Fields of Gold

There are five railway stations in the Kolar Gold Fields: Marikuppam, Champion, Oorgaum, Coromandel and BEML Nagar. If you include the trains from nearest big junction, Bangarpet, there are 25 trains to the state capital every day. The first train starts well before dawn – but is crowded, crowded with all the young people of Kolar commuting to Bengaluru to work.

On the face of it, KGF looks like any other small town in India – but then you notice that there are very few cars on the roads. It’s all either two-wheelers or autos. The people on the roads are mostly students – or women with children. “What do you expect? All our young people are in Bangalore, working as housemaids or security guards. There are no jobs here,” says G Jayakumar, the coordinator of the BGML Employees, Supervisors and Officers United Forum.

A Town of Memories

Sixteen years ago, last week, the company at the heart of India’s most famous – and fabled - company town shut down. Bharat Gold Mines Limited, the public sector enterprise that operated and managed the Kolar Gold Fields, was one of the most visible casualties of liberalization, when the recommendation made by the Board of Industrial and Financial Reconstruction to wind down the company was accepted by the central government. When the company shut down, it had 3,100 workers, down from 35,000 employees during its heyday in the 1960s.

“The population of KGF is around 2.4 lakh. That’s more than that of Kolar, the district capital. Even though KGF is not even a taluk, we have a separate superintendent of police and a separate district surgeon,” says R Vikramadithan, former chairman of the KGF Urban Development Authority. “This was one of the first places in India to get electricity – in 1902, from Shivasamudram, before even Bengaluru. KGF had the largest hospital in Old Mysore, the BGML Hospital, a three hundred bed hospital, built way back in 1880. Now, we can’t even compete with Kuppam, which Chandrababu Naidu is developing at a record pace,” he says.

Ghosts of the Past

Scattered around KGF are the shafts – marked by rusted metal platforms, around two storeys high. They still bear British names – Bullen, Champion, Edgar and so on. But with the Brits long gone, the names have become Indianized.  Hancock’s shaft is now ‘Uncox’s’, Rodgers camp is now Rajesh camp.

Next to the Hancock’s shaft is a building that looks like a cathedral – it’s actually housing for an aircompresser, feeding power to the cart that took the miners down – 3,200 feet below the surface. The cart is rusted solid now, and the sheds nearby are falling apart. “This is where the agents would sit. This is where the explosives were the explosives were stored. The mines clerk would have a key, the officer would have another. Both of them had to unlock the stores at the same time to access the gelatine and the ANFO,” says 64-year old Francis Peter.

Peter used to be a detective, guarding against gold thieves among the miners. He and his crew would navigate the miles of tunnels under the surface, with just a single torch to guide them through the darkness. The idea was to conduct surprise checks on the miners – who had their own ways of communicating to each other that checks were on the way. But now, those gold thefts seem minor. “They looted this place – those so-called-officers who were supposed to be looking out for us,” he says. “Everything that could be moved, they stole, from the machinery to the copper wire that connected the compressor to the shafts.” He spits in disgust.

Gayatri Chandrashekar, the author of Grit and Gold, a history of KGF, says “The very people who were supposed to guard the resources of BGML were the criminals,” she says.   

The next generation     

There are around 140 students in the Government Higher Primary School in lower Maskam. “These are children from the poorest families. We have a few students from the local remand home for children as well,” says Nagaraja Rao, the school’s principal. For the children here, the mines are irrelevant, the stuff of stories their grandparents tell. They aren’t living in the past, but immediately, vitally, in the present.  Take 14 year-old Clinton (It seems like the Big Dog has taken over from JFK as the US president people name their kids after these days). He’s tall, dark, and taciturn. He wants to quit school when he’s 16 and go to Bengaluru and become a dancer and dance teacher. He’s already discussed this and got the approval of his father, John, an auto driver. There are the brothers Ameenu, Siddique, and Saleem. Their father Fairoz is also an auto driver. Siddique wants to become a car mechanic when he grows up. When Ameenu, the eldest, prompts him, asking if he doesn’t mean a mechanical engineer, Siddique shakes his head. Not an engineer, but a car mechanic. He’s quite emphatic. Saleem, the youngest, has the grandest plans. He wants to be a collector.  As for Ameenu, he wants to be an engineer. “He’s smart enough, he can do it if he studies,” says his teacher Varalakshmi, smiling with pride. There’s Charulatha, a gangling girl of 12. Her father works in a local garment store. She wants to become a cop when she grows up.

