not more than 50 years. According to S.A. Azad, the Executive Director of

Prasaar, at the time of taking up jobs in quarries, a worker is fully aware of the death

trap lying ahead, but the lack of alternatives forces a person in his twenties to work in

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232/Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt

the quarries (Azad 2006). In Azad’s view, the average working life of a worker—both

women and men—is between 12–15 years. After a decade or so of working in the

collieries, most workers become ill and gradually are unable to work, eventually

dying in their late 40s or early 50s. The degraded working and living conditions, and

uncertainties of life also encourage excessive alcohol consumption habits amongst

the quarry workers, both women and men falling victims to the habit. Alcoholism

is prevalent primarily amongst men, but affecting women and the family, leading to

domestic violence (such as wife-beating and ill-treatment of children), confrontations

amongst neighbours and workmates and desertion of wives by husbands and above all

plunging the entire family into poverty and perpetual indebtedness.

Gender, Bonded Labour and Child Labour

Women are at the bottom of the hierarchy of production. Although they play major

roles in subsistence as well as commercialised small mining and quarrying, they

generally have very low level of control over the products of their labour or to act as

autonomous subjects.

Bondage, a contemporary form of slavery, is a widely used method of labour em-

ployment in ASM in South Asian countries.11 Srivastava (2005: 3) deﬁ nes bondage

as, ‘a system of forced, or partly forced, labour under which the debtor enters into an

agreement, oral or written, with the creditor.’ In South Asia’s caste-bound and hier-

archical society, bondage of an individual man turns into inter-generational bondage,

child bondage, loyalty bondage and bondage through land allotment spilling over to

other members of the family, especially women (widow bondage) and girl children

who have the least control over their fates (see: Bakshi 2002; Sreedharan and Muniyapa

2000: 6, also Lerche 1995 for distinctively different approaches to the question of

bondage). Quarry workers and gem cutters are highly represented amongst those in

bondage (see Kapadia 1995). Mendelsohn’s (1991) research described the intervention

of a non-governmental organisation to release the stone quarry workers around New

Delhi. Olsen and Ramana Murthy (2000) traced the condition of contract and bonded

labourers in Andhra Pradesh. Debt bondage, the most prevalent form amongst the

various kinds of bondage, enslaves more men but for women, it can mean ‘double

exploitation’ (Herzfeld 2002). When a woman marries a bonded labourer, she also

marries the conditions of his bondage. In case of a woman head of a household being

in bondage, the consequences are forced work for long hours, often outside of usual

quarry jobs, and complete disempowerment.

In Pakistan’s small mines and quarries, Ahmad Saleem has shown the ‘vicious circle’

of bonded labour, where about 80–85 per cent of them came from only two districts,

Swat and Shangla of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP):

An agent of the mine owners, who always remains behind the scene in most cases,

recruits the people for this exhausting grind by giving them ‘advance money’. The

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advance money ranges from Rs 40,000 to 45,000 in Balochistan, Rs 25,000 to

30,000 in Sindh and at its lowest in the NWFP’ (Dawn 2003).

Ercelawn and Nauman (2001) described the conditions of both women and men

bonded labourers in Pakistan. The Nepalese bonded labourers, called kamaiyas, belong

mainly to the Tharu community (Sharma et al. 2001), and once indebted due to

poverty, the borrower and his heirs become bonded to the landlord.

The relationship between women’s labour and bondage is acknowledged, but the

question of linkages between gender and child labour12 in small mines and quarries

is still ill-understood. This is because of the fact that even to this day, ‘women and

children’ are seen as a single category in many ofﬁ cial circles.13 This often leads to a

justiﬁ cation of protective legislation such as the prohibition of women’s work in mines

and quarries.14 It is indeed true that women are accompanied by children into small

mines and quarries, but in fact more children accompany their fathers as apprentices

than their mothers. The question of child labour also involves the question of ‘gender’

within the category of ‘the child’, as girl children are usually at a greater disadvantage

than the boys because of their gender.15 In spite of preventive laws such as India’s Child

Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act 1986, children continue to be engaged in

mining and quarrying work in the entire South Asia as a more docile and cheaper form

of labour. ILO’s major programme, the International Programme for the Elimination

of Child Labour (IPEC) has been operating in South Asia through governments, em-

ployers, workers, non-governmental organisations and teachers. Measures such as the

National Child Labour Programme in India and the ILO’s projects have been designed

to release and rehabilitate children under the purview of the Act.

