Abstract
This article explains the way mineworkers negotiated workplace hazards and articulated their ideas of safety. Mineworkers increasingly attained mining sense and made use of it, thereby surviving terrible working conditions and seeking to mend the accident-control mechanism. The formation and function of their mining sense were part of the industrialization process. It involved mineworkers’ particular ways of adaptation—quixotic and prudent—to the demand made by work relations. The miners’ unions strove to push the safety regime beyond voluntary codes of discipline and practical and technological solutions. They invested in legislative disciplining and sought informed safety-supervisory controls. They got involved in ‘civic engagement’ with agreeable investigators and legislators within the colonial context and afterwards. Confronted with the limits of such measures, the rank-and-file moved on, from the latter half of the 1950s to direct action in the very mining faces, thereby insisting on the right to withdrawal from danger. The historiographies which argued that Indian workers knowingly acquiesced to perilous mining to maintain livelihoods inadequately lend us the safety ideas shared and action at protection prevention undertaken by mineworkers. This article shows that Indian mineworkers reinforced the safety campaign through their strategic manoeuvring in legislative and workplace struggles as did their counterparts in Britain and some other societies.
Introduction
This article analyses the ways in which miners negotiated the dangers in Indian coalmines and responded to the efforts of capital at establishing the connection between labour subordination and accident-control mechanism. Workers began to define their mining sense or safety skill over time, even when they knowingly risked their life and limb for the sake of output. The organized workers articulated safety ideas, which went beyond practical and technological solutions and voluntary codes of discipline; they emphasized the legislative mandate and a participatory accident-control mechanism. The focus on social insurance characterized the manner of their direct action over safety in the early period, that is, the early twentieth century. The industry saw campaigns of organized workers for the legitimate withdrawal of labour from unsafe workplaces from the 1950s onwards. The present study outlines the context in which the workers’ understanding of safety and endeavours at accident control came to be part of mining development.
Employers often described work hazards as ‘unavoidable’ geophysical and mechanical occurrences. Additionally, they argued that ‘illiterate’, ‘ignorant’ and ‘agriculturist’ mineworkers were frequently involved in ‘reckless’ and ‘misadventurous’ mining, thereby causing accidents.
Several commentators have refuted the abovementioned managerial discourse on occupational risk and workers’ behaviour. Some find the short-sighted cost-minimization and profit-centred business consideration of employers to be responsible for workplace hazards. 3 Others suggest that the coercive terms and conditions of employment led workers to risk-taking and faulty mining practices. 4 The declining economic scenario and threats to employment also compelled workers to maintain a fatalistic stoicism and machismo attitude towards work hazards in some cases. 5 In contrast, the paternalistic policy of the metal company in Cornwall reinforced a stance of silence among metal miners on their occupational health and safety and the state’s indifference. 6
There are two diverging viewpoints regarding the conception of safety shared by workers, and the role played by their work–behaviour pattern on challenges to occupational health. First, workers knowingly risked their life and acquiesced to the pressure for the output. They showed an ‘economistic’ and ‘fatalistic’ outlook and machismo attitude, for they were the ‘ill-fed’, ‘ignorant’, ‘migrant’ and ‘ill-organized’. Hence, they sought only ‘ephemeral relief’ through desertions and petty compensation claims. 7 Simeon further argues that mineworkers sometimes expressed repugnance against perilous methods but acquiesced. They learnt to remain foolish, which enabled them to feed their stomach under the ruling mining regime. 8 Qadeer and Roy point out that although the labour union movement in India took up the demands for better living and working conditions, including the payment of compensation, it did not pay due attention to safety provisions and health care. Individual workers alone were the principal agents for redressal of whatever health and safety problems were resolved. 9 Such viewpoints and the findings related to India, my study shows below, are insufficient in elaborating what safety knowledge was shared and prevention measures undertaken by mineworkers in the Indian coalfield of Jharia.
The second viewpoint brings to the fore the workers’ understanding of the ill-effects of work and their quotidian and political efforts at prevention. Textile workers in Lancashire and New England, shows Greenless, clearly recognized the work–health relationship between dust and respiratory problems (in their personal mode of illness), but not the longer-term health consequences until it was too late. They did not expect these risks to have long-term health consequences extending outside the factory walls. They devised individual as well as cooperative responses to mitigate the ill effects of the workplace, even though they were unable to have any organized health action for long-term prevention. 10 Likewise, Douglas and Leger highlight the tacit safety knowledge possessed by mineworkers, which informed some of the workplace struggles over safety. 11 Some others suggest that the organized political labour brought a sense of urgency to the safety campaign; for instance, in Britain from the mid-nineteenth century, in the USA from the turn of the twentieth century as well as in early twentieth century South Africa. Here, organized workers challenged the managerial discourse of blaming the carelessness of workers for workplace risk and sought remedial measures. 12 Bloor highlights the combination of informal and formal actions undertaken by miners to ensure safety. 13 Bufton and Melling, furthermore, draw attention to mineworkers’ civic engagement and the strategic manoeuvring and political accommodation made in their safety campaign in order to reduce workplace dangers. 14
The particular ways in which formal and informal actions of workers would take place and feed into each other call for a context-specific enquiry. The present study takes the lead from a similar kind of recovery of the implicit knowledge and informal action shared by Indian workers. It suggests that the tacit [safety] skill of workers was neither pre-given nor stasis. The emergence and development of the mining sense among workers involved both didactic and autodidactic routes. Their mining sense mediated their ways of adaptation—quixotic and prudent—to the demands made by work relations. The understanding of workplace risk and safety conception shared by workers mediated their health-cum-safety action at the subterranean, quotidian level. This became a substructure for two different forms of safety struggles undertaken by the organized labourers. The pursuit of social insurance and regulation of workplace characterized the early phase. Subsequently, the quest for the withdrawal of labour from a hazardous workplace and the participatory safety mechanism took place. This shift occurred when mineworkers got efficaciously organized and secured a minimum earning, that is, when the loss of output, because of an unsure situation in the workplace, did not amount to their failure to meet the demand for output.
