Bonnie Konyak
Dimapur | February 11
First it was the booming business of logging, then came the abundance provided by River Dikhu in the form of stone quarries and now it is the huge deposit of coal buried in its hills that has Naginimora bursting with activity.
This relatively unknown town of Mon district flourishes in isolation from the rest of Nagaland along the border of Assam and at the foothills of Mon town. The place is picture-perfect with the hills to one side and the river to other with just the right climate and population. Naginimora is also historically significant as the place where Queen Watlong Konyak, wife of the Ahom King Godhadar, died and was buried. The name of the town itself is derived “Naga-Rani-Mora” and so a memorial in honour of the Konyak queen stands at one end of the town to this very day.
Today this usually slow-paced town is literally roaring with the attention it has attracted from individuals and companies who are generously investing in the extraction of coal from its bountiful hills. Such an operation being relatively new, the locals are more or less on their own with no one to care if they are receiving a fair deal or being exploited. Rates are fixed by outsiders, contracts are drawn up to their advantage and the precious mineral transported off in the absence of the state’s intervention while the guileless people are happy to have some extra money.
Another side-effect of this unawareness is the environmental threat presented by these extractions. Large areas of forests are cleared out for these operations which are carried out on virtually every hill of Kongan village. The coal mines called “jhuls” are precariously built with log posts to hold it and they run as deep as 300 feet or more. Several such inter-connected ‘jhuls’ in a single hill is capable of leaving it hollow and dangerous. The constant danger of the mines catching fire from candles lighted inside, is another hazard which has, on several occasions, been the cause of much destruction with fire raging uncontrolled for months.
The coal business has given the people of Naginimora a new leash to life after the abrupt ban on the logging business in Nagaland years ago. After many years of struggling for daily wages this new business with its many earning opportunities as labourers, agents, contractors, landowners etc., is a welcomed change. However one can only wonder if the simple folks stand to lose more than they bargained for, because land has been the one constant possession of the people for generations. If this trend continues, soon they may look to find nothing left, but ambers and ashes of a once beautiful land.
