An explosion in an illegally operated rat-hole coal mine in Meghalaya’s East Jaintia Hills district killed 18 miners.
About Rat Hole Mining
- Methodology: Rat-hole mining involves excavating narrow horizontal tunnels into hill slopes to manually extract coal.
- Thin Seam Constraint: Coal seams in Meghalaya are thin (around 2 metres), unlike thicker seams in other coal-bearing regions.
- Technological Limitation: Thin seams make mechanised mining economically unviable, leading to reliance on manual labour.
Risks Associated with Rat Hole Mining
- Absence of Safety Infrastructure: Tunnels lack ventilation shafts, oxygen support systems, drainage, or structural reinforcement.
- Occupational Hazard: Workers crawl through narrow, unstable tunnels highly prone to collapse, asphyxiation, and sudden flooding.
- 2018 Ksan Tragedy (Meghalaya): Fifteen miners died after a rat-hole mine was suddenly flooded.
- Recorded Accidents: Recurring fatal incidents highlight the inherent risks of mining.
Legal Status and Persistence
- Regulatory Prohibition: Rat hole mining was banned by the National Green Tribunal in 2014.
- Land Ownership Perception: Under the Sixth Schedule, landowners in Meghalaya believe they own the minerals beneath their land (unlike the rest of India, where minerals belong to the state), leading them to conduct private, unregulated mining
- Illegal Coal Laundering: Illegally mined coal is often misrepresented as “legacy coal” (coal extracted before regulatory bans or licensing frameworks) to evade enforcement.
Reasons For the Ban To Fail
- Economic Dependence: Despite the 2014 ban, rat-hole mining persists due to high livelihood dependence in coal-bearing regions with limited alternative employment.
- Diffused Accountability: Layered arrangements involving landowners, contractors, and subcontractors fragment responsibility, weakening enforcement and liability.
- Contractors abscond after accidents, while landowners deny awareness of mining activities.
- Informal Labour Practices: Workers are kept outside formal records, leading to underreporting of accidents and the avoidance of labour and safety regulations.
- Suppression of Violations: Injuries, child labour, and environmental damage remain largely unreported due to fear, coercion, and local power asymmetries.
Governance and Enforcement Gaps
- Supply-Chain Opacity: Once illegally mined coal enters transport and trading networks, it becomes indistinguishable from legally sourced coal.
- Weak Monitoring: Inadequate surveillance and verification mechanisms allow illegal extraction and movement to continue undetected.
- Administrative Laxity: Tolerance at multiple levels of administration dilutes enforcement and compliance.
- Patronage Networks: Local political–economic linkages protect illegal operators, reducing the deterrent impact of existing laws, including the MMDR Act (Mines and Minerals Development and Regulation Act, 1957).
Environmental and Social Costs
- Water Contamination: Acid mine drainage pollutes rivers, degrading water quality and aquatic ecosystems.
- Child Labour: Narrow tunnels facilitate the employment of children, driven by household poverty.
Way Forward
- GPS-Based Transport Monitoring: Tracking coal trucks to ensure route compliance and invalidate unauthorised consignments.
- Drone and Satellite Surveillance: Real-time monitoring of mining zones with centralised data transmission.
- Community-Based Oversight: Incentivising local reporting of illegal mining and transport activities.
- Demand-Side Regulation: Blacklisting buyers sourcing coal from illegal mines and cancelling future auction eligibility.
- Bureaucratic Rotation: Regular transfer of field officials to reduce collusion risks.
- Livelihood Diversification: Expanding alternative employment opportunities to address economic drivers of illegal mining.
Conclusion
Treating rat-hole mining as an enforcement issue alone risks pushing the practice further underground. A durable solution requires synchronising regulation, livelihood creation, technology-led monitoring, and institutional accountability.
7 Feb 2026
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