Economic and Political Weekly November 3, 2001 4213

IIntroduction

Coal mining in India carried a symbolic significance at one time. Itrepresented the new modern

economy that began to flourish in Bengalduring the British rule. It fuelled the enginesof not only the Raj steamships but also theNehruvian model of postcolonial industri-alisation in India [Chakrabarty 1992] at ahigh cost to the environmental and socialstability of these resource-rich regions.Like the plantations, collieries manifestalmost all the symptoms of colonialmodernity that descended on feudal eco-nomic relations and production systems:private investment and the involvement ofindigenous capital, import of labour fromother parts of the country to build up areserve of ‘captive labour’, a low level oftechnology, and its nature of a secondaryenclave (described so first by Rothermundand Wadhwa in 1978) meant to serve theprimary metropolitan enclave.

The special feature of coal mining wasthe participation of women workers in thelabour force, initially as part of a familylabour system but also on individual ca-pacity in later stages as certain castes (likethe bauris for example) came to be seenas ‘traditional coal cutters’ by Britishadministrators [Paterson 1910]. Womenminers mostly came from adivasi1 andlower castes traditionally inhabiting [seeRisley 1891 for more on the ethnic region-alisation in Bengal] this sal-forested junglemahal tract of the Radh. Their roles in theresource extraction process were signifi-cant as long as the techniques remainedbasic and labour intensive, and collieries

were surface-bound. The participation ofwomen in mines has declined remarkablyin last three decades of the industry’snationalised existence, and this exclusionhas occurred at the lowest level – thenumbers of white-collar office employeesincluded in the official statistics ongender divisions of coal workers haveprobably increased. Obviously, here is aproblematic that needs looking into; putsimply, who are being excluded? At whosecost? Where are the excluded womengoing?

The participation of local, poor, adivasiand lower caste women in coal mining isnot comparable to the modes in whichwomen in colonial Bengal were exposedto modernity. In Kolkata, women of uppercaste or elite families were learning withthe patronage of both Indian and Englishsocial reformers, how to read and write,and how to interact with men in spacesother than the domestic [Karlekar 1991;1986]. At around the same time in Raniganjcollieries adivasi women were workingshoulder to shoulder with men in com-pletely different circumstances. Standingnoted (1991) that Bengali women, with theexception of a small professional groupfrom the upper class, have conventionallytaken little part in waged work. The sepa-ration of ‘ghar’ and ‘bahir’, the home andthe outside world, was so complete inmiddle class, colonial Bengal [Chatterjee1993] that there not many instances ofwomen working together with men as inthe collieries. On the other hand, theexclusion that is taking place now some-what represents in a microcosm the post-colonial development scenario in whichthe poor and indigenous peoples such

as the adivasis and low ranking castes,and women have remained largely ex-cluded in spite of a multitude of pro-grammes. Exclusion of women workersfrom the coal mines, therefore, has a castedimension.

Cultural identities such as caste andethnicity are inextricably intertwined inIndia with class divisions, a fact thatnecessitated the rethinking of the assump-tion of a singular, monolithic working class[Guha 1982-97; Chakrabarty 1989]. Thecomplexity that gender introduces in thisrelationship have been brought into focusby several experts [Fernandes 1997 forexample]. Decline in the numbers of womenworkers in non-traditional roles outside ofhomes such as that as a miner in collieriesis an interesting problem to study; collieriesare where women had at once interfacedwith men, with overlapping spheres ofactivities. From gin girls to scavengers hasbeen a declining trajectory for the statusof women miners. Tracing that path bringsout how the state and international agen-cies, aided by a rigidly patriarchal statehave worked together in defining a placefor women in a gendered resource economy.This place is at a lower level, secondaryto the needs and struggles of men, in Indiancollieries.

Mining is widely perceived as a uniquelymale world where the separation of menand women’s lives is virtually total[McDowell and Massey 1984]. It is be-lieved to be a dangerous, dirty, risky andhazardous job in which men go down themines everyday to earn bread for theirfamilies, endangering their lives, andsharing risks that contribute to a particularform of male solidarity and also endow the

From Gin Girls to ScavengersWomen in Raniganj Collieries

In the beginning, the coal mining industry employed women from the adivasi and lower castecommunities 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. Theexpansion 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 describeshow the work of resource extraction becomes gendered, the growing marginalisation of

women, and their increasing alienation from access to environmental resources and theirtransformation into illegitimate and invisible beings.

KUNTALA LAHIRI-DUTT

Economic and Political Weekly November 3, 20014214

manual labour with attributes of mascu-linity. The unequal economic and socialrelationships between men and womenimposed by the social organisation ofmining increase the subordinate positionof women in collieries both directly andindirectly.

In this paper I am trying to understandhow the natural resource extraction pro-cess becomes gendered in the first place,what happens when women find them-selves excluded from the mainstreameconomy, how difficult their survivalbecomes in the face of a rapidly deterio-rating environment denying them accessto the basic resources, and how the pre-vailing perceptions about men andwomen’s spheres of work held by theInternational Labour Organisation (ILO),the trade unions and the state creategender polarisation at home and in theworkplace. This paper describes the exclu-sion of women from the coal miningindustry in trying to unravel the relation-ships between the various social, economicand political factors operating in produc-ing this exclusion.