V POLICY IMPLICATIONS OF GENDER IN SOUTH ASIAN ASM

In prioritising policies, the ‘high congruence between the informal economy and the

poor and vulnerable’ led the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised

Sector in India to examine the twin issues of conditions of work and promotion of

livelihood. The ﬁ rst step towards addressing the magnitude of the problem was to ‘create

a social ﬂ oor’ below which nobody is allowed to fall (NCEUS 2007: 9). So far, policies

in India have swung between complete control of illegal mining and complete opening

up of the small mining sector as evident in the Mineral Policy of individual states such

as Rajasthan. Other countries do not seem to have a well-developed policy at all.

The Commission also recognised that ‘livelihood promotion is the only route’

through which it is possible to deal with the issues of working conditions and related

aspects of poverty and vulnerability (NCEUS 2007: 9). Although the Commission

recognised that certain laws and regulations have negative impacts on livelihoods to

create the foundations of decent work, no mention was made in this context on the

legislation that affects women and their work in small mines and quarries.16 This is

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234/Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt

not unusual; generally the mining industry and bureaucracy of South Asia have neg-

lected to prioritise social issues, and have continued to focus on the improvement of

techno-economic efﬁ ciency in all spheres from exploration to exploitation, including

management and control. The ﬁ rst policy implication, therefore, is to accept that small

mines and quarries are here to stay, that they make important contributions and hence

need to be integrated fully into their respective local economies, and that they pose an

area of concentrated poverty that has yet remained relatively untouched either by the

administration, NGOs or trade unions. It is also important to better understand small

mines and quarries as an integral and legitimate aspect of the livelihoods of innumerable

women and men in the South Asian informal sector. Improving record keeping, in-

creasing the understanding of production relations and processes and tracking the

processes of change through gender-based data collection and analyses would be the ﬁ rst

step towards building pro-poor policies that actually work effectively at the grassroots

level. While some women are forced into small mines due to extreme poverty and

thereby suffer a great deal of exploitation, it is evident that simply preventing them

from working will not remove the primary cause of their vulnerability.

Livelihood Enhancement

What concrete policy steps could then be taken in promoting livelihoods in small

mines and quarries in South Asia? There are broad guidelines, such as the Government

of India’s Mineral Policy (2006), which notes that small mines and quarries may

ﬁ t in well with the existing social and production structures—particularly seasonal

operation—in remote areas with little infrastructure, in a manner that is compatible

with agricultural production in the same area. However, no deﬁ nitive measures are

either indicated or taken towards this direction. Enhancing the ability of small mines

and quarries to generate employment, income and entrepreneurial skills can indeed

reduce the push for outmigration to urban areas, but this would need to go hand in

hand with enhancing the ability of the workers in this sector. For example, if they are

locally owned and managed, small mines and quarries would provide a larger net gain

to the community and to the national economy than do larger, centrally or foreign-

owned mines. The ﬁ rst efforts, therefore, would be made to support the workers to

earn decent wages and enable them to work in safe and healthy working conditions

in small mines and quarries. However, the process may be more difﬁ cult in reality due

to the extremely poor working conditions, low wages and semi-feudal structures and

production relations that still exist.

Mainstreaming Gender at the Policy Level

In developing livelihood enhancement strategies two important considerations are

involved: why gender needs to be integrated, and how it is to be done. To answer

the ﬁ rst, one needs to explore contemporary developmental approaches which have

emphasised that gender equity is a core development issue, ‘a development objective

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Women’s Livelihoods in South Asia’s Small Mines and Quarries/235

in its own right’ (King and Mason 2001: xiii). Promoting gender equality as part of a

development strategy in small mines and quarries should not mean continuing with

or reinforcing the low status of women to men as well, but rather creating situations

that might enable all people to earn a decent living from a decent workplace, allowing

escape from poverty and improvement in the standard of living. The aim is to enhance

women’s decision-making power within the mine, the mining community and the

family as compared to men. This can be undertaken through gender mainstreaming

in both worker-centric and community-centric projects. Empowering women mine

workers has the potential to bring more tangible developmental outcomes than top-

down interventions such as the regularisation of informal mines. Women working in

small mines have limited opportunities in other non-farm activities due to their low

levels of skills and education. This forces them to work in mines that are essentially

low skill jobs. With greater use of technology in production, gender roles of workers

in small mines might change, negatively impacting women’s productive roles. Again,

social and economic policies leading to local changes may also negatively impact upon

women and there should therefore be an awareness to avoid such pitfalls.

