Asked when he realised his late wife Rukhmani Bai was seriously ill, Sudhram lifts his leg to show the lesions on his foot. Once infected, his foot could develop gangrene, forcing the doctors to amputate it. His wife, whose illness began much the same way, was on crutches for years until she died of cancer two years ago.
There are dozens of cases like theirs in the village of Kiradalli Tanda, in Karnataka’s Yadgir district, a settlement of the nomadic Lambada people. Independent studies such as the elaborately titled, Environmental Arsenic Contamination and its Health Effects in the Historic Gold Mining Area of the Mangalur Greenstone Belt, have shown that the groundwater in the village has an arsenic level of 303 micrograms per litre, 30 times over the permissible limit defined by the World Health Organisation. A CAG report compiled in 2013 also states, “In 16 habitations in the region, a combined total of at least 24,000 people are affected due to arsenic contamination of their drinking water.”
Just 4km from Kiradalli Tanda, is the now defunct Mangalur gold mine, which was mined by the British from 1887 to 1913, briefly re-opened by the Government of Karnataka in 1980 and shut down again in 1994. As with settlements near gold mines in Australia, Ghana, Canada, France, Slovakia and Brazil, here too the levels of arsenic pollution are very high.
The state-run and still active Hutti Gold Mines is 60km away from Kiradalli Tanda. But much like Mangalur, it continues to add to the region’s environmental woes. Both the mines are responsible for contaminating the groundwater in Yadgir district with arsenic, causing mild to extreme poisoning of all those who live in the area. In Kiradalli Tanda alone, nine people have died since 2009 because of various forms of cancer and many more suffer from skin lesions.
While the government has taken some corrective measures, such as installing water desalination machines, they are but minor solutions for what is a serious health concern.
Meanwhile, for people like Sudhram and thousands of others who live in the region, mining has rendered their land unusable, driving them into the maw of the mines, yet again, to earn their livelihood.
(Javed Iqbal is a photojournalist who reports on tribal issues in Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Maharashtra and AP)