Growing up in Dhanbad and Jharia in my earliest childhood years, I still recall the distant wails of families whose men were killed and trapped in the coal mines. It was almost an everyday affair. The cries would waft in with the night air across a few kilometres. But these wails did not travel beyond the coal mine region. Hardly any action was taken.
The Chasnala mining disaster of 1975, for instance, which happened near Dhanbad, killed 375 miners. An explosion was followed by flooding.
Bollywood took note. Kaala Patthar, starring Amitabh Bachchan, Shashi Kapoor, Shatrughan Sinha, Rakhi Gulzar and Parveen Babi was made. Utpal Dutt wrote his Bengali play, Kallol, on the mining tragedies. But data tabled in the Lok Sabha showed that 377 workers involved in the mining of coal, minerals and oil were killed in accidents between 2015 and 2017. Of these, 129 deaths happened in 2017, 145 in 2016, and 103 in 2015.
Landslides are another devastating expression of an angry earth. The Malpa landslide of 1998, for instance, wiped away the entire Malpa village in the Pithoragarh district of Uttarakhand in the Kali Valley of Higher Kumaon division. The initial rockfall killed three mules. By the time it ended, 221 people died buried under the earth, including 60 Hindu pilgrims travelling to Tibet as part of the Kailash Mansarovar Yatra. Indian dancer Protima Bedi, mother of actor Pooja Bedi, was among them.
There have been 3,782 major landslides in the seven years leading to 2022, revealed Ministry of Earth Sciences data. with quite a few casualties. Whether it is mules or humans, even tragedies of such scale failed to shake the nation into collective anxiety and mourning, forget action.
That seems to have changed with the Uttarakhand tunnel collapse.
For once, the entire nation was hooked on to the plight of 41 trapped workers from various states inside the Silkyara tunnel in Uttarkashi. As the rescue team painstakingly made their way to the victims, television channels, websites, newspapers and the omnipresent social media started posting minute-by-minute accounts.
It is media and technology, coupled with a growing bullishness about one’s own nation that for the first time one saw Indians attaching so much value to other Indian lives, that too of poor workers. This one, looming tragedy and the gritty rescue brought with it an avalanche of actions, mostly positive. Bharat was hooked and praying, despite the cricket World Cup eating into its attention till a few days ago.
The Opposition by and large steered clear of politicising the accident, except for one tasteless poster by Congress mocking Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav even offered some tips on the rescue.
Minister and former army chief General VK Singh and principal secretary with the PM’s office PK Mishra personally oversaw the rescue at the site.
Rat-hole tunnel diggers — an activity now banned in India — made the last-mile rescue possible and gave the efforts a last, human touch.
Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami met and enquired about the health of rescued workers at the Chinyalisaur Community Health Centre on Wednesday. He handed over relief cheques of Rs 1 lakh each. He ensured that all workers undergo check-ups at AIIMS Rishikesh. Dhami said that the Baukhnag temple will be rebuilt and the tunnels under construction in the hill state will be reviewed.
PM Modi spoke to the rescued workers on the telephone.
The whole episode signalled a changing India where even workers’ lives matter, where a nation prays and swings into action for the underdog as intensely as it lauds the success of its famous and powerful.
Uttarakhand tunnel rescue was India’s First World moment.
Abhijit Majumder is a senior journalist. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
Disclaimer: The feature image previously used in this copy was sourced from PTI feeds, however, it was later learnt that the image was AI-generated. Therefore, News18 has removed it from its platform. News agency PTI has also retracted the picture after the fact-check.
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