The research presented here was doneover a period of seven years between 1993-2000 during which two other researchprojects funded by the environment andforests ministry, government of India, werecarried out on the region. These projectsinvolved repeated and extended visits tothe coal mining and other settlements inRaniganj, meetings with the trade unionleaders, mine managers, workers and theirfamilies, and other local women. Repeatedinterviews provided important insights intowomen’s subjective experience of local-level environmental changes. Besides thisinterview material, I have used historicalinformation from printed sources avail-able in libraries as well as with individuals.Statistics from census reports were con-sulted as well as data from EasternCoalfields Limited (ECL) and Coal IndiaLimited (CIL) – the government compa-nies in charge of mining in the region –and other actors in the industry such asdirectorate general of mines safety (DGMS)and the trade unions.

Official data usually club all women inthe industry as one group leading to prob-lems of understanding the nature of theirjobs; so it was not of much help. In coalmining, as I have shown here, a specificgroup of women participated traditionally;exclusion means these women are beingdenied a role in the production process;not the urban, educated, middle class

women clubbed together in official dataas ‘women workers in the mining sector’.Above all, I have described how themarginalised poor adivasi woman hasbecome invisible to policy-makers as theabsence of alternative means of livelihoodin a viable environment has forced theminto scavenging and hence turned theminto illegitimate people. I emphasise thatthe increasing marginalisation of womenminers in the post-colonial or the post-nationalisation period has to be seen be-yond the economic changes taking placewithin the country or the industry. It hasto be put in the specific regional historicalperspective and examined in terms of thechanges occurring in that context. Theexclusion of women miners and the trans-formation of the labour force into apredominantly male, immigrant work-ing class represents a gender politics.National and international discoursesproduced by the state, ILO and the tradeunions tend to conceptualise ‘the workingclass’ as a unitary category transcendingboth cultural and gender differences,and they juxtapose this unitary conceptionto the ‘special interests’ of women work-ers to protect them from what they see asa job for men. Marginalisation from theformal sector also has a long-drawnimpact on the livelihoods of women, asin mining regions the environmental per-formance of the India state has usuallybeen abysmal. A deterioration and de-cay in the subsistence resources even-tually denies basic survival opportuni-ties to the poorer women [Parpart 1995;Venkateswaran 1995].

The research concentrates on a specificregion – the Raniganj coalbelt which is theoldest coal mining region located in theBurdwan district of West Bengal about250 km northwest of metropolitan Calcutta.Mining in this old colliery region is stillalmost the only livelihood provider amongmany dying industries, overcrowding,decaying agriculture and severe environ-mental problems such as land subsidencesand surface and subsurface coalfires. Ithas a high level of urbanisation – above67 per cent of its population live in some38 mining towns and other urban centresof various sizes [Lahiri-Dutt 1996]. Theregion received massive governmentinvestments since the Second Five-Yearplan period and there were hopes that itwould be transformed into ‘the Ruhr ofIndia’ [Chaudhuri 1971]. However, noneof the industries set up by the governmenthas been quite successful and the region

now suffers from a chronic high un-employment.

IICoal Mines of Raniganj

Coal mining in India until independencetook place almost entirely in eastern India.The history of coal mining in Raniganj,particularly in the early days of the indus-try, is synonymous with the way moderndevelopment has unfolded its trajectory inIndia. Local folk tales tell of a river-borneexchange trade of salt and coal betweenthe Bengal plain and coast, and the Radhregion of Raniganj. However, the need forfuelling the industrial-urban engine duringthe British Raj and later a ‘planned’economy of India actually gave rise tocollieries. Raniganj, with its counterpartJharia in Bihar, had been the only supplierof coal in India for about 100 years sincecoal was first struck by Suetonius GrantHeatley and John Summer, two employeesof the East India Company in 1774. Theyworked on six mines, three of which wereat Chinakuri, Aituria and Damodar – alllocated well within the Raniganj coalbelt.Initially the Company showed little inter-est in further exploiting the potential ofcoal mining in India [Akhauri 1969]. Somuch was the reluctance that Heatley waseven transferred – a rather common colo-nial instrument of punishment – to a re-mote district to discourage his mining en-thusiasm.

Coal mining in Raniganj remained spo-radic in nature as long as it was not realisedthat instead of transporting British coalto India by steamships, it is economicalto extract this resource in India itself[Murty and Panda 1988]. This simpleeconomics generated much enthusiasmin opening new collieries at random. TheBritish emerged as the main investorswhen by the second part of 19th centurycoal mining picked up in the region.Transport to the main market in Calcuttawas difficult as it depended on the Damodarand Ajoy, both seasonal rivers with lownavigability and tendency to monsoonalflooding. The name ‘Koilaghat’ (coalpoint) in Calcutta strand still testifies tocoal transport by rivers from the Raniganjregion.

Three factors provided the initial stimulifor growth of coal mining industry – theabolition of East India Company’s tradingmonopoly in 1813; opening of the Raniganjmine under European supervision; and theintroduction of railways in 1855 [Munsi

Economic and Political Weekly November 3, 2001 4215

1980] to facilitate coal transport to themarket in Calcutta.

By the time of Hunter’s famous visit tothe region it was ‘practically treeless’[Hunter 1872, reprinted in 1973], and achange in the region’s social fabric hadbecome notable. Indigenous entrepreneurseventually came to dominate coal produc-tion; as many as 13 of the 17 companieswere owned by Indian operators in earlypart of the 20th century [Bhattacharyya1985]. Prince Dwarkanath Tagore’s Carr,Tagore and Company was merged withGilmore Humfrey and Co to form theBengal Coal Company that soon becamethe largest operator. In 1860, the 50collieries of Bengal Coal Company pro-duced 99 per cent of Indian coal. The lowlevels of technology and capital invest-ment ensured that local zamindars2 couldmake an easy entry into the industry[Rothermund and Wadhwa 1978]. As mineowners concentrated on underground re-sources, and left the surface cultivationrights to local people, there were fewerconflicts with agriculture than at present,and instances of displacement from land-based occupations were fewer.

