Bihar has long been a “labour-exporting” state—during colonial rule and after Independence. Bihari workers have travelled far and wide, within India and overseas, selling their labour to survive. Today, their numbers in the Middle East have grown substantially. Within India too, a disproportionate share of workers killed in industrial accidents come from Bihar. This is why migration emerged as a major issue in the 2025 Bihar Assembly elections, prompting the government to announce measures to curb out-migration from the state.
On January 22, an explosion at a steel plant in Baloda Bazar district of Chhattisgarh killed six workers and injured five others. All those who died were residents of Gotibandh village in Dumaria block of Gaya district, Bihar, and belonged to the Mahadalit (Manjhi) community. Among the dead were a father and his son. They had travelled to Chhattisgarh just ten days earlier to work at the Real Ispat and Steel unit in Bakulahi, where some men from their village were already employed. They went in search of nothing more than two meals a day for their families.
Each of them was burdened with debts ranging from ₹30,000 to ₹50,000—borrowed from village moneylenders or self-help groups. With no work available in the village, debts mounting, and survival becoming impossible, they were pushed out. Someone had a daughter to marry, someone’s wife was about to give birth, and no one had the money for any of it. Trapped in debt, they fell into the grip of usurers and labour contractors.
To ensure uninterrupted production, these workers were sent in without shutting down the machines, in an environment where temperatures hover around 900 degrees Celsius—leaving virtually no chance of survival in the event of an accident. That is why 40-year-old Sundar Bhuiyan, 40-year-old Vinay Bhuiyan, 42-year-old Badri Bhuiyan, 37-year-old Jitendra Bhuiyan, 22-year-old Ramdev Kumar, and Shravan Kumar died on the spot. Their bodies were so badly charred that even identification became difficult.
This was not an accident; it is a system that burns lives for profit and turns that fire into a celebration of “development” and “GDP growth”. It is the same GDP we loudly proclaim every day to announce that India has become the world’s fourth-largest economy. This economy is being built on the bodies of workers who, trapped in debt, sell their labour and fill the coffers of the wealthy.
The death of one or two workers often does not even make the news, nor do such deaths find place in government records. That is why the true toll of industrial accidents never fully comes to light. The condition of the injured is even worse. In this incident, the injured workers—Motaj Ansari (26), carpenter; Sarafat Ansari (32), carpenter; Sabir Ansari (37), carpenter; Kalpu Bhuiyan (51), helper; and Ramu Bhuiyan (34), helper—remain without any clear official information about their health.
“Papa took a loan from a self-help group. We had to pay an instalment of ₹17,000 every month. We couldn’t manage it; the debt kept increasing. The pressure was so intense that Papa had to leave the village. We thought he would earn, repay the loan, and come back to live with us. But everything is over now,” says Khushboo Kumari (18), daughter of the deceased Sundar Bhuiyan.
“Badri Bhuiyan had never gone outside the village to work. The entire household depended on him. His niece was to be married. He said he would earn outside this time and return to arrange the wedding. Now everything is finished,” says Partania, his daughter.
“Papa had taken a loan for my elder sister’s wedding. The lenders harassed him daily. Just a few days ago, he left with people from the village to earn. Now who will look after us four sisters?” asks Asmita, daughter of the deceased Vinay Manjhi.
“There was no work in the village, so my brother went out to earn. His wife was due to deliver a baby, for which he had taken a loan,” says Kanti Kumari, sister of the deceased Jitendra Kumar.
Women of Gotibandh village told a Dainik Bhaskar reporter, “If there were factories in or around our village, why would our husbands go outside to die? There isn’t even clean drinking water here—we have to go to others’ doors for water. No one owns even ten kathas of land.”
A similar tragedy unfolded on June 30, 2025, when an explosion at an industrial unit in Sangareddy, Telangana, killed workers including W. Paswan. His father, Ramnath, said then, “If there were jobs in Bihar, people from the village wouldn’t have to go to Telangana and die in accidents. We are forced to wander across states just to survive.” After that incident, the Bihar government sent a three-member committee—but what happened to its report? What schemes were framed for workers? There has been no answer till date.
This is a system that reveals itself through such “accidents”—a system that burns lives for profit and calls it development. It represents the extreme culmination of the exploitation of India’s working people, spreading from villages to cities and gripping the entire society in its bloody claws.
According to information presented by the Chhattisgarh government in the Assembly, between January 1, 2024 and January 31, 2025, 171 industrial accidents killed 124 workers and injured 86 others. The central government told the Lok Sabha in July 2024 that 1,154 people died in 2018, 1,127 in 2019, 1,050 in 2020, 988 in 2021, and 1,017 in 2022. In the same period, the number of injured was reported as 4,528, 3,927, 2,832, 2,803, and 2,714 respectively.
But all these figures pertain only to registered companies. There is no reliable data for the unorganised sector, where nearly 90 percent of India’s workers are employed. If those numbers were to emerge, the picture would be even more horrific. In cities like Delhi, where the minimum wage for a helper is around ₹19,846, workers are made to work for ₹6,000 to ₹10,000—right before the government’s eyes, without any safety.
A look at newspapers shows that accidents in both formal and informal sectors have increased since 2020, yet official figures show a decline. Between 2012 and 2022, the recorded number of deaths was 1,317, 1,312, 1,266, 1,107, 1,189, 1,084, 1,154, 1,127, 1,050, 988, and 1,017 respectively. The reported decline in injuries during the same period is even more dubious: from 28,700 in 2012 to just 2,714 in 2022. In 2015, injuries were reported at 20,257, suddenly dropping to 5,367 in 2016 and declining further thereafter—without any proportional fall in deaths. This points to data that is neither transparent nor honest. Even accidents in the formal sector are not being properly recorded; the truth is being buried in paperwork. When profit becomes the sole measure of development, a worker’s life is reduced to a “cost”. That is why deaths appear to decline in files, while bodies keep piling up on the ground.
According to the International Trade Union Confederation, India was among the world’s ten worst countries for workers’ rights in 2020. The ILO considers India one of the most dangerous countries in terms of industrial accidents. Between 2018 and 2020, 3,331 deaths were recorded, yet under the Factories Act, 1948, only 14 people were jailed in that period.
Recent changes to labour laws have further weakened workers’ conditions. Under the labour codes, inspectors are no longer inspectors but “facilitators” for owners. They cannot conduct surprise inspections without the employer’s consent, nor can they immediately file cases—contrary to the spirit of ILO conventions. The right to an eight-hour workday has been diluted, the definition of a factory has been altered to exclude millions of small production units from legal scrutiny, and workers already earning less than the minimum wage have been left at the mercy of employers. Permanent jobs are being replaced by a hire-and-fire regime.
Today, workplaces are truly turning into killing fields. To cover this up, democratic rights—protest, demonstration, the right to unionise, and freedom of expression—are under constant attack. After workers die, a few scraps are thrown in the name of compensation to douse public anger. But justice will not come through compensation; it will come through organised political struggle. The working class must fight the profit-driven system to secure safe, dignified, and protected workplaces as a fundamental right. Only then can we save ourselves and our future. As long as development means profit and workers are treated as fuel, these killing fields will continue to operate.
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*Freelance journalist and social worker
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