Sangeetha Neeraja AN UNOFFICIAL BAN ON EXPLOSIVES DURING POLLS HAS SEVERELY AFFECTED THEIR LIVELIHOOD THE life of a quarry worker is hardly an enviable one, consisting, as it does, of hours of hard grinding labour under the scorching sun. And the election season has only made things worse for them. When election dates were announced, the news came that there would be an unofficial ban on using explosives in the stone quarries. The local police and the revenue department enforced the ban for security reasons. As a result, the quarry workers have been pushed from a level of bare sustenance to the margins of survival.