Deaths shroud high-speed train construction: The other side of India's Moon landing

Just as the country was celebrating the success of the Chandraayan-3 mission, 23 workers from West Bengal lost their lives in the collapse of a viaduct of a line under construction in the state of Mizoram. In Indian construction sites an average of 38 fatal accidents per day. Victims mostly internal migrants.

New Delhi (AsiaNews / Agencies) - All eyes of India were turned to heaven on Wednesday 23 August, the day of the Chandraayan-3 probe landing on the moon. But in those same hours in which it celebrated with justifiable pride the successes of its technological industry, becoming the fourth country in the world to reach the terrestrial satellite, India was brought crashing back to earth with a new very serious tragedy in the workplace: the collapse of the slab of a viaduct under construction for one of the many new high-speed railway lines under construction.

The tragedy occured in the north-eastern state of Mizoram, on the border with Myanmar: of the 40 workers working on the Sairang construction site - about twenty kilometers from the capital Aizawl - 26 fell into the escarpment. Only three survived: twenty-two bodies were recovered, while one is still missing.

The victims were all from the same area, Malda district in West Bengal state; one of those from which thousands of internal migrants leave continuously from very poor villages in search of job opportunities.

This is also a face of today's India which - as in the construction sites of infrastructures - intertwines with the "success stories" of today's India.
But accidents at work are a very high and dramatically daily price.

Just a few days ago, for example, at the beginning of August 20 other workers were crushed to death in the collapse of a crane on a highway under construction not far from Mumbai.

The construction industry employs 51 million workers in India, a sector now second only to agriculture in the local labor market. It contributes 9% of India's gross domestic product but at a very high price: estimates speak of an average of about 38 fatal accidents per day in the large country.

According to a study by researchers at the National Institute of Technology in Surat and the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, deaths on construction sites account for about a quarter of all fatal accidents at work in India. But it is feared that these figures are still lower than the real ones, since so many fatal accidents - or serious injuries that cause death at a later stage - are not reported at all.

While many construction workers face unsafe and unhealthy working and living conditions – such as inadequate housing, food and sanitation, unsafe work practices, and inadequate health and insurance coverage – they are attracted to work because employment is more reliable and better paid than that as a farm laborer.

As in the tragic case of the bridge under construction that collapsed in the state of Mizoram, it is mainly workers in rural areas who seek work in these construction sites due to the lack of opportunities in their villages or chronic poverty.

INDIAN MANDALA IS THE ASIANEWS NEWSLETTER DEDICATED TO INDIA. WOULD YOU LIKE TO RECEIVE IT EVERY FRIDAY IN YOUR E-MAIL? TO SUBSCRIBE, CLICK HERE.

• India
• work
• construction
• building sites
• Chandrayaan-3
• Mizoram