To improve the lives of women in small mines and quarries, the immediate need is

to eliminate gender bias and harassment and accept women’s multiple and productive

roles in the economy, in society and at home. This will enhance women’s ability to

ensure food security for the family and provide for children more effectively. For women

to beneﬁ t from ASM, it is ﬁ rst of all imperative to make their productive work more

visible, and to make their voices heard. At present, women and their labour are almost

invisible in the quarries and their issues are thereby neglected. Work is a part of any

human being’s life and women and men toiling in small mines and quarries in South

Asian countries are not an exception. The work in the mines must not be seen as a

negative or undesirable thing in itself, and legal frameworks restricting women’s work

need to be revisited immediately. Women’s work in mining has been a contested area

since the advent of modern mining in Europe, and the response in general had been to

‘protect’ women from the poor conditions existing in the mines. In all South Asian

countries, women’s work in underground mines and at night is prohibited by law in an

effort to protect them. Equal rights to work and consequent economic beneﬁ ts from

small mines and quarries, on the other hand, can be seen as enabling and empowering

for women. The need is to improve the conditions surrounding women’s work, and in

this regard, to include measures such as protecting women’s interests, safety and health,

providing a safe and secure working environment, assuring continued employment

and old age security for citizens and improvements in wage levels. For this purpose, a

concerted effort is needed as many of these ills are closely associated with rural poverty,

patriarchal society and consequent exploitation of women. There is also a need to

ensure a more equitable distribution of economic beneﬁ ts from ASM between women

and men. This would also involve giving incentives to women to own small mines

and quarries—possibly through a greater attention to land ownership and training

programmes—for their economic and social empowerment. These legal and economic

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236/Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt

measures are connected to a range of social and technical measures: ensuring health

and giving education to create livelihood options, training women to use machines

that lessen manual work burdens and providing training on risk, safety and security

to improve the overall productive efﬁ ciency.

Programmes such as those taken up by the ILO in South Asian quarries would

beneﬁ t from adopting a gender focus. To do this, commitment to gender mainstreaming

would need to begin at the international policy level and trickle down to the individual

country’s strategy level. The promotion of microcredit programmes can provide

ﬁ nancing for women in communities on mineral tracts. Gueìrin and Palier (2005)

have shown how small interventions as microﬁ nance and credit for women have been

effective in dealing with the problem of debt bondage in certain cases. They have also

pointed out that ﬁ nancing women has been more effective in poverty eradication than

providing credit to male heads of households. Elsewhere, there are examples of locally

based non-governmental organisations that are making marginal improvements in

women mine workers’ lives and also in making their voices heard. The Mine Labour

Protection Campaign (MLPC), based in Udaipur, has focused on mine labour

issues in Rajasthan’s marble and stone quarries (MLPC 2006). Similarly, the Mines

Monitoring Centre of the Bindrai Institute for Research Study & Action (BIRSA),

based in Ranchi, the Jharkhand Mines Area Coordination Committee (JMACC) and

Jharkhandi Organisation for Human Rights (JOHAR) have an important presence in

the adivasi communities that work Jharkhand’s stone and limestone quarries (BIRSA

2003; JOHAR n.d.).

Development policy in recent years has increasingly focussed its attention on the

area of women’s work in the informal economy including the small mining sector

(Heemskerk 2003). However, as we noted in our research, women form the poorest in

the small mining economy that itself is a repository of extreme poverty and exploitation.

Such is their invisibility that often the perceptions of stakeholders regarding women’s

work roles and issues surrounding their work are not well developed and omitted

from the opinions of experts. For example, there is not yet a real appreciation of the

production relations that tie women and men into bondages of various sorts within

the mines and quarries. Another example is the use of technology; the ability to use

technology or ‘appropriate technology’ is often seen by ASM experts as gender-neutral

and the panacea for all social ills. However, in my study, I noticed that technology

intensive mining processes not only tend to exclude women but relegate them to

lower status and low skilled jobs. Often these are more risky and dangerous jobs, and

reproduce the social biases against women workers within the industrial production

in mines and quarries. Consequently, the status of women in the ASM economy

is low and the strategic and gender needs and concerns of women are not fulﬁ lled.