Working in the Coalmine
The production method adopted by the industry revealed how the mining world, while offering many livelihood opportunities, caused workplace risks and sapped the life energy of mineworkers (see Figures 1 and 2, and Table 1). 15 At the Indian coalfield of Jharia, the industry adopted a production method which came to be disapprovingly known as ‘slaughter mining’, 16 defined by the employment of untrained coalminers under a few trained supervisors. A productionist ethos, working under minimal safety essentials, and the handicraft-type labour process, also known as artisanal mining. 17 It largely depended on the supply of cheap labour by oscillating migrants. The intermediary, known as the sirdar, recruited and controlled workers. 18 The colliery owners made use of managing agencies and raising contractors, who had short-term interests in the industry and showed an urge for quick returns. 19 The monopsonic clutch maintained by the railways, as the largest consumer of coal, and the limited investment on expensive, imported machinery in the colonial economy arrested the growth of the coal industry. 20 The management sought voluntary codes of discipline and practical solutions more than a mechanical solution to ensure safety. All this proved conducive to ‘slaughter mining’.
Minor Injury in All India Mines (over 60% Mining Employees Were in the Coalmines) for Selected Years.
In the belowground workplace of the mines, coal cutters (called malcutta), loaders and hauliers (called trammers) worked in gangs of 10–12. They maintained ‘autonomy’ in the execution of tasks. They executed a mining plan outlined by the manager and the overman. The gang of coalminers and gang-headman, lineman (called line-mistries) and timber-man (called timber-mistries) were responsible for the testing of gases, for the supporting roof and sides, and for assessing the right size of pillars. Coal-workers, under the leadership of a gang-headman, relied on their collective practical skills. Working at the mine’s face, where the geophysical condition could undergo a sudden change, was dangerous. W. H. Pickering identified the problem:
Two young men were at work as miners for the first time in this mine (Kuordih Coal Company’s Kuordih colliery), and it seems doubtful that they had had any previous experience of coal-mining. They were at the time actually not at work in the place intended… They had undercut some coal as far as a joint, and one of them was wedging it down. Owing to several joints, a coal piece about one ton in weight probably came away more quickly than they anticipated, and in falling it struck the unfortunate man and nearly tore his arm off…. With proper supervision, it would be impossible for men to work for hours in the wrong part of the mine.
21
Mineworkers often counted on the principle of trial-and-error to secure safety. They tore off coal by sheer force, took away pillars, cut under the sides and undertook improper propping up of roofs. In addition, they tampered with safety lamps, used too many explosives, and regularly napped on site. They were often seen riding on trams to avoid walking and holding on to the rope of the cage-lift that carried them up and down the shaft. The Inspector of Mines and other observers regularly bemoaned such ‘unsound’ work behaviour and workers’ discretion. They lamented the absence of a training scheme, which would make labourers technically informed, and enable them to anticipate imminent danger, undertake accident-control measures and display, thereby, new mining wisdom.
To address these issues, the industry initiated two measures. The first was modernization of production through mechanization. The second was the emphasis on safety function of the supervisory staff, including managers, overmen, mining sirdars, surveyors and short-firers. Such measures came to conform to, as we would see below, the stipulations of the Indian Mines Acts (IMA) of 1901, 1923 and 1937–9. However, the supervisory staffs were found inadequate in number and of poor quality (see Table 2). These personnel were, furthermore, often directed to prioritise production goals and afford risk-taking. ‘Archaic’ mining, therefore, remained in practice. The inadequacy of constant and efficient safety supervision prolonged the coalminers’ reliance on implicit knowledge of own gang members.
Occupational Composition at the Indian Coalfield of Jharia: Percentage of Supervisory-safety Personnel to the Total Workforce.
Simple tools and implements, like hews, pickaxes, baskets, mug-lights (Kuppî-batees), lanterns, manually hauled tubs, wooden props, along with oxen power and bare-footed and half-clothed wo/men, were early productive forces in the colliery. The depth of collieries increased with time. Therefore, the machine–tool and elaborate techniques, like steam engines, electric power, better-placed shafts, ventilators and brattices, safety lamps, water pumps, coal-cutting machines, explosives, tram and haulage machines, and bamboo helmets slowly came into the scene after the 1910s (see Table 3). There was also concern for the sustainable size of galleries and pillars and the rotational and phased de-pillaring. Machinery installed to improve productivity were paradoxically also a new source of hazards such as the ignition of coaldust and firedamp by the blasting of explosives and lights with electric power. Several observers found to their disappointment that safety tools like ventilators, safety lamps and belowground stowing for the board and pillar method of coal extraction were inadequately and reluctantly applied. 22
Scale of Adoption of Safety Essentials and Other Mechanical Tools in the Jharia Coalfields.
Employers were in full cognizance of this situation. Hence, they depended more on voluntary codes of discipline and practical solutions to promote prevention of workplace hazards. The industry heavily relied on the mining sirdar and his gang persons and their practical skills of production and protection. Employers regarded such an arrangement to be cost-effective and unproblematic.
Coercion in labour relations was responsible for the mineworkers and the frontline supervisory staff taking grave risks in the production of coal. The mining sirdars and overmen drove coal-workers into the workplace for meeting the assigned task: a pair of coal-cutter and loader was supposed to produce on average two tons of coal in the hard seam and three tubs in the soft seam per day. A mining shift was on average 11–13 hours during the 1890s–1940s, subsequently coming down to 8 h in the big mines and 10 hours in the rest.
23
The supervisors received assistance from the employers’ security guards (called latthith or pehalwan) to herd mineworkers from the colliery houses (called dhowrah) to the coalmines. Additionally, the payment of piece-rate and return-based wages led coal-workers to search for easily accessible coal, move into ‘prohibited’ areas, take part in ‘forbidden’ mining activities and spend long hours in the working faces.
24
Workers extracted coal from pillars in a dangerous condition, for instance in the following instance at Khodo Vallery colliery (Nawagarh, Jharia: Kanga & Company Ltd) on 10 April 1944:
Sadhuram Samsoye, the supervisor-in-charge, directed a few gangs of miners to strip the pillars … The sirdar, who was acting as the temporary manager, did not raise any objection and the undercutting of the side continued even when a mass of stone and coal became overhanging … No support was erected at or near the place of the accident. Eventually, the place became so dangerous that the coal-cutters were unwilling to work there, but Samsoye persuaded them to do so, saying that there would be no danger. The overhanging side had been undercut to such a dangerous extent that it collapsed without warning.
