Jharkhand: Videos/Mapping India
Bhukhal Ghasi, a 50-year-old laborer from Bokaro district in Jharkhand, had a family of seven to support. Amidst existing poverty and food scarcity, he struggled to find work. The situation worsened when he died of hunger in March 2020. Tragically, Bhukhal’s family faced another loss just a few months later. Jharkhand is the lowest-performing state in India’s ‘Zero Hunger Goal’ of SDGs, accounting for 33 of the 99 starvation deaths between 2015 and 2020. The state’s negligence left Bhukhal waiting for months to receive a ration card.
Reena Kerketta, one of India’s 6.6 million tribal Christians, is recovering from a severe head injury she sustained after an attack in her home in the tribal-majority Khunti district in the eastern state of Jharkhand. Host Harshita Rathore visits the Kerkettas to explore what identity-based discrimination …
A seven-year-old girl witnesses her mother’s death after a portion of land caves in, burying her under debris in Jharia coalfields in India's Jharkhand state, where an underground fire has been raging for over 100 years due to unscientific mining. The girl's father, Dilip Bauri, recalls the incident …
Two underage girls from India’s eastern state of Jharkhand narrate how they were trafficked from the tribal-majority district of Gumla to the country’s city of Delhi for domestic work.
Madhusudan Mahto, a 60-year-old resident of Dhanbad district in Jharkhand state, is one of many paying the price for successive state governments' careless embrace of state capitalism. Coal mining has been ongoing in Jharkhand since 1901. Today, around 6,486 hectares of land in the state affected by the mining activity, while about 75% of the state’s population remains economically dependent on agriculture. Although mining is a lucrative source of revenue for the state and is prioritised over vital sectors like agriculture, it compromises the well-being of millions of residents who are not employed in the mining sector. And this is apart from significant environmental and health costs associated with the extraction of natural resources.