Kailash’s wife is dead. His elder brother is dead. His two sisters are dead too.
"They are all dead", he says, rather impassively. In his mid-twenties, the resident of Badhghyar village in Kukshi block or Dhar district in Madhya Pradesh knows he is next.
Kailash is dying of the same disease as his family members — Silicosis. It is incurable.
He too worked with them in the Gujarat quartz crushing factories and breathed in silica dust that nw covers the inside of his lungs, slowly choking him.
His body has already shrivelled up and his muscles have melted. A skeleton of hisprevious self, he finds it demeaning but lets his mother bathe him.
His lungs blocked, breathless and short of oxygen for his blood, self-esteem is the last of his worries as his body refuses to build new cells while the older ones die. Eventually his system will collapse.
He is one of the hundreds of Bhil and Bhilala tribals in Jhabua and Dhar districts of Madhya Pradesh waiting to die. In a survey conducted in 2007 by a group of doctors in 21 villages of Jhabua, 158 people were found dead of silicosis.
"266 others, who have been exposed to silica dust and are sick, wil also eventually die", the doctors noted.
Can anyone expect for what the people are putting their lives in Factories? It is just for Rs 50-60 as daily wages for three or four months in the summer.
Munni, a Rordha resident in her mid 30s’ has seen 13 members in her extended family die over two years. In all, 28 die due to silicosis.
How sad the life and how miserable is the lifestyle in India as a labour!