The land laws of India gradually beganto change so that the mining companiesstarted to gain control of both surface andsub-surface rights of the land as operationsbecame much larger in size in the early20th century [Manindra 1946]. As long ascoal mining was ‘extensive’ in nature,technology did not undergo any decisivechanges, the units of production did notgrow in size, and mines of similar sizewere added to each other to increase pro-duction, women miners continued to takea significant role in the industry.

The coal mining industry was broughtunder state ownership in several phasesduring 1971-73 [Kumarmangalam 1973].The private owners were given compen-sation and expelled from ownership, butthe labour relationship they had institutedcontinued in the collieries. All mineralswere classified into two categories – majorand minor, and all major minerals includ-ing coal were brought under state control.India is now the third largest coal producerof the world with an annual production ofabout 299 million tons which is about 68per cent of total energy resources of thecountry [Coal 1999]. The entire coal miningindustry was put under the umbrellaorganisation Coal India Limited (CIL). Ofits several regional subsidiaries, thecollieries of the Eastern Coalfields Lim-ited (ECL, controlling the Raniganj

collieries) had the largest number of womenminers.

IIIGin Girls

The term ‘gin girls’ reminds one of atechnology of coal production that existedin the early days of the industry. Till theearly part of 20th century, shafts weresunk every few hundred feet and quarrieswere often opened below the high watermark whenever an outcrop was found neara waterway. The mining appliances, toolsand methods were simple. For examplecoal was brought from the face to pit bottomin head baskets, usually by women. Thereit was put into larger baskets (6-7 maundor about 250 kg) and wound to the surfaceby a winding engine, called a ‘gin’ (anabbreviation also used in other industriessuch as cotton). Women worked the ‘gins’,sometimes in groups of more than 20.Small ‘beam’ engines were occasionallyemployed to do the combined work ofpumping and winding and were mannedby three women. Steel tipped curved piecesof iron were used as picks with bluntwedges and hammers and one inch roundcrowbars.

Around 1920s, women miners wereemployed in a variety of operations incollieries. As steam engines ‘phased out’gin girls, and collieries came to be ownedby Indian entrepreneurs, women ended upworking as kamins on surface as well asin underground mines. However, eventu-ally women workers got large-scale em-ployment as ‘loaders’ who lifted and trans-ported the coal cut by their male partners– father, brother or husband [RoyChaudhuri 1996]. This ‘family labour’system was suitable in view of the primi-tive techniques used in the shallow opencast mines, locally called ‘pukuriya khads’as well as the inclines.

The technology of coal production inIndia began to change in response to greaterdemands by 1920s. This meant the re-placement of open cast mines by deepershafts, which were considered ‘unsuitable’for women. This technological shift andresultant exclusion of women workers tookplace at several scales; at the internationallevel by several ILO measures – the 1919Convention on Night Work (Women), the1935 Convention on Underground Work(Women) – restricted women workers fromworking in both shifts and from workingin underground mines [ILO 1999, 1997,1996, 1988]. At the national level, the

Indian Mines Act, initiated first in 1901,restricted the age of employment of chil-dren in mines. In 1929 and finally in 1935the Mines Act entirely prohibited com-pany owners to employ women in under-ground work. Such orders were issuedagain in 1946, and then a complete banin 1952 that stated that women miners willbe employed only in surface work duringthe day shifts [Coal Handbook 1997].These acts restricted the period of workfrom 16 to 12 to 10 and eventually 8 forunderground workers and 9 for surfaceworkers. The acts/measures were presentedas a means of ‘protecting’ women froman unsafe job such as mining. The stateassumed its traditional benevolent rolethrough its commitment to the protectionof women. The legislation tell us thatwomen miners were perceived by the stateas one group that needs to be ‘protected’from the hazardous mining work. However,they had the impact of reducing women’swork participation; in 1901 women formedabout 48 per cent to total mineworkers inRaniganj. Of these women, 65 per centworked in underground collieries. Theproportion remained more or less thesame till 1921 (38 and 60 per cent onsurface and underground, respectively).The proportion of women miners decreasedfrom such high levels to around 20 percentin postcolonial India.

The data in Table I show that the par-ticipation of women in collieries wassomewhat significant till about 1930s.

The second world war provided exigen-cies that forced the mining companies toflout these acts/measures and womencontinued to be employed in large num-bers in production to meet wartime de-mands. However, the net effect was thatwomen became ‘unofficial’ employees, asthere are very few quantitative data avail-able on their participation during this time.The period between 1947-71 is anotherhazy area with regard to official statistics;

Table 1: Proportion of Women Workersin Eastern Indian Collieries(1901-96)

Year Female Male Percentage ofFemale to Total

1901 26,520 55,682 47.61921 70,831 115,982 61.11935 67,899 122,454 55.51951 45,668 128,936 35.41961 41,457 134,928 30.71973 31,181 138.587 22.51980 16,094 169,136 9.71990 12,875 165,829 7.21996 9,879 151,855 6.1

Source: Compiled from Seth (1940), DGMS andECL Reports.

Economic and Political Weekly November 3, 20014216

this was the period of ‘company’ raj whenlocal and non-local entrepreneurs had re-placed local zamindar-owners in manyRaniganj collieries. The feudal relation-ship between labour and colliery-ownerswas transformed into a more cash-orientedrelationship, and the mining companies’primary objective became to increaseproduction at any cost to supplement theindustrial dreams of planned developmentof modern India.

