Anyone who has seen a rat-hole coal mine up-close would have known that the chances of survival of the 15 miners trapped in a mine at Ksan in Meghalaya’s East Jaintia Hills was slim once the mine was flooded. I have been inside one of these mines and can tell you that it is beyond imagination how anyone can enter such a small space and mine coal with bare hands and rudimentary tools. In 2011, I, along with my colleagues at the Centre
