Just a few pieces of debris stood between Munna Qureshi and dozens of laborers who his team had been tasked with rescuing from deep inside a Himalayan tunnel after all previous attempts to free them had failed. <\/p>\n
\u201cI could hear the laborers gasping on the other side with excitement,\u201d the 29-year-old\u00a0said. \u201cMy heart was racing as I removed the last rock between us.\u201d <\/p>\n
Qureshi is among 12 specialized workers who were called by Indian authorities to help with last month\u2019s rescue of 41 construction workers trapped in the collapsed tunnel in northern Uttarakhand state. <\/p>\n
For nearly three weeks the construction workers were cut off from the world, some 60 meters inside the mountain, receiving food and air through a thin tube and frequent updates from rescuers outside. <\/p>\n
Engineers worked round the clock to drill a safe passage through the broken rock using a state of the art machine, while officials flew in experts to help with rescue efforts. But ultimately, after 17 days, it was Qureshi and his colleagues who succeeded in bringing the men to safety after the drill broke beyond repair just meters from the trapped workers. <\/p>\n
Known locally as \u201crat hole miners\u201d, they belong to a niche group of highly skilled, but poorly paid<\/strong> excavators who typically crawl through narrow tunnels to extract coal from deep within the ground. <\/p>\n It is a profession so dangerous it has been banned in some parts of the country. But it has been thrust into the spotlight in recent weeks, and the men celebrated as heroes by many across the country. <\/p>\n \u201cRat hole mining may be illegal,\u201d Lt General Syed Ata Hasnain, a retired official from India\u2019s National Disaster Management Authority told reporters shortly after the rescue. \u201cBut a rat miner\u2019s talent and experience is not.\u201d <\/p>\n Workers employed in the dangerous profession are among the most vulnerable and marginalized in India, hence the unflattering local moniker. Mostly migrants from some of India\u2019s poorest states, they are paid about $5 for a day\u2019s work, according to local reports. <\/p>\n Slimly built and nimble, they are expected to enter tiny crevices in mines, often deprived of oxygen and at risk of being buried under loose soil. <\/p>\n Most coal mining\u00a0in India takes place in northeastern Meghalaya state, home to some of the country\u2019s largest coal deposits, amounting to more than 576 million metric tons. <\/p>\n Rat hole mining was banned in the state by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) in 2014 due to health and environmental risks, but it\u2019s still carried out illegally in secluded pockets of the region. <\/p>\n According to Hasina Kharbhih, the founder of Impulse, a non-profit that advocates for the safety of these workers, an estimated 225 \u201crat hole miners\u201d died between 2007 and 2014, before the practice was banned. <\/p>\n In 2018, four years after the ban was implemented, another 15 died after becoming trapped in an illegal coal mine for two weeks. <\/p>\n \u201cThis number however is the tip of the iceberg,\u201d Kharbhih said. \u201cI am sure if other regions where this happened were thoroughly researched, these numbers would go up.\u201d <\/p>\n Most of the men called to rescue the laborers said they knew the risks\u00a0when they joined the profession. <\/p>\n \u201cI always thought this job would take my life someday,\u201d one of the workers, Nasir Khan, said. \u201cI never thought it would earn me respect.\u201d <\/p>\n However, retired judge B.P. Katoki,\u00a0who set up the tribunal that banned rat mining in Meghalaya, said India shouldn\u2019t \u201cnormalize\u201d such a dangerous profession. <\/p>\n Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami announced 50,000 rupees ($600) will be handed out among the workers as a token of appreciation. But some of the \u201crat miners\u201d said they are still waiting for details of the compensation. <\/p>\n And despite the media attention, they said they had not been thanked or rewarded by the authorities. <\/p>\n Just two hours after the men were rescued, a list of 90 men who took part in the effort was circulated by an Uttarakhand government official on a media WhatsApp group. Conspicuously missing were the names of the 12 \u201crat miners\u201d who put their lives on the line to complete that final breakthrough. <\/p>\n \u201cThis does not surprise me,\u201d said Mohammad Irshad Ansari, one of the \u201crat miner\u201d workers. \u201cA laborer is and will only be seen as a laborer. Whatever we may have done, it does not change that we are poor.\u201d <\/p>\n One of the men, Monu Kumar, said he received a hero\u2019s welcome when he arrived home in northern Uttar Pradesh state. <\/p>\n \u201cThere was music playing, we were garlanded, and my family and neighbours distributed 30 kilograms worth of sweets to everyone,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n \u201cPeople (in the village) are saying that we did so much, put our life on the line, but we did not get anything in return.\u201d <\/p>\n To get to the trapped workers, the \u201crat miners\u201d had to crawl through an 80-centimeter (2.6 feet) diameter pipe inserted into the debris, crouch for hours in the small space and dig through the final 12 meters (about 40 feet) of rubble with their bare hands. <\/p>\n Khan said it was \u201cunlike anything we have ever seen before.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cIt was not just debris, stone, or a mountain; there were steel pipes, water, and ropes in there. We used many tools to slowly get them out,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n Two \u201crat miners\u201d went in at a time on rotating four-hour shifts, with one cutting the stone and the other pulling the debris out of the pipe. <\/p>\n \u201cIt was difficult. It was risky,\u201d said Kumar. \u201cThere is no doubt about that.\u201d <\/p>\n Ansari wants to keep going to rescue more men should the situation arise, but Khan\u2019s family has urged him to quit his job, saying the risk is not worth the low pay. <\/p>\n Despite working for three decades in the industry, he cannot afford to send his three children to school. <\/p>\n \u201cThis work is also seasonal. We do not have it in summer months as access to oxygen is a problem, and in monsoons as the water makes it unsafe,\u201d he said. \u201cBy working for only four months in a year, how can I afford to send my children to school? I did not go to school and nor will they.\u201d <\/p>\n Kumar feels the media attention won\u2019t last long. <\/p>\n \u201cSoon, these calls will stop coming,\u201d he said. \u201cNo one is going to remember us.\u201d <\/p>\n\n Just a few pieces of debris stood between Munna Qureshi and dozens of laborers who his team had been tasked with rescuing from deep inside a Himalayan tunnel after all previous attempts to free them had failed. \u201cI could hear the laborers gasping on the other side with excitement,\u201d the 29-year-old\u00a0said. \u201cMy heart was racing <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":12523,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12522","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} Bottom of the hierarchy<\/h2>\n
Already forgotten<\/h2>\n
\u2018Unlike anything we have seen\u2019<\/h2>\n