The image of the coal worker invokedby both the state and trade unions is in-variably a masculine one. Women havebecome invisible, persona non grata in thecoal mining industry. Their role has de-clined at an alarming rate during the lasttwo and a half decades under the state-ownership of coal mining industry. Duringthis period the Indian coal mining industryhas been characterised by two trends –increasing mechanisation to improve pro-duction through technologies such asdragline and shovel for the open cast minesand longwall for underground mines, andincreased thrust on open cast mining tocompensate for what CIL perceives as loss-making underground mines [Lahiri-Dutt

1999a]. The new technologies have notbeen developed indigenously. Many ofthe newly opened mechanised mines areusually worked with foreign assistance –both financial and technical. The conven-tional board and pillar system of miningstill accounts for 95 per cent of the un-derground production in Raniganj. Withsuch developments as shaft-sinking techno-logy, deployment of longwall and otherheavy capital equipment underground,and the introduction of dragline-basedopen cast mining, women have been as-signed mostly unskilled tasks, whereasthere has been no attempt to impart train-ing and skills so as to enable them toadjust to the reorganisation of work. Womennow occupy a marginal position in theIndian coal industry because they havebeen made redundant in the labour process[Ghosh 1984].

IVFamily Labour and Women

When Heatley opened his first minein 1774, he had invited experts fromEngland besides employing the local labour.

William Jones, one of the British entre-preneurs to invest in coal mining, was thefirst to employ local adivasi and lowercaste labour around the middle of 19thcentury. So easily were they absorbed intheir new occupations that the Britishadministrator of Burdwan district, Paterson,reported in 1910 in the Imperial Gazetteerthat two-thirds of the total workforce inthe mining industry was ‘locally born’. Ofthe different local adivasis, the bauris werethe first to bring their women into thecollieries and their contribution in the earlydevelopment of Indian coal mining indus-try was quite significant. The santhals,kols, koras and bhuinyas also joined themining workforce along with their women.These are the people that are at the bottomof a caste divided society – mostly lowercaste groups and adivasis who were beingsucked into the mainstream colonialeconomy and society through the coalmining industry. Upper caste womenusually stayed away from the colliery work.

Women of different local castes andcommunities participated in varying pro-portions in coal mining as seen fromTable 2.

Civic Professionalism and Global Regionalism:Civic Professionalism and Global Regionalism:Civic Professionalism and Global Regionalism:Civic Professionalism and Global Regionalism:Civic Professionalism and Global Regionalism:Justice, Sustainability and the ‘Scaling up’Justice, Sustainability and the ‘Scaling up’Justice, Sustainability and the ‘Scaling up’Justice, Sustainability and the ‘Scaling up’Justice, Sustainability and the ‘Scaling up’

of Community Participationof Community Participationof Community Participationof Community Participationof Community Participation

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Economic and Political Weekly November 3, 2001 4217

To British visitors A A Purcell and JHollsworth (as mentioned in Sinha, 1975)such family labour systems appeared en-tirely ‘different’ from that ‘in our collieries’where miners had already organised as anindustrial working class. Collectively,Indian coal miners still had rather strongtraditional rural roots and occupationalloyalties. The local adivasi and semi-adivasilabour often used to leave the collieriesduring the rains to work in the agriculturalfields, and this interfered with miningoperations. In addition, there was theadivasi’s love for freedom (that is oftennot mentioned in such studies, for ex-ample, see Read, 1931). In spite of work-ing as miners, the adivasis never alliedwith the British in the empire buildingproject and hence periodically withdrewfrom collieries.

The family system of labour operatedwell for several social reasons too – theadivasi sentiments of family attachment,and the unwillingness of women to carrycoal for men of another caste. Above all,the dominant economic reason was thatit provided uninterrupted maintenanceof work schedule. Trade unions believethat the system was an exploitative one;as women as one single unit of productiondid not receive equal wages to men.

Collieries began to employ ‘upcountrylabour’ (normally originating out of twosimultaneous migrations – one from thewestern districts of Bihar, Gaya, Patna,Sahabad, Saran and Muzaffarpur whilethe other from the adjoining easterndistricts of United Province – later UttarPradesh – such as Azamgarh, Balia,Ghazipur, Benaras, Jaunpur and Bilaspur)to create their own captive workforce.Thekadars (contractors) brought hard-working able-bodied males from easternUttar Pradesh, Bihar and even MadhyaPradesh. Intra-state voluntary migrationwas initially comparatively smaller involume, possibly due to the ravages leftby frequent bargi (Maratha raiders) attacksfrom the western states of India [Guha1955]. A statutory body called the CoalfieldRecruiting Organisation (CRO) was intro-duced to maintain, often forcibly, the supplyof labour to the mines [Mahindra 1946].Tales of how labourers were kept in chainsin the coolie-barracks have now becomepart of the folklore in Raniganj. Work wasat least for 12 hours and cash wages couldnever compensate for a kind of work thatthese agricultural people could neveridentify with. Many of the upcountry labourleft the mines after their 11 month contract

period never to come back. Paku Mejhen,whose Santhal adivasi ancestors had livedin the region for generations, remembershow ‘Bilaspuris’ and ‘Gorakhpuris’ (labourfrom Bilaspur in Central Province andGorakhpur in north India) were brought into work in collieries and kept in ‘labourdepots’. The manager used to send thesardar (leader of workers, a foreman) toa depot to get a few additional hands assoon as there was a labour shortage. TheCRO received commission from the com-panies in return of labour supply.Gorakhpuris, of course, began to perma-nently live in Raniganj as working con-ditions began to improve in post-colonialtimes when trade unions began to wieldtheir full weight. Paku calls each cooliedhaora by its cultural name even now; toher it is always a santhal bastee, kora,nunia, Gorakhpuri or a Central Province(CP) dhaora. Most of the adivasis, how-ever, responded to the import of migrantlabourer by leaving the collieries to workin plantations in North Bengal or Assam.Gradually a large segment of the workersin the collieries become typically immi-grant and male, caste Hindus from northor central India. Some adivasi women likePaku’s grandmother still carried on, thoughtheir contribution in the resource extrac-tion process was increasingly being deval-ued in more ways than one.

