Many Bangladeshis facing slow death from silicosis after their return from India

Many Bangladeshis who return from India are suffering from deadly silicosis, the Dhaka-based “Daily Star” newspaper reports. Here is the story by Kongkon Karmaker:

***

Many Bangladeshis are facing slow death from silicosis after their return from India following years of work at stone crushing fields in different states of the neighbouring country.
Silicosis is a form of lung disease that is usually caused by many years of inhalation of silica dust.
Most of these Bangladeshis, especially residents of bordering districts, had long been working illegally at various stone crushing sites in a number of Indian states including Haryana, Rajasthan and Delhi.
The Bangladeshis entered the neighbouring country in search of jobs and none of them have any valid travel documents.
The Daily Star recently interviewed several such returnee workers who are from Biral upazila in Dinajpur and Pirganj upazila in Thakurgaon.
All of them said that they used to work at different stone crushing plants in India for many years and are now suffering from silicosis.
According to lung disease specialist Prof BK Bose, who is the director of Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Allied Sciences in Dinajpur, silicosis is a fibrotic lung disorder caused by inhalation, retention and pulmonary reaction due to long term exposure to crystalline silica at mines, stone crushing plants and stone quarries.
High exposure to silica can cause silicosis within a month with significant impairment of lungs within few years, he said. "Life becomes shorter if anyone gets infected with silicosis."
Most people in Bangladesh still have little knowledge about the deadly but preventable disease. If anyone gets infected and the stage is at an acute level, the person will surely die at an early age, the professor also said.
Idris Ali, a 35-year-old man from Narabari village in Dinajpur's Biral upazila, crossed into India illegally in search of a job when he was 20.
He said he later got a job at a stone crushing site in Delhi and his initial monthly wage was 5,000 Indian rupees.
Idris returned home in 2016 after working there for ten years.
He fell sick soon after he came home and he primarily took treatment from local quacks. But after his health condition started to deteriorate, he recently saw a doctor in Dinajpur town and was soon diagnosed with silicosis.
Talking to The Daily Star over phone, Idris said many people in his village are still working at various stone crushing fields in different states of India. "If I knew [about the risks], I would not have taken the job," he sighed.
Till date, at least 11 people died of silicosis in Narabari village alone, he also said.
Since the treatment of the disease is highly expensive, he recently stopped getting allopathic treatment in favour of homoeopathic treatment.
Moinul Islam, a 26-year-old from the same village, said he went to India in 2013, looking for a job.
He later got a job at a stone crushing company in Haryana where he worked for six years. He returned home in 2019 and was diagnosed with silicosis recently.
His monthly medicine costs now go as high as Tk 6,000, which is beyond the affordability of his poor family.
While talking with this correspondent, Moinul said around 200 young people, mostly from Dinajpur, Rangpur and Lalmonirhat, work at nearly 200 stone crushing fields in India.
Another returnee worker, Khairul Alam, 29, from Pirganj of Thakurgaon, said he too was unaware of the risks and worked at a stone crushing field in India for five years to support his family in financial hardship.
He returned home in 2019 and was diagnosed with silicosis recently.
Dr BK Bose, the lung specialist in Dinajpur, said five of his silicosis patients had worked at different stone crushing sites in India.
Terming the trend of going to India for job a social problem, he said there are many job opportunities in Bangladesh now. "Awareness could be a solution to the problem."

Comments

Was Netaji forced to alter face, die in obscurity in USSR in 1975? Was he so meek?

By Rajiv Shah This should sound almost hilarious. Not only did Subhas Chandra Bose not die in a plane crash in Taipei, nor was he the mysterious Gumnami Baba who reportedly passed away on 16 September 1985 in Ayodhya, but we are now told that he actually died in 1975—date unknown—“in oblivion” somewhere in the former Soviet Union. Which city? Moscow? No one seems to know.