Existing laws regarding small mines and quarries are unclear and ill-deﬁ ned; the legal

framework on women’s work needs to be revisited. This is not uncommon for any part

of the informal sector. However, small mining and quarrying is here to stay. Leases for

small mines and quarries are becoming a source of revenue for the states, and the state

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mineral development corporations are aggressively advancing mining and quarrying.

However, the responsibilities of these corporations do not extend to ensuring gender

equity, a safe working environment and secure wages. Being loosely controlled, even the

licensed quarries create environmental pollution and hazards for the region and local

residents. Near metropolitan cities and capitals, for example in India, environmental

degradation caused by the quarries has led to several public interest litigations and the

rise of powerful civil society movements.

These considerations lead us to ask a critical question: will promoting women’s work

in the ASM sector in South Asia improve the quality of life for rural poor women of

the countries involved? This question has great implications for developing pro-poor

livelihood policies that are effective in three areas: (i) sustaining economic beneﬁ ts

for the states, for the families and for the individuals, in other words sustaining the

development from mineral extraction; (ii) raising the well-being of the innumerable

poor people engaged annually or seasonally in small mining and quarrying, in other

words poverty alleviation through income generation; and (iii) raising the standards

of living in meeting the Millennium Development Goals. The answer, if there is one

at all, is deﬁ nitely in the positive, although the need of the hour is to develop a gen-

der sensitive and pro-poor framework of developmental interventions that would

be effective in dealing with the big challenges that small mines and quarries pose to

policy makers.

End Notes

1. Indeed, the International Labour Organisation (ILO 2002) observed that employment in the formal

mining sector had been declining due to the increased use of machines in production. Although the

recent mining boom throughout the world might have reversed this trend, jobs in formal mining have

been shrinking generally due to mechanisation.

2. ‘Informal’ here implies the large range of activities and practices in mining and quarrying: digging,

cutting, panning, processing, breaking, amalgamating, carrying, transporting and marketing of a wide

range of minerals or products from the earth’s surface or the interior. In my earlier works (Lahiri-Dutt

2003a, 2004) I have used the term informal as coterminous of ASM.

3. Gunson and Yue (2001) showed that the estimated 6 million or so artisanal miners in China produce

at least 11 per cent of the world coal output, outproducing comfortably the entire coal industry of

India or Australia.

4. Some of the material—including those done by our partners—from this research is now available at

our website (www.asmasiapaciﬁ c.org)

5. The word ‘livelihood’ means the command an individual, family or other social group has over an

income/or bundles of resources that can be used or exchanged to satisfy its needs. This may involve

information, cultural knowledge, social networks, legal rights as well as tools, land or other physical

resources (Blakie et al. 1994; Valdivia and Gilles 2001). The livelihood approach to understanding

survival strategies of the poor people as well as development processes has received a spurt in the last

decade.

6. According to Census of India, ‘Marginal workers’ were those who worked any time at all in the year

preceding the enumeration but did not work for a major part of the year, i.e., those who worked for

less than 183 days (or six months). They are often landless labourers or farmers engaged in various

South Asian Survey 15, 2 (2008): 217–244

238/Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt

informal jobs during the non-cropping season. ‘Main workers’ were those who had worked for the major

part of the year preceding the date of enumeration, i.e., those who were engaged in any economically

productive activity for 183 days (or six months) or more during the year (Census of India 2001).

7. Illegal mining also occurred, and Arthashastra gave instructions on how to deal with it: ‘A mine worker

who steals mineral products except precious stones shall be punished with a ﬁ ne of eight times their

value. Any person who steals mineral products or carries on mining operations without license shall

be bound (with chains) and caused to work (as a prisoner).’ However, in India, illegal mining needs

to be placed within the broader context of the (lack of) environmental and social justice in mining

areas, an issue that I have raised in a recent work (see Lahiri-Dutt 2007a).

8. Mines and Geology for license to mine; the local forest department which establishes the status of the

area in their records and through physical veriﬁ cation, and issues a ‘no objection certiﬁ cate’ (NOC);

the Ministry of Environment and Forests to ascertain the implications and repercussions on local

forests; the District Collector; the Sub-district or tehsil ofﬁ cials or the Patwaris, and the head of the

village council or Panchayat pradhan—all requiring to survey the current use of the land and to provide

NOCs. In some cases, State Pollution Boards are also involved.