25
In this case, eight unfortunate workers evidently recognized the impending dangers and reluctantly succumbed to the production pressure.
Take another case. At the Central Bhowra Colliery, which was adjacent to Sowardih, an abandoned waterlogged colliery, water inundation took the lives of 23 coal-workers on 20 February 1958:
The diary of the Senior Overman (Shri R.S. Mukherji) is replete with instances of Shri B. N. Agarwala’s (the owner) initiative in running the colliery even to the extent of suggesting changes in the group of miners. … The Overman in his diary writes that he was permitted by the Manager (P. K. Dan) to cross the boundary line towards Sowardih. He has deposed that whenever he would mention this question of the crossing, the Manager would tell him that the working could proceed to two pillars lengths to the east. Shri R.S. Mukherji knew that he was doing something against the law. Perhaps, he was helpless because he was working under the instruction of the Manager and the owner. It is not easy to suggest as to how a subordinate functionary of Shri Mukherji’s status could ignore the instruction of his superior officers, even though he knew such instruction to be in contravention of the Mining Regulations.
26
This case was an incisive revelation made possible by the Court of Enquiry with the participation of the representatives of republican parliament and labour associations. It was the vantage point of efficient industrialism shared by the Inspectorate. The latter hitherto advocated the application of adequate safety tools, personnel and the scientific method. This was the case of a well-equipped and well-staffed colliery. We will see below how the new revelation called for a different treatment, including the call for the first participatory safety conference in 1958.
As noted earlier, several studies have noted how the coercive work relations and wage system resulted in greater risk taken on by workers, thereby sustaining what some observers have described as the culture of machismo risk-taking. However, the discourse of employers and the inspectorate regularly omitted any connection of work relations with slaughter mining and continued to hold ‘illiterate’, ‘ignorant’ and ‘misadventurous’ mineworkers responsible for their own ill-fate (see Figure 3).
The Prudent and Quixotic Mineworkers
As mining industry advanced, a new generation of ‘better informed’ coal-workers appeared. Safety-related knowledge was imparted by parents to their newly recruited children, along with peer-group discussions. This was what Kesho Rawani (photograph I, see the Appendix), employed first as a loader from the late 1920s and subsequently as a haulier (trolley-man) at the Bhowra colliery, had benefitted from. 27 He, in turn, imparted his accumulated learning to his elder son, Shyamnarain Rawani, who was employed first as a construction labourer and then as a trolley man in the mines from the late 1960s.
When I first began working underground, my father used to admonish me and warned me against the following: working at the coalface, tearing off coal from pillars, sitting on tram lines, riding on tubs, etc. He asked me to take note of the condition of the roof and the sound of the timber that supported the roof. 28
Shyamnarain (photograph II, see the Appendix) is the third generation in his family to work at the Jharia coalfields.
The discourses of employers and inspectorate on safety-related issues continued to reduce mineworkers’ work–behaviour pattern into an innate and inchoate culture. On the contrary, mineworkers drew upon inherited wisdom, adapted to changing times and developed new sensibilities to apprehend danger, even when those in authority did not train them. Karpo Rajwar (photograph III, see the Appendix), a coal-cutter and loader, told me:
The Burbak (reckless/quixotic) man indulges in a risky manner of extraction and gathering of coal; why would a Chalak (rational/prudent) man show such an indulgence and risk his life and limb?… A person might think that by taking away a chunk of coal from the pillar, he could quickly fill up more tubs in the given time. We did not do such things. I saved my gang members on one occasion by persuading them to leave the working face early, since I could sense that the supporting timber was giving certain warning signals. It was making a certain sound that I knew indicated that it would soon come crashing down due to the weight of the chals (coal roofs). On another occasion, I dragged one of our dangal (gang) persons from the place where the jhurri (the loosened colliery sides left in the aftermath of the blasting undertaken in the working face) was about to fall.
29
The emphasis placed in these memorial testimonies on the lessons related to tram-lines, running tubs, treacherous working faces, the size of pillars and timber supports to the roofs had attained a critical place in the evolution of accident-control measures during the 1910s–1950s. The issue of poisonous and combustible gases is absent in these oral accounts as well as a barrier between two collieries and between a colliery and a water body, considered necessary against the threat of flooding. For both these items, it could be said, were the responsibility of the managerial and supervisory personnel and surveyors.
The terms burbak and chalak provide two sets of contrasting meanings. In the first set of meanings, chalak denotes the ability of a person to be manipulatively successful; in contrast, the burbak stands for being conformist, having a contented human nature and being unable to trick the system. The second set indicates the life preferences of the person rather than his/her ability or inability. While the chalak stands for a guarded, correct and righteous path, the burbak follows the path of misadventure, ignorance or negligence. Karpo Rajwar, whose mining career spanned from the latter 1940s till the 1990s, seems to have referred to the second set of meanings. His misadventurous (burbak) gang person seems to have shared the ethics captured by the first set of meanings. The burbak, who was a chalak in his own perception, wanted to take advantage of the condition of production in various ways: he would also bribe the tub clerk in order to get hold of a sufficient number of tubs and a better working face. Karpo Rajwar, in this sense, shared the language of safety discipline.
Beyond the burbak and chalak ways to mining, however, mineworkers frequently faced situations that challenged the given wisdom at their disposal. An accident seriously challenged Mahadeb Chatterjee (a certified overman), Meghua Kahar (a certified but ‘illiterate’ mining sirdar), and D. Howieson (a manager holding a diploma certificate in mining) at the Bararee colliery in 1929. It occurred due to the air blast caused by the sudden fall of a colliery roof in goafs, that part of the mine in which coal had been cut away, and waste was left in the old workings. The classification of such a disaster as ‘misadventure’ by W. Kirby (Inspector of Mines) obfuscated the gap between the available knowledge and the unfolding geophysical circumstance. 30 Mining required an elaborate, measured and reflective association between a miner and the constraint that s/he faced in the colliery. Yet, the collier’s burbak approach to mining appears to have been an expression of the work–behaviour of a person who migrated from a rural society where s/he had engaged in agriculture, animal-husbandry, handicrafts, or other such services characteristic of a preindustrial economy. S/he was thus ignorant of the principle of mining and was often attached to a pre-modern, religious and cosmological view of things. S/he gained a working knowledge of mining through trial and error. The chalak collier, in contrast, was the one who followed sound mining methods and was thus posed as the opposite of the burbak miner, though a boundary between the two was difficult always to sustain.