There’s Ramesha. He ran away from home when he was nine, unable to take the constant beatings his parents dealt out. Now, he’s at the remand home, where he’s happier. He doesn’t ever want to go back home. There’s little Vidya, nine years old, very shy, and heartbreakingly pretty, with her left hand horrifically withered and burnt after an accident with hot tar. She’s another remand school resident as well. Her parents left her there, unable to take care of her. Like Ramesha, she’s happier there. They give her breakfast and dinner there, and the school provides her lunch. She gets 3 sets of school uniform clothes. Life is better at the remand home, she says.

Despite the poverty, despite the hardships, these children are bright and inquisitive. They live in a world without Instagram and Snapchat, in a world where books and play still matter. They aren’t blasé or jaded and retain the sense of wonder that’s one of the most magical things about childhood. “They’re all good kids,” says Indumathi, another teacher. “Of them, we hope that at least 50% will go on to college. We can only help them up 4:30 pm, while they’re here in school. After that, when they go home, they’re on their own,” she says.

Open and shut

Every once in a while, news of new developments in the myriad of court cases surrounding BGML sweeps through KGF.  Or it’s talks of the mines being reopened. But this week, there’s been a significant development. “We have now got the penal interest on the delayed gratuity payments for the miners,” says Jayakumar.

According to Jayakumar, its more viable to get the gold from the so-called “tailings”, the cyanide salt dumps that dot the landscape around KGF.  “We are ready to do what is needful to revive mining in this area. But there are vested interests who have been working against the workers – while pretending to speak for them,” he says.

Jayakumar has been fighting for the miners in the courts, as well as representing their issues to the government for years now. For him, the next target is getting compensation for the miners’ lung infections. The miners call it silicosis, and it’s a result of inhaling the crystalline dust from the mines.  “1,500 people have died as a result of BGML’s neglect,” he says. Now we are going to the Supreme Court. Prashant Bhushan is representing us.”

But as far as the revival of mining is concerned, KGF seems to be the ball in a ping-pong game between the Centre and the state. “The Central Government has said that it is OK with the idea of the Karnataka government taking over and running these mines. But the Karnataka government does not want to take on the 1,700 crores of BGML’s liabilities,” says Jayakumar.

A long, slow decline

Over the past seven decades, the story of Kolar has been one of departures. First, after Independence, the British officers left. “The Company now began to entrust more responsibilities to the Anglo-Indians. Other educated Indian Officers and Agents joined the Mining Company at this stage and they took over many Administrative and Managerial posts when the European exodus began,” says Bridget White Kumar, a long-time Kolar resident who now lives in Bengaluru. But the Anglo Indians too found themselves considering other options. “Towards the beginning of the 1960’s till the end of the 70’s there was a mass exodus of the community from KGF to England, Australia, America and Canada,” she says.

In 1956, John Taylor and Sons, the company that was instrumental to the development of the Kolar Gold Fields handed over charge to the State of Mysore. Fourteen years later, in April 1970, the firm closed down.  

Today, most of the BGML officers have gone, too. A few remain, dreaming dreams of reopened mines and gold from sand. The old workers remain, too, hoping for compensation and payments that may never come. The younger generation has abandoned hope of work in KGF, preferring gruelling commutes on crowded trains to Bengaluru every day. And with talk of the privatization of BGML, the last big employer in the area, it looks like Kolar is set for another exodus.