# Modern Hyderabad (Deccan)/Chapter 13

CHAPTER XIII.
The Singareni Collieries.
Coal mining being one of the most important industries in Hyderabad State, I was anxious to visit the Singareni collieries at Yellandu, and journeyed to Dornakal Junction, which has become quite a busy place since the adjacent coalfields brought it into prominence. There was no available train from Dornakal to Yellandu before midnight, and then, after an hour's journey, I reached a dark little station, where I was advised to sleep in the railway carriage until daybreak. The jabber of coolies woke me before the sun was up, and the servant said that these people had been waiting on the platform all night in the hope of carrying my traps to the Rest House, and that I must walk there, because Yellandu possesses no public conveyance of any sort. The distance was not great, and, followed by a crowd of men and women, who fought for my things and seemed to talk a dozen languages, I reached in a few minutes the best Rest House ​I have found in Hyderabad State, in fact, it was so good, I began to fear that I had come by mistake into one of the luxurious places that His Highness's State Railway reserves so jealously for the use of its officers and their friends.
Singareni, as seen from the Rest House, did not resemble any mining centre I had visited in other parts of the world, and apart from a small line along which ran empty trucks, there was nothing to intimate that I was on a coalfield. Men, women and boys, carrying lamps, passed in batches and I was told that they were the "miners;" and, later on, Englishmen drove by in neat buggies, and they were pointed out to me as "the mine Sahibs on their way to office." Wood, my servant said, was expensive in the bazaar, but otherwise prices there were the same as in Secunderabad, and he had found an English Memsahib who sold fruits and vegetables, and from her he had obtained big tomatoes and enormous carrots and turnips. I learnt, later on, that water is only too plentiful in the mines, and, in consequence, everyone in Singareni can have a garden all the year round. Moreover the Company has made a tank, that is developing into a pretty ​lake, and there fishing, swimming, and a little boating can be indulged in by the mine Sahibs and their Memsahibs. And there is a Club where these people meet twice a week for tennis, billiards, and bridge, and where they give an occasional ball to which all the Europeans for many miles round are invited. The Company has built a church, and, when I was there, Singareni had just escaped having a Bishop, the Bishop of Madras having been anxious to make a See at Singareni for Bishop Azariah, and to convert the Company's pretty little church into a cathedral of some sort.
At sunset I went to the office, where the English manager gave me a bundle of papers in which I could find the information I wanted, and he promised that one of his English staff should call for me early the following morning and drive me round the twenty pits, which stretch over a considerable distance.
I read that the Singareni coalfields were discovered in 1872 by Dr. King of the Indian Geological Survey Department, and in 1886 the Hyderabad-Deccan Company acquired the mining rights from His Highness's government. English miners were afterwards sent to lay out the works of an English colliery, ​and since that time the coalfields have expanded, although, perhaps, the coal industry has not become all that was hoped and expected of it twenty years ago. Four distinct seams have now been found, the principal one being the King seam, which contains a valuable, hard, semi-bituminous steam coal, and which is being worked at a considerable depth, some of the works being not less than 1,400 feet from the surface.
The main shaft is at the Osman pit (named after H. H. the Nizam when he was a little boy), and this accommodates the King seam. Here the tubs of coal are brought to the bottom of the shaft on rails, run by a cable that is worked by electric power, and the tubs, which contain eleven hundred-weight of coal each, are raised to the pit's surface in cages, two at a time, and the coal is then tipped on to an endless revolving belt, from which women and boys extract the shale and outside products before it travels to the end of the belt, and there falls into wagons that convey it to the railway station.
All this I saw the next morning, but I did not go down the shaft, being satisfied with recollections of mines I had explored elsewhere. I saw the miners — men, women and ​boys — going down, sixteen at a time, and I noticed that they laughed and talked and did not seem to be at all nervous. Some years ago it was different. Then miners had to be brought to Singareni from the north of India. But now a miner's life is popular at Yellandu, good wages, good houses and good compensation in case of death, or accident, having convinced the people in the neighbourhood that a miner's work is worth the risks that must attend on mining. Stalwart men from the neighbourhood of Lucknow still help to hew the coal, but the ordinary work is done by the people of Yellandu.
The coal is won by contract, the head-man of each gang being paid monthly according to the number of yards cut. And the work, which is in eight hours' shifts, goes on both night and day, except during the many Hindu holidays, Christmas Day, and the Mohurrum. Englishmen superintend the work underground, and they possess the confidence of the Indian miners, who say : "If there is an accident, the English Sahibs never leave us." The neat houses of the miners and their well- stocked gardens were pleasant to visit, the bazaar was clean, and the Company's hospital looked well-cared-for and up-to-date. ​ The machinery used in the mines is of the best and latest pattern; the electrical power station gives just under 1,000 h.p.; and the water is pumped out of the mines by a treble ram pipe, which discharges 600 gallons of water per minute at the surface, from a depth of nearly 800 feet.
There are 8,315 persons working in the mines — 6,406 below and 1,909 above, and during the two past years 38 fatal accidents have occurred.
During the years 1910, 1911 and 1912 there has been unfortunately a constant decrease in the output of the coalfields, and consequently of the royalty paid to His Highness's government. The administration report for 1320-1321 Fasli (1910-1912 A.D.),. gives the following figures : —
1910 Output 506,173 tons Royalty paid 56,914 O. S. rupees
1911 „ 505,380 „ „ 56,855 "
1912 " 481,652 „ „ 51,186 "