In the tea-stall and the local pub (Kalali), a chalak collier (equipped with the pit-sense) would boast of his expertise. S/he would, with time, refuse to ride back and forth by clutching to the rope of the shaft-lift with his toes. S/he would avoid overcrowded shaft-lifts. S/he would refrain from stepping out of a moving lift-cage and riding on a haulage-tub or sitting beneath an overhanging roof. Further, s/he would be disinclined to use too many explosives or tamper with safety lamps.
The growth of a mining sense was apparent in the discrete fall in the fatality rate of shaft and haulage accidents by the 1940s and the 1950s. There was also a check on the casualty rate due to ordinary fall of roofs and sides in the 1940s. Rather, explosions of coal-dust and inflammable gas, and the inundation of water now claimed a disproportionately high number of fatalities. The explosion of combustible gases owed to the use of naked lamplights and the failure of the overman and mining sirdar to test for gasses in goafs. The inundation indicated a fault of the managerial and technical (surveyor) staff rather than any burbak practice on the part of an ordinary collier (see Figures 4 and 5).
Contrary to the assertion of the management, mineworkers acquired the tacit skill and applied it over time. This was despite a score of instances of compulsion to do the opposite, thereby making themselves appear either foolish or stoically macho. Douglas has observed a similar feature among the British [Durham] coalminers, whom he described as the ‘big hewer’. They resisted the intrusion of supervisory authority in the working faces in order to preserve their autonomy, described as ‘little soviet’, in the workplace. 31 Leger has noticed this feature among production workers in the South African goldmines. This tacit knowledge of production workers mediated the cooperation as well as the conflict between the labourers and the management. Managerial refusal of any recognition of the tacit knowledge of mineworkers vitiated the accident-control mechanism. The rise of an organized labour movement, the National Union of Mineworkers, in South Africa in the 1980s marked a break in the connection between labour subordination and accident-control measures. Consequently, the conflict over occupational hazards and safety began to surface in public in South Africa, points out Leger. 32 These narratives eschew reducing the tacit knowledge or pit sense of mineworkers to a work behaviour pattern characterized by a stoic, macho risk-taking attitude.
The formation of a chalak coal-worker was the result of two conditions: autodidactic learning by regular workers, and the creation of a new group of safety-supervisory staff. The practical skill of colliers inevitably grew with time. The new generation of miners, like Kesho Rawani, was bequeathed with a mining sense; by the time Shyamnarain Rawani and Karpo Rajwar ventured into collieries, they were well-versed with the norms of the quixotic and prudent mining approaches. However, only about 20 per cent mineworkers possessed formal literacy as late as 1970, which would have a certain bearing on the growth of mining sense amongst mineworkers.
The modernization of the workforce and regulation of mining practices facilitated the development of didactic mining wisdom. From the turn of the twentieth century, three types of public legal injunctions for mining came in place—precaution, training and regulation and prosecution. They advanced managerial and technological solutions on the pattern which came to be accepted in the UK and in the USA. 33 The following discussion shows the manner in which such efforts at ‘combined development’ were performed in the Indian context and how they affected mineworkers.
The Inspector of Mines carried out the task of disciplining. On the question of improvement of the mining practice, Balchandra Ravidas (photograph IV, see the Appendix), a loader and mining sirdar, reported: ‘The prosecution meted out to the truculent impelled the rest, reflectively, to make use of their experiences to resist shoddy method and temptation for easy coal.’ 34 The responsible mining sirdar was a crucial figure in this regard. Unlike the residential segregation enjoyed by most managers and supervisors, the mining sirdar lived amidst production workers. The slow but steady stabilization of coal-workers as settled and career workers contributed to this prospect. 35 The mining sirdar took a keen interest in imparting safety techniques to his gang persons and neighbours because he was also answerable for fatalities. 36 The new mining rules stipulated in 1952–7 enforced this aspect. In his response to the question as to how he learnt the chalak mining technique, Karpo Rajwar emphasized the role of the mining sirdar.
The safety personnel shared responsibility for the advancement and propagation of wisdom required for safe mining. This was especially so after the IMA, 1901, that made the colliery manager answerable for safety. Under these regulations, during 1901–4, every coalmine was supposed to be under the supervision of a manager (mining certificate holder), along with the overman (shift in-charge), mining-sirdar, onsetter, banksman, engineman and surveyor. The 1923–4 amendment to the IMA made mandatory the employment of trained mining sirdar. It transformed the gang headman into a mining sirdar, who was no longer directly involved in coal cutting and loading, except the blasting.
Along with the Inspectorate and other scientists, the managerial men were associated with research and development activities in order to address the challenges. For creating an informed mining community, the National Association of Colliery Managers (NACM), formed in 1906–8, along with the Indian Mine Managers’ Association (IMMA), formed in 1922, conducted regular deliberations on safety issues and screened film shows on safety. NACM represented the managers of European origin, and IMMA represented the managers of Indian origin. They were members of the Mining, Geological and Metallurgical Institute of India (MGMII) and the Geological, Mining and Metallurgical Society of India (representing Indians). Many of them participated in regular discussions, study circles, lectures and research activities organized by these associations. In their deliberations, the safety issue usually included the findings and prescriptions, which Inspectors of Mines made in the aftermath of enquiries into fatal accidents.