9. Personal communication with Professor Shen Li, who is an authority on ASM in China and the head

of CASM China network. See http://www.casmsite.org/regional_CASM-China.htm.

10. ‘The potential hazards from silicosis have been known for a long time, and a number of state gov-

ernments [in India] have passed legislation to address this…. [However, such developments have] meant

nothing in practice; to date, no person affected with silicosis has ever received any compensation or

reimbursement of cost of treatment by court orders in Rajasthan. Besides the fact that almost none

of the mine workers are aware of the regulations and laws, the procedure for ﬁ ling a compensation

petition is very complicated. The biggest hurdle in the whole process is the difﬁ culty in obtaining

a certiﬁ cate from the Pneumoconiosis Board. With the board inordinately delayed—and even then

largely idle—actual relief for the mineworkers remains out of reach’. (India Together 2005)

11. The ﬁ rst systematic survey of bonded labour, carried out by the Gandhi Peace Foundation and National

Labour Institute in 1978, placed the number of bonded labourers at 2.62 million. The survey also

found that 61.5 per cent of the bonded labourers were from the Schedules Castes (SC), or lower castes

and 25 per cent were from the Scheduled Tribes (ST), or the indigenous peoples/adivasis (Marla 1981).

The National Commission on Rural Labour (NCRL 1991) presented a clearer picture of bonded

labour in India. It took note of bondage among women on account of social as well as economic

factors and mentioned the examples of indebtedness-induced prostitution of women and children.

The Commission also mentioned the high incidence of child bondage and tribal exploitation in many

parts of the country. Of the vast number of bonded labourers in South Asia, a large proportion is

toiling away in small mines and quarries and crushers (Ministry of Labour 1991). The United Nations

Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery estimated that 10 million of the 20 million slaves

of the modern world live in India alone, of whom more than half are women and children (UN 1999).

Human Rights Watch (1996) puts the ﬁ gure at a higher level: ‘Approximately ﬁ fteen million children

work as bonded labourers in India.’

12. The term is used to mean children between 5 to 14 years of age, in gainful occupation injurious to their

physical, mental, moral and social development, used as synonyms of ‘employed child’ or ‘working

child’, young people who are leading adult lives, working long hours for low wages.

13. Many national or state machineries for women set up during the 1950s in most third world countries

still reﬂ ect a ‘welfare approach’ to women’s issues in their nomenclature; in India for example, the

ministry is still known as Ministry of Women and Children’s Welfare and in Bangladesh Women

and Children’s Affairs, putting women and children’s concerns in the same category. The implicit

understanding behind such nomenclature is the acceptance of motherhood as the primary role and

responsibility of women. It is assumed that women will automatically beneﬁ t from improvements in

the conditions of their families, with the beneﬁ ts trickling down through the male head of households

(Elson 1995). Changes are however in the air; the Pakistan government now calls the relevant institution

South Asian Survey 15, 2 (2008): 217–244

Women’s Livelihoods in South Asia’s Small Mines and Quarries/239

the Ministry of Women Development and Sri Lanka Ministry of Women’s Empowerment and Social

Welfare, although essentially these institutions remain weak and under-resourced.

14. The general approach so far in South Asia has been to create ‘special’ measures for women in various

ﬁ elds. Examples of such protective measures are many: beginning from the recent 73rd and 74th

amendments of the Indian Constitution reserving seats for women to enhancing their political

participation, to old Acts or legal provisions such as breast feeding breaks for women workers under The

Plantation Labour Act, 1951; prohibition of night work, provision of crèches (for factories employing

over 13 women workers) under the Factories Act, 1948; and ﬁ nally, the prohibition of women from

working underground under the Indian Mines Act of 1952. Often, in informal sector employment,

these provisions are not followed or enforced. In fact, often in cases of accidents or collapse of unofﬁ cial

mines or quarries, women have been found underground, either dead or injured. Above all, these very

measures are cited as barriers for the gainful employment of women. Intended as a means to protect

them from harsh working conditions, these measures usually work to act against women in the labour

market.

