Drowning for Sand: miners risking all for India’s building boom
About 25km north of Mumbai, along the Vasai creek, up to 75,000 men work illegally as sand miners. Illegal extraction of sand generates about $150 million per year in India. The divers descend to the creek bed up to 200 times to extract sand and on an average earn $4 per day. They are not even given proper equipment. Men die in the process but these deaths go unreported.