The discussions entered the public arena through publications. A few of these papers are worth mentioning since these were concerned with some of the predicaments that were acutely felt. In 1907, the MGMII discussed the following papers: ‘Fighting a Colliery Fire’, ‘Solid Rope Capping’, ‘Chersea Electric Power Plant’, ‘Premature Explosion of Powder’ and ‘Mine Dams’. In 1917, the following papers were discussed: ‘On Hydraulic Stowing in Mines in Bihar’, ‘The Burning of Coal Seam at the Outcrop’ and ‘Housing of Labour and Sanitation at Mines in India’. 37 In 1924, 1927, 1929 and 1935, we find references to the following papers: ‘Notes on the Coal Dust Danger in Indian Mines’; ‘Further note on the Ventilation of British Mines’ and ‘Coal Resources of the Jharia Coalfield’; ‘Discussion on the future of the Jharia coalfields’; 38 and the ‘Report of the Second Subsidence Committee appointed by the MGMII’ (1935). 39 These essays had common threads—an emphasis on the adoption of mechanical safety tools (ventilators, safety lamps), safety techniques (stowing, supervision, planning) and organizational arrangements (co-operative investment in stowing and power plants), some of which highlighted the necessity for general training, attractive living conditions and mass education.
These essays were later published in the annual proceedings of the associations. These would have informed the training programme for managers at Bengal Engineering College (Sibpur) since 1906 and the Indian School of Mines from the mid-1920s. More importantly, lantern lectures, evening mining classes and research tours were organized for the dissemination of ideas to the safety staff in the fields. A ‘pedagogical mission’ was thus carried out. To what extent this mission influenced social forces involved in interest bargains and contained malefic mining practices, is a subject to which I will discuss in the later sections. Notably, there was a difference of emphasis between managers and the chalak coal-worker on the concept of sound mining. The latter emphasized safety discipline while warning against the pressure exerted on colliers to raise a higher number of tubs during the given work hours. In contrast, managers and supervisors emphasized safe mining methods while continuing to demand higher output. Karpo Rajwar seemed to represent a discourse of safety, which related to the new safety politics aimed at the removal of a hazardous pressure for more output.
As I have suggested, autodidactic learning, the circulation of wisdom through parents and neighbourhood and the norms of safety discipline as outlined by the Inspectorate, were responsible for the advancement and democratization of mining wisdom. Kerr points in his discussion to how the British got the railways built in India, the significance of the creation of a generation of informed labourers and the routinization by British engineers of accumulated, transmitted and codified knowledge of managerial and construction techniques. 40 The subsequent section of the article probes the safety politics of mineworkers and lay bare its function within the accident-control mechanism.
Ideas of Safety in Coalmines
In the quest for sustained advancement, the mining society, confronted with a precarious existence, recognized the necessity preventive and remedial measures. The response of mining classes and other social groups to such measures was often multi-pronged. Initially, they seemed to share the term of common law: mineworkers recognized the presence of workplace hazards and bore the responsibility of both risk and self-preservation. A few mineworkers moved away from the accident-prone shaft mines. As Pickering reports:
It apparently takes very little to frighten the native worker away from the mine, and it will become increasingly important for mine managers to study the prejudices and customs of those under their charge… As soon as it was known, the place was visited by the officials, but the bodies had already been removed from under the coal by the other workmen. A lamp, however, was found beneath the new falls…The evidence, in this case, is most difficult to obtain. Of the three surviving men, one was not close at hand at the moment, and immediately he knew of the accident he went out of the mine with the two women who assisted them…Another man disappeared altogether, and the third, who either could not or would not give any clear explanation of the occurrence, died two days later from excessive drinking.
41
A permanent departure was not considered by most mineworkers whose economic necessity drove them to collieries. Mobility between coalmines was their other response. Some moved away from a fleecing deep-shaft colliery to a more congenial work atmosphere. Their movement towards incline colliery (shirmuhan) and quarry (pokharia) gathered strength during the period of the First World War and continued till the collapse of coal prices in 1923. 42
Some locals and immigrants gradually became settled workers in the vicinity of collieries. They preferred working on big collieries, which offered them a relatively higher wage-rate and accommodation. Because they bargained for better remuneration, they were willing to take chances in deep collieries. 43 Here, they preferred a dry, easygoing and poorly attended coalmine over a wet, punishing and better-attended coalmine. The latter was known for its supervisors driving workers to perform the arduous work in the wet working-face and gallery. 44
The bitter and melancholic expressions found in the folklore of colliers reflect their experience of working in treacherous environments:
We sad coal-cutters, Our hand, hard and callused, Our insides dark with dust, Oh! This (is what) I think. Once in the lift-cage, I shivered, What if the rope snaps? Oh! This I think; The cage goes down, My father, my mother-so far away Shall I ever see them again? Oh! This I think If a chunk of coal falls, My head will be smashed, God knows what is due Oh! This I think Ghuga Mahto tells you this story The warm Damodar flows on, Oh! The heat, the heat, Tortures me on and on.
45
Ghuga Mahto’s bitter feeling of an unfulfilled life stands out as a critique of the numerous difficulties in colliery work. He yearned for industrialization that would bring in employment, along with a healthy and joyful life.
Mineworkers’ efforts at adjusting to the work and safety imperative, as time wore on, had four subtexts: the growth of a mining sense, the formation of safety staff, the politico-legal struggle for ‘safety first’ principle, and the deification of the colliery in the image of goddess Kali.
46
The formation of a safety regime that was informed by an ever-evolving mining sense, I suggest, was borne not only out of the need of industrialists but largely due to the effort of the mining classes, in alliance with a group of labour publicists. Their endeavours were the harbinger of modern associational efforts to secure labour welfare. Since the 1920s, such publicists took a keen interest in the implementation of safety provisions and worked towards strengthening the safety mechanisms as advocated by the scientific community. Following the burial of 74 persons in the Parbelia colliery disaster, N. M. Joshi, a political advocate of labour and the founding member of the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), insisted in 1922–3 on legislation for ‘compulsory certification of mining sirdar and overman with a view to improving their performance as the front line safety supervisors’.
47
On 3 November 1920, Simpson pointed out:
[Management] of collieries was very much handicapped by the poor calibre of the persons who were appointed to make the daily statutory inspections of the workings. Sirdars should be required to have certificates, and certificates would be granted after an examination in which the sirdars’ practical knowledge of timbering, goafing, ventilation, etc. would be tested. And, in the case of gassy mines, the sirdar would have to prove that he understood the principles of safety lamps and knew how to test for gas.
