India: the children of the mines | M6 | 66 minutes

In the North-East of India lies Meghalaya, a region that is neighbour to Nepal and Bangladesh. The subsoil here is bursting with coal and the mines belong to private owners. It is said there are nearly fifteen thousand of them. A mine is a gaping hole, gouged out of the earth with dynamite.  At 100 feet underground the temperature is over a 100⁰ F in galleries that are barely 2 feet high and 5 feet wide. As every day, some 50 people are at work. Among the miners is a small group of children: Late, 13, Kumar, 15 and Santosh, just turned 16, left their families to live here and escape extreme poverty. They have been working in this hellhole for two years. In India child labour is officially forbidden. And yet there are said to be 70,000 in the mines of Meghalaya.