For the Fotovisura Grant I propose an investigative reportage on coal trade, child labor and human trafficking in the triangle between Nepal, India and Bangladesh.
Two years ago I traveled to Northeaast India to document child labor in India’s illegal coal mines. In a makeshift miners’ camp, I met Manuj, a 15-year-old boy from Nepal.
Every day, he risks his life for a few Dollars. He descends down on a ramshackle ladder into a black hole, 50 Meters vertically into the depth. So much groundwater flows out of the walls that it slowly becomes a never-ending, drenching rain. The steps are slippery. One mistake and he will fall towards his death. But he is not afraid of the height, he is afraid of the rat holes that await him down in the coal quarry. Rat holes - that is how they call the kilometer-long seams in the mines here.
Children like Manuj work for hours in the darkness, mining dirty coal. Many of them are migrants from Nepal. Human traffickers have told them that they could make 20 Dollars a day – a fortune for impoverished Nepalese. A false promise. Many children end up as wage slaves, working under perilous conditions.
More than half of India's electricity is derived from coal. Forecasts predict a doubling of coal consumption in the next five years. Nevertheless, India exports coal from these illegal mines to Bangladesh.
With the help of the Fotovisura Grant I want to extend this body of work and explore the economic and social conditions behind the coal business in the triangle between Nepal, India and Bangladesh.
What drives people to take up this dangerous work? Why is coal exported to Bangladesh, when India can hardly satisfy its own needs? Does coal out of the rat holes make its way from Bangladesh to the US, as NGOs claim?