48
In March 1921, while discussing the Simpson Draft, B. Y. Hajibhoy, a member of the legislative assembly, raised the question of the need for regulations with a view to minimizing accidents, and also asked for rules that would provide for the examination and certification of underground sirdars. Faced with a renewed insistence by Joshi on the Simpson resolution, the colonial government acceded that ‘a prompt measure taken in 1921 would have helped minimise the dangers of accidents as had occurred in Parbelia’. The concern of workers with regard to the menace of combustible coal-dust influenced legislative measure. Hence, the Mining Regulations of 1926 stipulated the sprinkling of water or incombustible material over coal-dust that was found in galleries. 49
The Politics of Safety
In the late 1920s and the 1930s, there was a staggering increase in the instances of roof collapse, explosions of coal-dust and inflammable gases that caused fires, and inundation of the collieries. Political advocates now called for a thorough examination of the problem and an inquiry into the consequent ‘loss to the public’. They demanded comprehensive statutory control on the reckless methods and short-sighted schemes prevalent in Indian mines. 50 The Burrows Coal Mining Committee (1936–7), constituted by Government of India (GOI) in response to the public hue and cry, made a comprehensive investigation into the reasons for perilous mining. Its report emphasized the necessity of significant control on mining methods. Consequently, a series of regulations and amendments to the IMA were stipulated in 1937–9. Under the Mines Regulations Act, 1937 and 1938, the separation of professions of mining sirdar and blasting was made mandatory, the latter task now assigned to the shot-firer, plus training for both. It also mandated the employment of certified surveyors for every colliery and the conducting of joint surveys by contiguous collieries, the maintenance of a barrier of a minimum of 12 feet from water bodies and the use of non-flammable safety lamps and electric lights in all gaseous mines. The guidelines for the first workings and designs of galleries and pillars were set out. The colliery management was asked to submit a working plan for approval, and the mining inspectorate was given the right to stop any work in progress in collieries that appeared dangerous. The Indian Mines Conservation (Stowing) Act, 1939, laid down the guidelines of the stowing project. The financial resources generated through the levy on coal despatches would support the fencing of abandoned mines. The recent changes in the organization of the British mining industry informed the views and recommendations of the Burrows Coal Mines Committee, with the exception of the institution of a separate profession of the shot-firer as distinct from the mining sirdar. 51
Many owners and managers vehemently opposed many of the proposed safety checks. Representatives of the Indian Mines Managers’ Association regarded the control on mining methods as an unwarranted and undesirable interference in the working of the industry. On other occasions, unlike the proprietors, they affirmed other legislative measures, including the idea of universal mandatory stowing. 52
Mineworkers, generally, appreciated the functioning of the Inspector of Mines and his ideas of accident control. At times though, the Inspectorate drew their criticism as well. Unlike employers, mineworkers found the inspections to be inadequate, as was proved by the high number of accidents and casualties. They bitterly complained that the Inspectorate was susceptible to influences exercised by the management. P. C. Bose, a representative of the Indian Colliery Employees Association (ICEA), complained to the Whitely [Royal] Commission on Labour (RCL) in 1930: ‘False prosecutions were conducted against the poor worker at the instance of the management, wherein false evidences, many times put forward by management to contest cases under the Workmen’s Compensation Act of 1923–24, became the basis of judgment.’ 53 Therefore, he demanded that the number of inspectors be increased and that the method of inspection be optimized for stringent regulations. Chapala Bhattacharya, representing the All India Mine-Workers Federation before the Mahindra [Coal] Committee in 1945–6, acknowledged the improvement in the safety situation post-1937 under the regime of more stringent mining regulations, though, as he argued, a lot more needed to be done. 54
While insisting on legislation to ensure sound mining techniques devised on scientific lines, labour publicists had two distinct approaches. They insisted on the training of employees and on statutory controls on the mining processes prescribed by the scientific community. By the mid-1930s, they began to argue in favour of ‘universal stowing’ and ‘considerate pillar cutting to check fall of roof and sides’; these measures were seen as the most assured resolution to the threat of collapse and fires, which accounted for a little more than half of the total accidents. For reducing the loss of life and injury to workers, they highlighted the need for a general supply of boots and fibre or steel helmets (in place of the bamboo hat). Despite the suggestion made by Simpson in 1924, these were supplied only to managerial and supervisory staff until 1961–3. Similarly, a programme of mass training for rescue operations would help bring down the scale of casualty, as S. K. Bose, General Secretary of the Indian Colliery Labour Association (ICLA), suggested to the Burrows Committee. Such technical and technological proposals were marked by plebeian insights and were not always taken up by the authorities. The necessity for education and training of all adult members of the mining community was another area for improvement that failed to receive a concrete response till as late as 1975.
Coal-workers, however, recognized the necessity of taking up the safety question beyond established technological, bureaucratic and managerial exercises. They now began to lobby for the cause in the legislative domain and organise representations and agitations for the implementation of accident-control measures and for publicizing negligence. Faced with a lukewarm response from employers and the state about their demand for universal education and training, the labour associations began, from 1926 onwards, to hold weekly lantern lectures for ordinary colliers on questions of trade unionism, sanitation, housewifery, health and safety measures. 55 These popular lantern lectures seemingly contributed to the rise of a number of chalak colliers.