Another major factor of the exodus ofadivasi labour was the introduction ofnew technology. The changeover fromopencast and inclines to shaft or pit miningafter 1920s required far greater initialcapital investment and consequently, theinterests of the colliery owners to securea stable and skilled labour force grew con-siderably. In the capitalist productionprocess that collieries adopted, localadivasis with their first commitment toland were not considered by mine-ownersas a stable and dependable labour force.However, instead of encouraging the dis-sociation of land and labour, the ‘compa-nies’ tried to maintain a semi-feudalzamindari style of functioning, and adopteda recruitment policy with the objective ofoffering a homestead to captive laboursupply. The colliery workers, like otherrural-based workers in Indian industries(see for example, De Haan and Sen, 1999for more discussions on the culturalrootedness of industrial labour force inBengal) neither economically nor ethni-cally belonged to the same class. Thewithdrawal of adivasi labour from Indiancollieries during late 19th and early 20th

century proves the fact. It also indicateshow changing techniques of production aswell as changing production relationsaltered the social-ethnic composition oflabour in collieries. When the state itselfbecame the owner of resource extraction,its labour policy did not undergo signifi-cant changes from the ‘company’ owners.Trade unions – there are at least sixrecognised unions operating in the Raniganjregion now – were delighted at the timeof nationalisation but they too soon settledin their new role of bargainer with the state,apparently oblivious of subtle nuances ofcaste and gender in the workforce.

There are many accounts of coal miningin Raniganj in colonial records. One suchwas written in 1915 by Colond Frank JAgabeg, the general manager of Apcar andCompany, the pioneering coal miningconcern in the Raniganj region. He de-scribed how Asansol, now a major urbancentre, had then just started to developand Raniganj was the most importantmining town. Barakar town was the westernterminus for the East Indian Railway,whereas Ondal had a large railway siding.Collieries located at a distance from therailway transported their coal by bullockcarts across dirt tracks. Only those adja-cent to the railway lines had sidings forloading and unloading of coal. The costof such infrastructure construction wasborne by the companies themselves. TheBengal-Nagpur Railway eventually ex-tended the subsidiary lines to the lessaccessible collieries and thus an intricatenetwork of ‘company lines’ grew up inRaniganj.

What was the view from below? Pakudescribes the hierarchical colliery life whichplaced women workers like her greatgrandmother at the bottom:

In the colliery, managershaheb was theboss. Borobabu was under him, translatedhis instructions and in case of any troublecontrolled the situation. The manager-shaheb would shout, ‘borobabuko bulao’

Table 2: Ethnic Division of WomenMiners in Raniganj, between the Wars

Castes Women/100 Castes Women/100 MenMen of Their of Their Caste

Casts

Doms 111.0 Kurmis 67.5Jolahs 59.4 Bauris 55.8Mallahs 79.5 Rajputs 27.2Beldars 102.0 Goalas 24.5Santhals 87.9 Telis 45.5Bhuiyas 80.1

Source: Seth (1940), p. 129.

Economic and Political Weekly November 3, 20014218

(call the borobabu)! Gomostababu man-aged the coolleys and kamins, gudambabulooked after the store, hazribabu tookattendance, loadingbabu supervised coalloading, and batibabu distributed the lights.We santhals did all the dirty and heavy jobs– our men cut the coal and women loadedit in baskets. We grew up on collieries; inour family my great grandmother was thefirst to go into the khadan with my greatgrandfather.

Later, more babus (clerks) came tooccupy middle-positions between themalkata (coal cutters) and the manager incollieries. The bijlibabu for instance ap-peared with the advent of electricity incollieries before the second world war.So came compassbabu (surveyor),miningbabu and inchajbabu (in-charge).This structure has remained more or lessunchanged till now excepting the factthat some white collar jobs have comeup for women in colliery offices. Men nowoperate the machines that have replacedwomen workers from surface and under-ground jobs, and there have been very fewattempts to impart technical skills to thewoman who enters the collieries as ‘com-pensation’ cases after the death of thehusband.

VInto Scavengers: Women and

Resources

Each change in production technologywithin the industry also had a genderimpact: the changes effectively excludedand marginalised women, the extent of ex-clusion depending on how men’s interests,needs and hopes are disproportionatelyrepresented.3 Therefore, the impacts oftechnology changes have been experienceddifferently by women than men in collieries.Since much of these changes was notautonomous and used indiscriminatelywithout paying attention to its suitabilityto the region [Lahiri-Dutt 1999b], theyhave failed to stimulate other sectors ofthe regional economy. On the other hand,the obsession with the import of techno-logical input has had major impacts on theregional environment and destroyed thenatural resource bases and the livelihoodsources of poorer, rural communities. Theabsence of opportunities in other sectorsof the economy in mining regions such asRaniganj, especially the loss of commonsand the decline in agriculture, have furtheraffected women. In Raniganj, women’sbanishment from the male world of ‘work’

has in several ways excluded them entirelyfrom the power to determine their ownlives. Three factors have contributed in thedifferential gender impact of coal produc-tion: gender segregation in the workplace,the less secure and more sporadic formsof employment relations which exist forwomen workers, and the very nature oftechnology as a social relation which isnecessarily conditioned by gender rela-tions. Women still participate in mining,including coal mining, in India and else-where in the world, but their roles remainsignificant as long as the resource processremains low-technology. In the Raniganjregion, the introduction of undergroundmining restricted women to surface work,machines restricted them to unskilled work,the process of mechanisation generallyreduced their opportunities in the coalmining sector, and a degraded environ-ment truncated the alternative subsis-tence bases in agriculture, forestry, fish-ing and such other primary productionswhich have traditionally provided em-ployment to local women.

