Workers in industries such as mining, quarrying, construction, and glass are exposed to high quantities of active silica dust, and often contract a fatal and incurable lung disease called silicosis. It causes the formation of fibrous nodules in the lungs, slowly choking patients to death. The scale of silicosis in India is staggering—research estimates suggest that 52 million workers will be at risk of the disease by 2025.
But just as staggering is the absence of the disease from the public imagination, and the government’s indifference to it. Silicosis is often misdiagnosed as doctors lack awareness of the disease.
Over the course of one and a half years, journalist Akhilesh Pandey visited silicosis victims in close to 200 villages across 12 states in India. It became clear in his reporting that no one thing had damned the victims more than the accident of their birth—they were poor, forced to migrate for work, and undertook any job they could get. Most worked as undocumented daily-wagers, outside the basic protections of Indian labor laws and without access to any reliable health care.