Their politics of safety emphasized links between safety and the necessity of a better working and living condition. Most labour advocates believed in the ‘Labourite’ politics and stressed on the principle whereby ‘the interest of labour is the interest of industry’. As they argued, for a settled, experienced and efficient mining community, living and working conditions should be improved. Their demands included improved wage rates, housing and water supply, reduced working hours, paid leave and social insurance (sickness, old age and maternity benefits), as well as arrangements for ventilated working faces, adequate supply of tubs and other safety materials. In particular, they emphasized that a short and delayed supply of basic appliances like coal tubs, timber and safety lights caused long and fatigued workdays, and consequently miners rushed to finish a day’s task, such as loading of, on an average, 2–3 tubs in a pair. Such work behaviour resulted in negligence and misadventure. The practice of non- payment of wages or imposition of fines for any under-loaded tub and the low wage rate also played a role in forcing miners into risk-taking work behaviour. 56 S. K. Bose reported in detail to the Whitely Commission on forced labour or advance (dadan) based attached labour, popularly known as Bandhua Majdoori. Under the dadan system, the sirdar (recruiter) made deductions from wages for paying off the advance that the recruit had taken, and insisted on a regular submission of salami (6–8 paisa per tub or rupee of earning) to the sirdar. Some proprietors exploited zamindari rights and service tenancy to fleece the service tenant to perform work for long hours in collieries. Sarkars, or supervisory staff, like overmen and tub distributing and checking munshis (clerks), were interested in gains of a few pennies from over-loading or from the cancellation of payment for under-loading.
Coercive labour practices also impinged on the performance of safety supervisors, who were themselves subject to ‘authoritarian’ work relations defined by abuses. The mining sirdar was often charged with responsibility for more than one gallery. As a remedy, S. K. Bose and Mitter demanded employment of separate safety staff who would not be saddled with production tasks, and for deployment of separate and trained shot-firers. Staffs were inadequately paid, and truculent personnel were dismissed on flimsy grounds for inability to conform. Indian staff were subject to change upon a change of management, and the new management favoured substitution of Indians by Europeans. ‘Justice is non-existent, and fairness is guided by self-interest … the palatial manager looks down upon down-trodden, clerk, and overman.’
57
They, therefore, suffered from a sense of job insecurity and demoralization. Consequently, they had little commitment towards work. Labour publicists raised the following points before the government:
[F]or any real improvement in the delivery of performance, the relation between superior staff and labour must improve. Racial discrimination must be abolished. Recognition of qualification must replace favouritism. Justice and fairness must be more than lip-deep. The mining person should be better paid, and the legislation for reduced working hours and paid leaves rules should be framed.
58
Likewise, the colliery manager, especially of Indian origin, protested autocratic work relations:
The colliery proprietor makes undue interference in the working of mines for cost-effective mining and compromises with the necessity of scientific method. A commitment to principle is meant the loss of favour and replacement. They are inadequately rewarded and placed in little reassuring social condition. For efficient and rational management, the manager deserves full facilities and reasonable salaries and amenities, for enabling him to discharge of all those statutory responsibilities and obligation.
59
With time, Indian proprietors and managers became predominant. Consequently, the initial grumbling of native managers gave way to the idea of the defence of private ownership. ‘The remedy for conservation lay in the nationalization of mines’ was no longer their recommendation. In contrast, European managers suggested that the ‘need is for a strong association of technical men’. 60 They opposed the official proposal of regulating mining methods since it meant ‘an excessive interference in the working of mines and management; rather, proper remedies to the problem of wasteful mining method lie in the increased powers of the manager so that he can successfully withstand the demands of owners’. 61
The third strand on workers’ safety views concerned the politico-legal structure of the industrial system. ‘Prevention is better than cure’ was their strategic principle. For protective legislation and safety regulations, they argued that ‘substantive labour representation in the legislative process is needed.’
62
P. C. Bose (a colliery doctor), S. K. Bose and Mitter demanded the participation of labourers at the level of the Inspectorate. ‘Some of them [Inspectors] should be chosen by labour unions. Accuracy in figures of statistics … can only be obtained by regular inspection and investigation conducted in collaboration with the labour unions.’
63
By the 1930s, the stark experience of the failure of the Inspectorate led S. K. Bose to canvass for a direct role of labourers in addressing the problem. He demanded that labour representatives should be allowed to conduct an inspection on their own and draw the attention of the inspectorate towards lapses and exigencies:
The rules, Regulations, Bye-laws and Temporary Regulations, if followed in proper spirit, are quite adequate. …but they are of no use unless they are actually adhered to in reality than in paper. We hold that unless some Trade Union officials are allowed to inspect the mines and report directly to the Mines Department about the observance of the laws, the Mines Department with their best efforts cannot humanly detect all the violations.
64
It is evident that Bose’s call for the direct involvement of labourers’ representatives in inspection took a cue from the recent legislative development in Britain. However, it faced stiff resistance from colliery owners as well as indifference on the part of the Mines Department in India. By the 1940s, some reformers were convinced that resistance from industrialists, contractors and managing agencies to the working of remedial and protective legislative measures needed to be overcome. They argued for state ownership (nationalization) and socialization of the industry. Initially, they had found fault with the contract system in the industry:
The contract system is the evil responsible for all problems such as extracting maximum works at the minimum cost, and skewed work relations are its governing principle. This system should be abolished; the company should be responsible for the employment of and payment to miner, managerial and other safety staff, known as Sarkari system.
65
Agreeing with the new proposition advanced by P. C. Bose, S. K. Bose argued in 1930 that ‘given the necessity of rationalization of the industry for scientific mining, for protection of coal and labour as two ‘national assets’, the mines will have to be nationalized as a way to keep alive this industry’. He, however, vacillated over the issue. In contrast, by the late 1930s, P. C. Bose and C. Bhattacharya insisted upon the necessity of ‘socio-political takeover of the means of production as a means to effect recommendation of the fact-finding committee’. 66 Unlike the ideas shared by H. K. Nag, M. S. Krishnan and H. C. Mookerjee on state control, ideas of nationalization advocated by P. C. Bose and Bhattacharya meant socialization rather than a nominal state take-over. 67 Further, S. A. Dange, vice-president of AITUC, described Indian mines as ‘Death Pits’ and saw ‘nationalization as a way out’ to effect rationalization. 68 Furthermore, with their varied views on the desirable form of politico-legal structures, they adopted different political practices. S. K. Bose, P. C. Bose and Mitter represented the nationalist movement under the aegis of the Congress Party, while Bhattacharya and some others were, for long, vanguards of communist politics.
