Illegality as the New Normal: Coal Mining Ravages East Jaintia Hills

Illegality appears to have become deeply entrenched in Meghalaya’s East Jaintia Hills, where illegal coal mining continues unabated despite repeated bans and court orders. The practice, widely known as rat-hole mining, has hollowed out the region’s landscape, economy, and safety norms, repeatedly claiming lives while escaping effective regulation.

Even after the National Green Tribunal’s ban, coal extraction has persisted through covert operations, often with alleged local complicity and weak enforcement. Unsafe mining methods have led to frequent accidents, trapping and killing workers, many of them migrants, in flooded or collapsed pits. Environmental damage has been equally severe, with forests degraded, rivers polluted, and agricultural land rendered unproductive.

The continued normalisation of illegal coal mining highlights systemic governance failures, where violations are neither exceptional nor hidden but routine. Until accountability is enforced and sustainable livelihood alternatives are created, East Jaintia Hills risks remaining trapped in a cycle of illegality, ecological destruction, and human tragedy.