Bloody Bauxite

Yes, bloody bauxite. The worst thing you can see here is the appalling conditions in which the chaps levelling the load in the railway wagons are working – bad enough in itself, but an issue that could be sorted relatively easily if the will was there to do it. But the simple paper or cloth masks they can have if they want them are useless: the dust gets through the cloth ones, and the paper ones don’t allow them to get enough breath when they’re working hard. The potential for nasty accidents, working in a wagon while it’s being loaded like that is not trivial, either.

There are even bigger issues with bauxite, that wouldn’t be so easily fixed. Whole mountains are being quarried away, destroying hydrological systems and ecosystems on which the local people depend. Those people are not being given adequate – or, in most cases, any – compensation. All for what? Mostly to supply the international arms trade – by far the biggest consumer of aluminium, for which bauxite is the raw material.

I also took a video from the station footbridge: Loading bauxite at Anuppur, MP, India.