15. Article 24 of the Indian Constitution states that no child up to the age of 14 shall be employed in any

factory or mine. The Labour Act of 1951, the Mines Act of 1952 and the Factories Act of 1954 also

strictly prohibit the employment of child labour.

16. These include protective bans on women’s underground work and night work, but actually throw

women into more vulnerability by taking away their legitimacy as workers in mines.

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Social Security of Mining Workers: Policy Versus Practice

Article

Full-text available

Sep 2022

This study assesses the role of mining companies in providing social security benefits to mining workers and the local community. It has used primary data collected from adult mining workers in 257 households working in public and private sector mines. The result finds inadequate social security benefits are delivered to mining workers and the local people. The profit-making behavior of mining companies, casual job contracts of workers, and poor monitoring and implementation of the mining laws are primarily responsible for workers’ deprivation from such fundamental rights. However, we observed that publicly managed mines are relatively better than privately managed mines in providing social security to the workers and area. In this context, recommendations of the study include strict implementation of mine laws, permanent job contract to workers, provision of employment for women both in open-cast and underground mines with proper social protection and security, necessary infrastructural development in the locality, and involvement of professional social workers to fight against the violation of human rights in the mining periphery.

Mineral Economy:An International Comparison

Article

Full-text available

Dec 2019

Mineral extraction and trading of mineral ores/concentrates enhances GDP, generates employment, alleviates poverty and increases infrastructural of a country. For the resource rich mineral dependent underdeveloped countries, it is one of the major sources of economic activities to encourage growth rate and earn foreign exchange reserve. Generally low- and middle-income countries lacks technology and efficiency to process raw mineral into final products. For which they sell their raw mineral to technologically advanced developed countries with less price and buy final mineral products with a higher price. Alternatively, the stringent environmental policy in the developed countries impedes mineral production, which is liberal in least developed and developing countries, for which developed countries laid more priority for mineral import than extraction of their own reserves. Mineral extraction and trading incur several negative effects to the exporter countries and act as a “mineral-course” for resource abundant countries. It invites several environmental and public health issues and hinders long-run economic growth of exporter countries due to its non-renewable nature. Even after several socio-economic-environmental issues, still mineral trading is one of the major priorities for developing and least developed countries for the fulfillment of their aspiration of economic growth. In this backdrop an attempt has made to compare the mineral economy of world with a special focus on India. To substantiate the objective simple descriptive statistic has used to analyze the secondary data collected from various sources.

Health Issues of Mining Workers: Provisions and Challenges in Social Work Perspectives

Article

Full-text available

Jun 2023

This paper assessed the impact of mining operations on the health of mining workers. Additionally, the challenges faced by mine workers due to health issues and provisions arranged by mines for workers’ healthcare were analysed from the social work and human rights perspectives. A cross-sectional study was conducted in a mineral-rich district of Odisha, India, by covering 257 households consisting of 296 mine workers of both public and private sector mines. The result showed mining operations had a critical negative environmental and occupational health impact on workers. Diseases like colds, cough, fever, bronchitis, jaundice, acute respiratory infection, gallbladder stone, blood pressure, skin disease, tuberculosis, and joint pain occurred frequently with greater intensity along with the deformity and death caused by mining accidents. Against the losses, the workers hardly receive compensation as mandated by Mining Act, 1952 and Director General of Mines Safety guidelines due to their lack of information, casual job contracts, poor implementation of mining law, lack of monitoring of mining activities by the government, and the profit-maximizing behaviour of the mines. In this context, the study followed the human rights and workers’ right principles and provisions of United Nations-Human Right Council, World Health Organization, International Labour Organization, and the Mining Act, 1952, and recommends a set of principles, i.e. employment of an adequate number of qualified health social workers/human right professionals both at micro and macro levels, and formulates an appropriate plan to ensure good health and well-being to mining workers. Additionally, strict implementation of mining laws, periodic social and environmental impact assessment, permanent job contracts to workers, social protection and security of workers, and creation of adequate health infrastructure in the mining locality is essential.