Sitting in her ‘rehabilitation’ home AduriRuidas, an evictee, a person displaced bythe World Bank-aided large open castproject at Sonepur Bazaari, was talking tome. She explained in a few words how awoman becomes a scavenger.

When the mining company takes the landon lease, it pays compensation to the ownerof the land, and gives them jobs too. Noone pays attention to what happens topeople like us who had worked on thatland. Who collected the twigs and branchesand fruits from the bagan (orchards)? Whoused the ponds for our daily water needs?Not only the owner of the land but we too.What will happen to us? What use do haveof a brick house? Shall we eat it?

The trade unions have come a long wayin the Raniganj region from the old daysof long working hours, lack of security andfrightful conditions as described by Dange(in 1945). They have indeed earned for theworkers many benefits they presently enjoy,and have in turn made getting a job incollieries a highly attractive proposition –far better than what was described by thegovernment of India in a 1967 surveyreport on labour conditions. Instead oftreating ‘family’ as a unit of productionto devalue women’s work, trade unionshave earned equal wages for women andmen in mining work. Ensuring that a widowgets the job of her deceased husband oncompassionate grounds was also theachievement of trade unions.

However, the trade unions have remainedinsensitive to either the declining numbersof women workers in collieries or the factthat this exclusion means a certain groupof women are left out. As institutions theyare male-dominated and, while some tradeunions have added women-related is-sues to their ‘list of workers’ demands’,their policies have not placed women atthe forefront of these agendas. Womenworkers are thus excluded at the level ofleadership and policy, and even if womenare members they are discouraged toparticipate in union meetings. The beliefin a monolithic working class is shared byall trade unions whether leftist or not,subsuming gender issues within class in-terests. This is neither surprising norunusual; McDowell and Massey (1994)have showed how in the colliery settle-ments of Durham, England, gender seg-regation in the coal mining industry hadled men to view themselves as industrialproletariat but enjoying the ownership oftheir home.4

Union activity in India has been de-scribed as being shaped by a gendereddiscourse that looks at women as a ‘spe-cial’ category externalised from the gen-eral interests of workers [Basu 1992]. InRaniganj too, the Colliery Majdoor Sabhatakes pride in their mass movements andhow women ‘participate’ in these move-ments, but it never goes beyond that. Theactive participation of women in leadingor key roles in trade unions has not alwaysbeen welcomed by male trade unionists inother sectors [Akerkar 1995]. Mining is anoverwhelmingly male world in terms ofpower and domination; men are perceivedto be risking their lives to earn the breadfor their families. Labour leaders arevociferous that the family wage systemwas more exploitative; but generally refuseto engage in a debate on the decliningnumbers of women in the collieries. Asenior union leader noted during an inter-view: ‘in a poor country like ours, let menget the jobs first’, reflecting the conven-tional wisdom that since ‘important’ eco-nomic problems such as mass labourretrenchment, mine closures and lossesdue to lack of productivity are intense, adebate on the position of women workerscan only be of secondary significance.Women’s right to work is also compro-mised by the voluntary retirement scheme(VRS) which is used to get rid of ‘redun-dant’ workers.

In India the displacement of women fromthe industrial workforce and the subse-

Economic and Political Weekly November 3, 2001 4219

quent construction of a male working classhas not been limited to the coal-miningsector only. Jhabvala first showed in 1985how retrenched women workers fromcotton mills of Ahmedabad in west Indiawere pushed into lower paying and inse-cure jobs. Banerjee (1991, 1992) too notedthe lack of political protection of womenby unions. Baud (1991) has demonstratedthat in case of women workers in theCoimbatore textile industry in south India,gender segregation is most marked in themill sector where regulation and trade unionactivity is more evident. In coal miningtoo, trade unions are less responsive towomen workers than their male members’interests. The attitude to the women workersis condescending and in their ‘noble’ effortsto ‘protect’ the weak women, the tradeunions often fail to look after women’sissues and interest in a substantive way.Fernandes (1997, 1999) has shown howthe politics of gender, class and cultureproduces notions about the spheres ofwork of women and men in Calcutta jutemills.

There is not much organised activismamong the women coal miners; protestsremain small, at individual level anddiscontinuous. Political silencing remainsan important factor because of theorganisational strength of the majdoorunions. The militancy of the trade unions,at least three of them being avowed Marxistorganisations, is understandable. The waythe unions perceive their jobs is significanttoo; the term ‘majdoor’ itself denotes amale worker and the occasional cases thatare taken up are indeed seen as specialones. Dulali lost her husband in a wall-collapse accident and applied to the com-pany for her own employment. Here iswhat followed in her words:

I made rounds of colliery offices for twoyears. Finally I went to the union leaderswho insisted that I accept that my elderson may be given the job. Followingtheir advice, I decided in favour of myson and now I hardly get two square mealsa day.

