A River and its Sand Workers

The Sand Workers

One of the seemingly never-ending gifts of the river is sediment. Sand is one part of this. In slow moving waters, the coarse, and relatively heavy particle is found not on the banks but on the river’s bottom. Sand is one of the primary components of cement which is the primary means of building and construction, particularly in this part of the world. And thus, just as there is a huge demand for construction, there is a huge demand for sand.

Interestingly, sand, for the most part, is collected by hand. Here, workers collect from the river’s bottom this important ingredient to our modern lifestyle. But in such an un-modern way, these workers dive into the water and swim to the bottom carrying a large bowl. The water is cold, the currents can sometimes be strong, there are a lot of other things in the water, yet the (mostly) men scoop-up sand, swim up to the boat, dump the bowl’s contents into the hold and swim down again for more. For ten or twelve hours in a row, day after day. The work is both dangerous and oppressively difficult.

But for so many, who have not been educated and are not literate, who have fallen on hard times, whose land may have been taken away by the rising waters caused by large dams downstream (ironically built with cement! and funded by equally large multi-national corporations) or stolen by land developers more cunning and ruthless than they, many of these workers have no choice – there is little else they can do. And if that means earning only 60 taka ($1) per day (this wage is below poverty, but above minimum wage, even in Bangladesh), they will do it because it is work and they feel lucky to even have a job.

In an even greater demonic irony, along the Narmada river where some of the following images were made, the sand quarrying work is being done in a part of the river which is slated for submergence because of a massive dam being built downstream. These dams create reservoirs hundreds of kilometers long making this kind of work virtually impossible because the water levels rise so much.

So to summarize:

people collect sand for work è sand is used for cement in construction è dam construction causes people to be forcibly removed from their agricultural rich land upstream è once farmers, people now live in squalid conditions and find any work they can (communities, families, ways of life for generations have been uprooted) è construction is always booming, sand workers needed è rising waters from dam construction eventually reach their work area, water is getting deep è work becomes even more difficult and dangerous è eventually, work can not be done in that area, people are left without work è (In desperation, many move to the cities. In the city, their language is not spoken, they have no “skills”, and must fend for themselves. The situation continues in a downward spiral.)