Indian Coal Mines in Hundred Years Old Fiction and Now: A Geographical Analysis

Article

Full-text available

Mar 2023

Payel Ghosh

This study attempts to construe the first-ever coalmine-oriented Bengali fiction from a social, historical, and geographic perspective. Sailjananda Mukhopadhyay wrote Koylakuthi (the coal miners' office) in 1922, representing Bengal's coal mines. This study aims to reconstruct the miners' society from the early 20th Century with narratives from this story and examine the societal challenges and changes a hundred years apart. A comparative study of the mining geo-cultural landscape of the 1920s Bengal and its contemporary counterpart is carried out. Changed geography, technology, and community are observed. And it reveals that areal expansion of the coalfields has increased production, and technological advancement has increased the safety and security of the miner class. However, the labour structure, class and caste hierarchy, and patriarchal mindset have hardly changed.

Gendering the Field : Towards Sustainable Livelihoods for Mining Communities

Book

Jan 2011

Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt

Beyond the rituals of inclusion: The environment for women and resource governance in Africa’s artisanal and small-scale mining sector

Article

Full-text available

Feb 2021
ENVIRON SCI POLICY

This paper considers the apparent confluence of three policy developments: the Sustainable Development Goals, as the latest international commitment to gender equality and women’s empowerment; the growing push to formalize the artisanal and small-scale mining sector; and the call to address environmental concerns of ASM through increased regulation, including formalization. Informed by feminist political economy and political ecology scholarship, we consider the kinds of gendered meanings about gold ASM (ASGM) and the environment made possible through the points where formal policy commitments to ASGM, environmental protection and women’s inclusion intersect, or fail to intersect. We explore three contexts in which environment narratives have been framed and/or mobilized: the 2014 Minamata Convention on Mercury, followed by two brief case studies examining the consequences of the enforcement of gender-blind environmental initiatives on the livelihoods of women artisanal gold miners in central Mozambique and eastern Ghana. The paper concludes with three recommendations for future work on the intersection of environmental protection programs and women’s empowerment agendas for the ASGM sector.

Application of Snowmelt Runoff Model in Sind catchment of Kashmir Himalaya

Article

Jun 2019

Mountainous regions of the world act as the reservoirs of water due to their enormous snow and glacier resources. Quantification of snow and glacier melt runoff is important for water resource management in the downstream areas. The present study applies Snowmelt Runoff Model (SRM) to estimate the streamflow for Sind catchment in Kashmir Himalayas. In-situ daily temperature and precipitation data along with Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) derived Snow Cover Area (SCA) were used to calibrate and validate the model. Digital Elevation Model (DEM) was used to prepare the area elevation curve of the Sind catchment. Several model parameters for streamflow were optimized during the calibration period (2011 - 2013) which were validated during 2014 - 2015. The accuracy of the model using coefficient of determination (R2) varied from 0.76 during calibration and 0.87 during validation period. The percentage difference in the volume (Dv) during the study period was around 3%. The results depict the relative capability of SRM to estimate the streamflow though more accurate estimation of model parameters can increase the model simulation results

Evolution and distribution of coal mines in Salanpur Block, District Paschim Bardhaman, West Bengal

Article

Full-text available

Jun 2019

The objectives of this paper are to describe an historical account that includes transfer of ownership, nationalisation and mining under public/private ownership. The results shows that the newly started coal mines consisting separate units were runing under private owners and later on taken by Coal Mines Authority Ltd (CMAL) under Coal Mines Nationalisation Act in 1973. Consequently, these collieries were brought under public ownership from private ownership. In 1975, these collieries were incorporated under Eastern Coalfields Limited (a subsidiary of Coal India Limited) for extracting coal that fall under the administrative control of Salanpur Area which is an administrative block of ECL. During post-nationalisation period these collieries registered a low production although ECL had considered both underground and opencast methods of working to augment production but decline trend was continued as reserve in working seams was exhausted and non-availability of land for further mining operation due to illegitimate demand from local people. To meet the growing demand of coal for energy sector and other use, mining under private companies has been approved by ECL and also granted mining leases for operation.

Gender in research on northern resource development

Chapter

Oct 2018

“Men Diggers and Women Carriers”: Gendered Work on Famine Public Works in Colonial North India

Article

Full-text available

Oct 2019

Madhavi Jha

The history of labour on public works construction is usually presented as a masculine experience, either because the workforce studied is mostly male, or because the labour of women remains unrecorded. Does the history of labour and wage on public works undergo change if we account for women labourers? This article examines this question in the context of famine public works in the second half of nineteenth-century India. State employment on public works was part of a famine relief programme and women, largely from agricultural labouring and small peasant families, worked on the construction of roads, railways, canals, and tanks. The article traces the development of task-gender association on famine public works both as a norm and in practice. Further, it analyses the evidence on negotiations made by women labourers themselves with the existing gendered notions of work and wage. This study contributes to the historiography of labour in a colonial context in two ways: first, it adds to the existing corpus on forms of labour extraction for construction work; and, second, it explores the question of women's work and remuneration outside factories, mills, and mines.