Her son has now deserted her and shelives by what she describes as ‘collectingcoal’ from an old abandoned mine. Thecompany, supposedly had stowed theunderground mine with sand and sealedit off. Now local people have broken offthe seals and, finding that much coal is stillleft there and no sand has been stowed,are scavenging on it. Dulali is one of them.After deliberating in her mind for a longtime when I asked why women like her

do not protest about the union’s reluctanceto entertain them, she said, “we are alwaysready for action, but first think beforeshouting. If the leaders are enraged, wewill be in big trouble. So we keep quiet”.When I probed further, she said, “Lookat Prakashbabu (the local trade unionleader) – he is just like other babus incolliery. How can he look after my inter-est?” What we have here is a double doseof exclusion, and a chain reaction of impactsthat multiply and accelerate to immenseproportions.

Not surprisingly, the only patronisinginitiative came from the establishmentitself. In 1997, Coal India encouraged theformation of an organisation called‘Women in Public Sector’ (WIPS) with theobjective of optimising the full potentialof its women employees and to play acatalytic role in improving the status ofwomen. However, the organisation is acity-based one with white-collar womenworkers. It has so far limited itself in holdingacademic seminars instead of establishinga dialogue with the trade unions and thecolliery management. Women miners whowork in collieries are not represented atall in this organisation. Moreover, themining industry has so far not taken anyserious initiative to identify the technicaljob areas where women could be employedor trained.

The state measures reflect a compart-mentalisation of the issue of women miners[Gibson-Graham 1994]. The various pro-tective legislation developed for womenminers, though probably designed toimprove their working conditions, haveacted as instruments to exclude them fromthe formal mining sector. The nationalisedcompany has been unwilling to recruitwomen because of their special and pro-tected status on the one hand, and on theother hand the legislation has not includedany means for the protection of employ-ment opportunities and job security. Thusthe special biological attributes of womenhave been at the centre of concern by the‘protectors’ rather than against discrimi-nation due to cultural, social and economicfactors [Pathak and Rajan 1992]. As aresult, women of those ethnic groupsthat traditionally did mining jobs – usuallythe most disadvantaged of the lot – havebeen most affected than white-collarworkers.

The exclusion of women miners bringsout how an ideology of ‘protection’ con-tinues to dominate women’s active role innatural resource management. The sepa-

ration of ‘home’ and the ‘workplace’ isnow complete in the Raniganj collieries.Women are protected within the family,work being a mode of access to a publicspace, a forum for combative actions toensure equal rights. But are they, in reality?What happens after they have been pro-tected from the dirty, dangerous miningjobs?

VIChanges in Resource Base

and Gender

Mining by its very nature is an unsus-tainable activity from the ecological pointof view. Mining in India is also unsustain-able economically; if environmental costsare taken into account, even the mostproductive of mines would not seem ter-ribly attractive. That in spite of the exist-ence of innumerable laws and measures tomonitor, mining in India completely altersand destroys the local ecology has beenproven by innumerable studies [see Dharand Thakur 1995 for a sample]. The overallenvironmental impacts of mining areuniformly detrimental and its human con-sequences especially in terms of displace-ment of social groups either from tradi-tional homes or from traditional occu-pations leave much to be desired. Thechanging subsistence base constitutesanother driving force behind the transfor-mation of women’s lives in Raniganj. Suchchanges often have negative effects onwomen from the point of view of alterna-tive work in a degraded environment[Emberson-Bain 1994; Shiva 1989; Jose1989; Tauli-Corpuz 1988]. An entire rangeof issues are, therefore, connected to theexclusion of women from resource extrac-tion activity – the state and the rights ofindigenous people, state policies regard-ing land transfer, and the rights of localcommunities over environmental andcommon pool resources.

In Raniganj, the state (through thenationalised mining company) is thelargest landowner and the largest employer,besides having the ownership of all naturalresources within its territory. As the paceof coal mining increased since 1970s,open casts expanded and newer collieriesopened, a rapid rate of ecological destruc-tion took place. The specific historicalpattern of mining expansion in the Raniganjmeant that there are innumerable under-ground voids at unknown locations.Since it is a densely populated andurbanised area, land subsidence, coal seam

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fires, desiccation of vegetation and afalling water table are the main environ-mental concerns. These are related to live-lihood resources of women of poor ruralcommunities.

What is seen here is a classic exampleof feminisation of poverty, when ‘deve-lopment’ itself brings about that poverty[Lebra, Paulson and Everett 1984;Mazumdar 1978]. Rural women inRaniganj have traditionally found employ-ment in agriculture-related jobs. A decay-ing agricultural base and falling groundwater tables, lack of wood, fuel, fruitsand other subsistence resources whichwere usually collected from the villagecommons, and near-absence of oppor-tunities in this mono-industrial regionhave combined together to completelyalienate poor adivasi and lower castewomen from the formal mining sector.This sector absorbs women at the lower-most strata in low-paying jobs such asmanual labourers in the construction works,various small factories, brick-kilns, stone-crushing units, as rag-pickers and as do-mestic help, as sex-workers catering totruck-drivers, and as workers in the flour-ishing unauthorised coal mining and trade.The family is no longer a valid unit ofproduction; the family and the factory areof no consequence to each other, and mayeven have contradictory interests. The resultis a lowered, powerless status for womenwho continue to get drawn to the main-stream mining-urban-industrial economyat the lowest level as unskilled, low-paid,high-risk, illegal workers, while taking thefull brunt of environmental degradation[Lahiri-Dutt 1999c].

