The ‘Sadak Se Sansad’ team visited Meghalaya’s East Jaintia Hills district to portray the travails of the residents whose land has been forcibly taken by the powerful to do rat-hole mining in spite of a ban by the NGT and the Supreme Court.
Mining has not only taken away their traditional means of livelihood – agriculture – but has also contaminated their sources of drinking water. While the rich buy water, the poor have to walk several kilometres every day to look for clean water to drink and wash clothes.