A belligerent group of women stormed the offices of the District Magistrate in Mahoba district in Uttar Pradesh on April 15, 2017. Their demand: that the stone-crushing machines, specifically, that of one Swami Raj Crusher be shut down or regulated. The women claimed that the white dust hanging constantly in the air as a result of the stone-crushing machines was detrimental to their lives and that of their children.

In February 2016, while investigating the death of a labourer in a quarry in Kabrai block of Mahoba, we stumbled on the cascading impact of this life-threatening livelihood. The conditions of work on these often illegal and unregulated sites were shocking. When accidents occurred, which they did at a horrifying frequency, bodies were removed from quarries and made to disappear. There was a nexus of police, contractors and quarry owners, who set the rules for the families of workers. They could rarely argue as that would lead to them losing their livelihood. Wages were regularly withheld. And despite the pitfalls, for landless labour in the region, this was their best bet to earn a living. After all, the price of a day’s work, was almost double that offered by the rural employment guarantee scheme, MNREGA – and ironically, much more dependable. So what if you may lose a few limbs, or your life?

The current petition carried by the women, the worst-affected in this region, refers to the fact that the 200 stone-crushing machines in just one Kabrai block of Mahoba had pushed them, their immediate families and future generations into illness. We visited some of these women’s homes along the edge of the quarry and saw the layer of dust on their grains, heard complaints of the dust never quite washing out of their food, hair, throat, eyes. “Now we’re just used to it”. “You’re here, so the machines have gone off. Otherwise we can’t hear ourselves”. The women were angry, cynical, at the end of their tether.

Sunaina, who lives in Kabrai, tells us, “the machine runs all the time, all day, all night. You wake up in the morning and look at yourself in the mirror, and your face is covered in dust!” The older Paana, less inclined to see the humour in the situation, said, “It’s been cold till now, so you could stay indoors. Now what? However you try and cover things, food, it gets everywhere. My husband died like this, in this dust, and now I’m sick, my children are sick all the time.”

The petition is an angry culmination of years of complaints and protests – “we’ve been to Mahoba, Banda, Lucknow – to Mayawati. Nothing has happened”, says Radha Yadav. “Since 2004, we’ve had this problem. It was the time of the Bahujan Samaj Party government. We went to Lucknow with a complaint when they set up these machines, that we had a problem with them. Our files ended up in the hands of some BSP workers who were from here, and who own quarries here. So, no one listened to our complaints. On the contrary, my husband was threatened, that if he ever complained again, he would be shot”.

The petition to the District Magistrate, Ajay Kumar, asked that the owners of the crushing machines owners be obliged to follow rules about spraying water to settle the crusher dust. It also requested that the Chief Medical Officeer organise health check-ups in Kabrai. Subsequently, a camp was held on April 16, 2017.

But some women, like Kunti, were clear they wanted no sprinklers. They wanted the machines to be removed.

The CMO of Mahoba district, AK Varshney said the crushers come under the jurisdiction of the Mining Department and the Revenue Departments of the administration. He knew of the dust, and claimed that he too had mentioned in some meetings that water be sprayed when the machines were on. This, he said, would mitigate any diseases. Although, out of the preliminary reports from the health camps, no chronic diseases had been detected on which he could comment or take action.

E Vijay Kumar Misra, the regional officer in charge of the Uttar Pradesh Pollution Control Board, was asked what regulations existed in regard to using stone-crushing machines near human habitation. According to him, older crusher machines had slowly had human habitations be set up close to them, and that so far they had received no complaints or orders to remove these machines. The newer machines were being set up at a distance from human settlements.

According to our ground reports, the officials seemed grossly ignorant and negligent, on both counts: the location of the stone-crushing operations, and monitoring and controlling chronic, life-threatening illness that pervades generation after generation of the inhabitants of Kabrai.

Khabar Lahariya is a rural, video-first digital news organisation, with an all-women network of reporters in 8 districts of Uttar Pradesh.