The road up to the mines of Soo-Kilo climbs out of the green valleys of Meghalaya in north-east India. Remains of wrecked or broken-down trucks litter its sides, daubed with messages such as "No one lives for ever".
Tarmac gives way to a dirt track in the village of Jowai. Roadside stalls sell umbrellas, shovels and spirits, and not much else. Vegetation and trees have disappeared, and instead there are coal heaps. The ground is cracked, sapped by subterranean galleries, from which child labourers hew coal.
Child labour is forbidden in India. The federal parliament passed a law recently decreeing compulsory schooling for children aged six. Yet according to Impulse Network, an NGO based in Shillong, the state capital of Meghalaya, there are more than 70,000 underage labourers in the pits. Adolescents aged 14 or 15 come to Soo-Kilo from neighbouring states, and also from Nepal and Bangladesh.
Up from the mine, the children of Soo-Kilo squat around pools of filthy water, and scrape away the coal dust that sticks to their skin. Bejay Rai, who claims to be 17 but looks a lot younger, is fashioning tools at a makeshift forge. He says "I want to be ready for tomorrow when I go back to work."
Below ground, there are no machines to do the work, since men and children cost much less than machinery. Every dawn they clamber down a bamboo ladder, descending as much as 70 metres. In the narrow galleries, no wider than their shoulders, there is not enough oxygen and it is hard to breathe. The workers' pay depends on how much coal they mine. The youngest miners can hope to earn $7 a day, the adults more than twice that. "It is a lot compared with what we can earn in Nepal," says Rai. Yet in the eight months he has laboured here he has not saved anything. Everything in the mining village – food, drink, betting and women – is expensive. "There are even drugs to boost their stamina," says Hasina Karbih, the head of Impulse Network.
"In the mines death is never far away," says a worker. Those who are injured at work have a low chance of survival, since the nearest hospital is three hours away, and the local doctor has only aspirin and bandages.
Why are the mines not closed for using illegal child labour? Patricia Mukhim, editor of the local paper, The Shillong Times, says that mine owners are prominent among those who pass the laws in the regional parliament. There are only seven work inspectors for the whole of Meghalaya and they have no transport.
The mines produce millions of tonnes of coal, yet there is very low investment in them. "The rich owners don't plough their money back into the pits. They would rather buy cars or build houses," says Wonderful Shullai, who owns several mines and reckons that he lives quite quietly.
What about the more prosperous owners? "They go into politics," he said.
This article originally appeared in Le Monde