Withdrawal from Danger
Safety resolutions articulated by the mining classes were comprehensively evolving and were not merely imbibing the official safety concerns. In the period up till the early 1950s, however, these insights were of practical importance at the level of legislation, educational propaganda, and mobility between the workplaces. In their collective action, the emphasis was on questions of bread and butter, social insurance and labour rights: the issues of wages, working hours, compensation and fair treatment. This was an expression of their overriding concerns for pet (bread and butter) and izzat (dignity and rights), as Bakshi Da (a doyen of the labour movement) reported. Responding to a question as to the timidity of the safety movement, he said without any reservation:
[T]he keen concerns of those colliery struggles were the security of Pet and Izzat regarded tantamount to the upgradation of life to the status of Aadmi (politico-social humanness embodied being) and improvement over the afflicted status of Bandhua Mazdoor (attached/forced labour) akin to cattle in the contemporary fields… Somewhere, in such paradigmatic colliery movements, the issue of security from occupational risk failed to receive due attention and political energy.
69
The pronounced tendency in their safety politics was to address the issue of accident-control in terms of a ‘social insurance’ question and a matter of ‘statutory regulation’. It meant that every agitation over accident-control issues involved only certain individuals.
As the unbridled series of disasters and serious accidents grew, the faith that the miner had reposed in the Inspectorate dissipated. The function of the Inspectorate faced a setback in 1957–8, when the labour association categorically opposed the presence of G. S. Grewal (Chief Inspector of Mines) in the court of enquiry that was formed to investigate the disaster that occurred in Central Bhowra Colliery. The Court of Enquiry attributed the prime responsibility to the owner, but let the ‘under-staffed’ Mines Department go free for failing to exercise preventive power. The finding did not satisfy the mining community. Jaipal Singh, a Member of Parliament from Chhotanagpur appointed as the assessor in the Court of Enquiry, argued against the observation made by the Chair of the Enquiry Court. In his separate declaration, he unequivocally blamed the Mines Department for ‘letting regular violators go free and not vigorously enforcing the rules’. 70
Certain instances occurred where the colliery populace gheraoed (barricaded) the management office and assaulted the ‘guilty’ and ‘irresponsible’ official in order to seek instant [popular] justice. 71 On some occasions, coal-cutters and loaders refused to continue work when they faced an unsafe workplace—the presence of firedamp, inflammable gas, other noxious gases and inadequate oxygen, and inadequate supplies of timber and other supporting material. They went on sit-ins in the gallery until remedial measures were arranged. Such direct action for the right of withdrawal of labour from unsafe workplaces became possible in the aftermath of the approval of their demand by the Mazumdar Colliery Dispute Award in 1956, related to the payment of a minimum wage in case the work was not done due to no-fault of mineworkers. The Mazumdar Award was a product of the policy of the national government, which aimed to secure an experienced, stable and contented industrial workforce. The organized mineworkers called for sit-ins when they were unionized and united. 72
These spectacular events of withdrawal from the terrible workplace and assertion for popular instant justice caused panic in certain quarters of the Inspectorate and the management. However, these resulted in the reduction of serious injury from the 1960s (Figure 1). Two Safety Conferences involving employers, labour representatives and the Inspectorate took place in August 1958 and in April 1966. They emphasized the need for education and training of mineworkers, and workers’ participation in safety management through the deployment of workers’ inspectors and pit safety committees. Employers rebuffed the proposals but eagerly participated in the programmes of safety exhibition and screening of safety films. Their approach was similar to what the Chamber of Mines practised in South Africa since 1956.
73
The mining classes described it as conservative when compared to the new rights granted to the British mineworkers in the aftermath of nationalization. Kanti Mehta, General Secretary of the Indian National Mineworkers Federation, held slick formalism responsible for too little, too slow improvement:
[T]he work done by National Council for Safety in Mines is extremely useful, yet much concrete work at pits levels will be necessary for ensuring better and safer working conditions. We had warned that mere formation of Pit Safety Committee will not promote safety—the national council for safety should see that they function effectively and workers’ participation in the promotion of safety is encouraged. …cases of accidents should be analysed at pit levels, and steps should be taken to see that such accidents are avoided in future…that money spent in outward expressions or exhibitions was used as a cover for saving expenditure required for creating better and safer working conditions in the mines.
74
The mining classes embodied an evolving tacit knowledge and combined it with specific formal knowledge in their organized politics. This was the substructure of their quest for a participatory mechanism for prevention and protection.
Conclusion
Our findings contradict the employers’ discourse that mineworkers were ignorant, illiterate and/or agriculturists, and were hence reckless. Our discussion suggests that the historiographies which argue that Indian workers ‘knowingly acquiesced’ to unsafe mining and sought merely ‘ephemeral relief’ fail to sufficiently elaborate the understanding of workplace risk and safety ideas shared by workers and their strategic calculations in the related struggles. Indian mineworkers, indeed, strengthened the safety campaign through their strategic manoeuvring in legislative and workplace struggles as did their fraternity in Britain and elsewhere. They increasingly attained a mining sense and made use of it, thereby surviving the terrible working conditions, and seeking to mend the accident-control measures. The formation and function of their mining sense and safety-cum-health action were neither pre-given nor static. It was part of the industrialization process involving mineworkers’ particular ways of adaptation—whether quixotic or prudent—to the demands made by work relations. They maintained the trial-and-error principle and benefited from both autodidactic and didactic exercises.
The organized political workers put faith in legislative measures, going beyond the voluntary codes of discipline, and practical and technological solutions. They sought informed safety-supervisory controls, even while the common coal-workers defiantly asserted autonomy in the workplace. Their unions got involved in ‘civic engagement’ with such colonial, and later independent India’s, investigators and legislators who were agreeable to them. However, preoccupation with ‘social insurance’ dominated the safety-cum-health action undertaken by workers. Confronted with the limits of such measures owing to the scant cooperation from industrialists, the rank-and-file moved to direct action in the very mining faces, thereby insisting on the right to withdrawal from danger from the latter 1950s. Simultaneously, they agitated for the participatory safety mechanism. This shift in their safety consciousness and endeavours was itself a response to increasing opportunities for achieving financial security and reflected their growing awareness of broader public sympathy. This meant a call for bridging the gap between the new gains of mineworkers on the British coalmines, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the ‘death pit’ in India.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.