Love letters in a lifelong war: Babusha Kohli’s resistance in verse

By Ravi Ranjan* “War does not determine who is right—only who is left.” Bertrand Russell’s words echo hauntingly in our times, and few contemporary Hindi poets embody this truth as profoundly as Babusha Kohli. Emerging from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, Kohli has carved a unique space in literature by weaving together tenderness, protest, and philosophy across poetry, prose, and cinema. Her work is not merely artistic expression—it is resistance, refuge, and a call for peace.

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

Asbestos contamination in children’s products highlights global oversight gaps

By A Representative A commentary published by the International Ban Asbestos Secretariat (IBAS) has drawn attention to the challenges governments face in responding effectively to global public-health risks. In an article written by Laurie Kazan-Allen and published on March 5, 2026, the author examines how the discovery of asbestos contamination in children’s play products has raised questions about regulatory oversight and international product safety. The article opens by reflecting on lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic, noting that governments in several countries were slow to respond to early warning signs of the crisis. Referring to the experience of the United Kingdom, the author writes that delays in implementing protective measures contributed to “232,112 recorded deaths and over a million people suffering from long Covid.” The commentary uses this example to illustrate what it describes as the dangers of underestimating emerging threats. Attention then turns...

Buddhist shrines were 'massively destroyed' by Brahmanical rulers: Historian DN Jha

Nalanda mahavihara By Rajiv Shah Prominent historian DN Jha, an expert in India's ancient and medieval past, in his new book , "Against the Grain: Notes on Identity, Intolerance and History", in a sharp critique of "Hindutva ideologues", who look at the ancient period of Indian history as "a golden age marked by social harmony, devoid of any religious violence", has said, "Demolition and desecration of rival religious establishments, and the appropriation of their idols, was not uncommon in India before the advent of Islam".

Echoes of Vietnam and Chile: The devastating cost of the I-A Axis in Iran

By Ram Puniyani The recent joint military actions by Israel and the United States against Iran have been devastating. Like all wars, this conflict is brutal to its core, leaving a trail of human suffering in its wake. The stated pretext for this aggression—the brutality of the Ayatollah Khamenei regime and its nuclear ambitions—clashes sharply with the reality of the diplomatic landscape. Iran had expressed a willingness to remain at the negotiating table, signaling a readiness to concede points emerging from dialogue.

Authoritarian destruction of the public sphere in Ecuador: Trumpism in action?

By Pilar Troya Fernández The situation in Ecuador under Daniel Noboa's government is one of authoritarianism advancing on several fronts simultaneously to consolidate neoliberalism and total submission to the US international agenda. These are not isolated measures, but rather a coordinated strategy that combines job insecurity, the dismantling of the welfare state, unrestricted access to mining, the continuation of oil exploitation without environmental considerations, the centralization of power through the financial suffocation of local governments, and the systematic criminalization of all forms of opposition and popular organization.

The kitchen as prison: A feminist elegy for domestic slavery

By Garima Srivastava* Kumar Ambuj stands as one of the most incisive voices in contemporary Hindi poetry. His work, stripped of ornamentation, speaks directly to the lived realities of India’s marginalized—women, the rural poor, and those crushed under invisible forms of violence. His celebrated poem “Women Who Cook” (Khānā Banātī Striyāṃ) is not merely about food preparation; it is a searing indictment of patriarchal domestic structures that reduce women’s existence to endless, unpaid labour.

The price of silence: Why Modi won’t follow Shastri, appeal for sacrifice

By Arundhati Dhuru, Sandeep Pandey* In 1965, as India grappled with war and a crippling food crisis, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri faced a United States that used wheat shipments under the PL-480 agreement as a lever to dictate Indian foreign policy. Shastri’s response remains legendary: he appealed to the nation to skip one meal a day. Millions of middle-class households complied, choosing temporary hunger over the sacrifice of national dignity. Today, India faces a modern equivalent in the energy sector, yet the leadership’s response stands in stark contrast to that era of self-reliance.

Search This Blog