Cracking open the earth’s crust and shattering gender stereotypes
The Hindu
Women coal mine workers of Bengal and Jharkhand are slowly breaching the male bastion
The blooms of the palash tree have set the rugged brown landscape of Asansol and Dhanbad on fire. In this otherwise dreary coal mining belt, 3,277 women of Eastern Coalfields Ltd. (ECL) have emerged ground breakers: they crack the earth’s crust, mining coal with heavy machinery, while breaking gender stereotypes.
ECL, which works across West Bengal and Jharkhand, is a subsidiary of Coal India Ltd. (CIL) that employs approximately 20,000 women, and is the top employer of women in a Central public sector enterprise (CPSE). However, that’s just 8% of the company’s 2.4-lakh workforce. The share of women in traditional male dominated on-field mining activities is lower still. However, this male bastion is slowly being breached.
In the vast expanse of Sonepur Bazari in West Bengal’s Raniganj Coalfields open-cast mine, where coal is extracted from an open pit, 49-year-old Bindu Paswan rides laboriously on a giant mechanised shovel. Within 20 minutes she fills a 60-tonne dumper. “She is among our best workers,” an overseer said.
“Many of the women are the finest HEMM (heavy earth moving machinery) operators we have,” said Vinay Ranjan, Director, Personnel and Industrial Relations, CIL.
Ms. Paswan, who finished Class IX, joined the Asansol-based ECL after the death of her husband. The job was offered to her on compassionate grounds, and rather than an office job like her husband’s, the mother of four daughters opted to work in the mine. Her daughters, she said, were proud of her. Three years after joining service in 2010 she was put on ground, to operate a shovel. “It gives me freedom and also provides a lot of recognition. There are not many women shovel operators in the coal mine,” she said.
Ms. Paswan is not the only woman though. In Barmuri open-cast mine in Dhanbad district of Jharkhand, bordering West Bengal, there are about six women shovel operators and drill operators.