Rothermund and Wadhwa (1978) noteda decline of agriculture albeit of a differenttype at pre-nationalisation times –zamindars squandering money, inter-mediaries and moneylenders benefitingfrom the wealth derived from agriculture,and the peasant at the subsistence levelunable to produce enough food formarket transactions. In the last threedecades of rapid expansion of mining adecay in agriculture has began to ravagethe region’s poor peasantry, a decay re-lated to environmental impacts of wide-spread mining and inadequate policing bythe state in enforcing good environmentalpractices. However, the deterioration ofthe natural resource base has affected eventhose rural women who were never di-rectly engaged in coal mining industry.Agriculture, the traditional activity thatwomen could fall back upon, has more or

less decayed over the last two and a halfdecades under state-ownership of thecollieries. Much of the cultivation thatone sees is actually on colliery-ownedland and is again another form of ‘illegal’activity like the scavenging for coal thatgoes on in old abandoned undergroundand open cast mines, and on privatelyowned land.

The past two decades have seen a globalrethinking on what constitutes ‘develop-ment’. In coal mining in India, develop-ment is state development. As the bound-aries between public and private spheres,of cash/wage work and family/household,are created or redefined in the course ofdevelopment, what are the implications forwomen in the resource process? What isthe role of the state in defining the chang-ing boundaries between public and privateand how susceptible are these boundariesto state control [Charlton, Everett andStaudt 1989]? We saw that for womenminers the enhancement of state controlover mining has not offered greater oppor-tunities than before. We have also revealedthe contradictory positions of the Indianstate with regard to gender relations incollieries. Through its laws of protectionand welfare, and then exclusion fromlivelihood bases, the state simultaneouslyreproduces and endangers the gender-based division of the public and privatespheres. In this way contradictions andinconsistencies in respect to genderissues become ingrained within the natureof development.

Notes[A previous version of this paper was presentedas a Working Paper at the Resource Managementof Asia Pacific Project, Research School of AsiaPacific Studies, The Australian NationalUniversity, where I was a Visiting Fellow. I thankthese institutions for giving me an opportunity toexplore beyond the disciplinary space ofGeography. I deeply acknowledge my intellectualdebt to Katherine Gibson, professor of HumanGeography, at The Australian National University.She suggested the title of the paper and many otherchanges, that I hope to have incorporated. Closerhome, I would like to thank Sunil Basu Roy andHaradhan Roy of Asansol and Raniganj towns,respectively, and Mr Joydeb Banerjee of EasternCoalfields for sharing with me their vast knowledgeabout the collieries of the region and its workers.In the department, I would like to thank Ms IraGhosh for her assistance.]

1 I prefer to use the term adivasi meaning originalinhabitants over other names for subalterngroupings of indigenous populations of Indiathat include tribals, untouchables, dalits andharijans. Recently, Mendelsohn and Vicziany(1998) have retained the original term,

‘untouchables’, in their study arguing that bothharijan and dalit are more political namesfor a creature whose identity continues tobe rooted in the concept of ritual pollution thatis itself a part of a very elaborate theology ofthe pure and the impure. I have used adivasithroughout this paper to mean the scheduledtribes of the region as identified by theConstitution of India.

2 The zamindars of Burdwan unlike those of theother districts, survived with an amazing degreeof resilience and was able to make thechangeover from the old zamindari system tothe new order commonly known as permanentsettlement and introduced by Lord Cornwallisin 1793 with but a few cuts and scratches.While other zamindars also played the samegame, the Burdwan raj initiated the process,almost perfected the structure before otherscould even collectively conceive of it. Therefore,the Burdwan raj model of subinfeudation underpermanent settlement has been described as suigeneris, the best specimen, the leading speciesof what developed to be a large genus[Bhattacharyya 1985]. Major changes kepttaking place in Burdwan region during the 19thcentury: a rise in the production, prices andexports of foodgrains; in the rentals; inproduction, prices and exports of each crops;tenancy legislation; coal mines; railwaysexpansion and growth of the market in general;expansion and growth of the market centres;and decay of river-borne trade bringing downa set of older settlements along it with the riseof railways and new urban centres.

3 It is strange how mining is commonly seen asa heavy, masculine job whereas in reality womenhave done the manual jobs more efficientlythan men. In post-industrial Britain for ex-ample, Reverend Eddy (1854) gave a vividdescription where women stood or doubled,often in knee-deep water, in deep and thinshafts of collieries: ‘females submit to labourin places which no man, or even lad could begot to labour in; they work in bad roads, upto their knees in water, in a position nearlydouble; they are below till the last hour ofpregnancy; their limbs and ankles swell, andthey are prematurely brought to the grave, orwhat is worse, a lingering existence.’ A 16-yearold girl working as windlass woman is quotedby Reverend Eddy as saying: ‘we wind up eighthundred loads (a day). Men do not like thewinding. It is too hard work for them.’ How-ever, the self-congratulatory public outcrythat followed in Britain resulted in a doublehardship for women as they were thrown outof employment. Once again petitions wereplaced that women may be restored to theprivilege of working in the mines that theymight not starve. The net result of all this wasthat working conditions for women were notmuch improved, but they entered the minesmore subdued, more at the mercy of the owners,more voiceless.

4 That women and men are treated differently bytrade unions is not quite uncommon. InAustralia, for example, women workers formedtheir own unions as early as 1912. The Harvesterjudgment there was a landmark judgment, whichfixed the wage for women at 54 per cent of thebasic male wage. The basis of this was the

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concept of ‘family wage’ – the notion that menhad to support wife and children whereas womenhad only themselves to support. This hadestablished women as a form of cheap labourbut at the same time given them an ‘unfairadvantage’ [Metcaffe 1987]. As female labourbecomes cheaper, employers respond by tryingto define more and more work as women’swork. Male trade unions in turn defend theirinterests by trying to have women expelledfrom most areas of employment.

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