Artisanal Mining in The People's Republic of China

Article

Full-text available

Small-Scale Mining: A Review of the Issues

Book

Full-text available

Jan 1987

Richard Noetstaller

Displacement from Land: Case of Santhal Parganas

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2005
Econ Polit Wkly

Nitya Rao

Despite the existence of tenancy laws that seek to protect adivasi rights to land in the Santhal Parganas, recent years have seen the considerable transfer of land from adivasis to contractors mainly through privately negotiated, temporary lease arrangements. This has serious implications for the employment and health of local populations as well as for the sustenance, in the long term, of common property resources and local livelihoods. At the same time, siltation and flooding in the upstream and lower reaches of the Masanjore dam have rendered cultivable land in several villages useless. As most of the adivasi population in the region depends on agriculture for its livelihood, the need to revise and rethink development strategies is of utmost importance.

Engendering Development: Through Gender Equality in Rights, Resources and Voice by World Bank

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2002

Elizabeth Asante

Gender and Gold Mining: The Case of the Maroons of Suriname

Article

Full-text available

Jan 2000

Marieke Heemskerk

This paper analyzes the relations between gender and gold mining among the Ndjuka Maroons, forest peoples in Suriname, South America. Today, gold mining has become the primary source of subsistence for many Ndjuka families. Yet in contrast to other parts of the world, few Ndjuka women participate in mining. The researcher examines how the gender system in Ndjuka society accounts for the male domination of gold mining, and how some women have negotiated traditional gender roles. Quantitative and qualitative data support the conclusion that the limited participation of Ndjuka women in gold mining is a product their limited access to critical resources and mobility. The internalization of gender ideology, and the dependence of women on men, prevents women from challenging existing gender roles and power structures in society. The women who engage in mining are typically poor single mothers who have adopted urban gender beliefs. Poverty and prior market experience inform their choice to become gold miners. On a theoretical level, it is argued that gender systems are changing continuously, under the influences of time, space, political process, and economic development. It appears that when the economic contribution of women becomes indispensable to household survival, cultural restrictions to the mobility and economic power of women necessarily weaken. The researcher emphasizes that the heterogeneity among women differentiates the options and constraints of individual women who make livelihood decisions. The conclusion is drawn that development efforts will only be effective when such efforts fully recognize the dynamism of gender systems and the heterogeneity among women.

Gendered Labour in Peripheral Tropical Frontiers: Women, Mining and Capital Accumulation in Post-Development Amazonia: Pit Women and Others

Chapter

May 2017

Jeannette Graulau

Gender and mining in Kenya: The case of Mukibira mines in Vihiga district

Article

Jan 2001

At Risk: Natural Hazards, People'S Vulnerability and Disasters

Article

Mar 1996

Artisanal and Small-scale Mining in India

Article

S L Chakravorty

This report was commissioned by the MMSD project of IIED. It remains the sole responsibility of the author(s) and does not necessarily reflect the views of the MMSD project, Assurance Group or Sponsors Group, or those of IIED or WBCSD.

The Profitability of Bonded Labour: The Gem-Cutting Industry in Rural South India

Article

Apr 1995

Karin Kapadia

The system of debt bondage in the gem‐cutting industry of South India is considered. Evidence is examined from intensive field work in villages in Tamilnadu, and one large village in particular, which has been a major centre in the synthetic gem‐cutting industry for 70 years. It is argued, against various authors, that here bonded labour is not a pre‐capitalist relation of production. Rather, it is part of a dynamic, capitalist small‐scale industry that is rapidly expanding into global markets. Moreover, since 1990 a dramatic change is noted in part of the industry: the introduction of semiautomatic machinery, with which a new product (the American diamond) is made. This has led, inter alia, to the displacement of women workers. The profits earned by employers, the nature of relations between employers and workers, and especially the use of kinship ideology, and the relevant inter‐connections are explored.

From Gin Girls to Scavengers: Women in Raniganj Collieries

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