Lone ranger who took on the mining mafia
Kailash Mina fends off violence and threats to fight dubious land acquisitions and might of the mining barons
SIKAR: It’s difficult to reach Kailash Mina after eight at night. An automated voice from the service provider greets people, saying the mobile is switched off.
But few know the reason behind this strange routine that Mina, an RTI activist, religiously follows.
“If my phone is kept on at night, the threats never stop, with callers constantly hurling abuses,” says Mina.
For the last two decades, Mina has been a lone ranger in Rajasthan’s Sikar, a major mining hub. His journey reveals the challenges of taking on powerful lobbies, but also the possibilities of civic action in free and democratic India.
It was in a bus in the early 1970s that Mina first experienced social discrimination. “I had fever and my mother was taking me to the doctor in the nearest city when an upper caste family boarded the bus. My mother had to sit on the floor because we were from the Mina caste, which is considered low,” he recalled.
This incident came back to haunt Mina in 1999, when children in Bhudoli village had their faces blackened and heads shaved by upper castes.
“We helped organise a huge movement against it,” said Mina.
He then got engaged in activism, using RTI.
In 2005, his RTI application revealed hundreds of stone crushers were operating in Neem Ka Thana locality without approval, putting at risk people in nearby villages from dust clouds.
“Following our RTI application in 2005, we successfully managed to stop the government from acquiring land after declaring it barren,” said Mina. This, however, generated a backlash. “I was standing a few feet away from Mina near Badiya Mod, when I saw 7-8 men armed with iron rods attack him. If we hadn’t rushed to his aid, they would have killed him,” says agriculturist Chagan Singh. Nobody was arrested.
The price of activism in an area dominated by the mining mafia is steep. Apart from the personal attacks and life threats, Mina also has close to two dozen cases on him.
“There would be times when I would sit on a dharna and the police slapped cases on me saying that I was trying to grab land.”
The deep rumble of stone crushers can be heard as one drives along the serpentine roads leading up to the many clusters of mines .
“Such is the mafia’s clout that if the villagers object to the constant blasting that result in earthquake-like-situations every day, they call the police to silence the dissenters,” said Mahesh Saini, a 21-year-old associate of Mina.
As Mina inspects a mine barely a few hundred metres of Kansawati, a small water body flowing through the area, the stone crushing unit in front of him abruptly stops.
A few men with faces covered throw furtive glances .
“Now all mine owners have been notified over phone that I am in the area, that too with journalists. We won’t see much mining action today ,” said Mina.
But after thinking for a moment, he smiled wryly, “It seems that I will be getting more threatening calls than usual today evening. I will have to switch off the phone much earlier.”