Polluter doesn t pay

29/04/2001
Down To Earth

Polluter doesn t pay The Supreme Court (SC) had constituted a cell called the Loss of Ecology (Prevention and Payments of Compensation) Authority for the state of Tamil Nadu to assess the damage caused by the tanneries and compensation to be paid to the farmers. It was based on the precautionary and the polluter pays principles. Yet, more then a year after its establishment, it has not achieved anything substantial, says a visibly upset P S Subrahmanium, honorary secretary of the Vellore Citizen's Welfare Forum.

The assessments are going on and no reports have been published, says K R Ranganathan, member secretary of the Loss of Ecology Authority. But Subrahmanium produced a copy of the report titled Final Report on Assessment on Loss of Ecology on Palar River Basin, which he brought from the authority for Rs 300.

Subrahmanium says, "The original SC directive to the authority was to receive petitions from affected individuals. Instead, they are identifying the affected individuals. If the individuals had petitioned, then it would be tough for the lazy bones to process the details and assess the damage as the number of affected people is over 100,000.'

According to the authority's assessment, each farmer gets approximately Rs 9,000. It does not even cover the land cost, where they use to grow three crops in a year, says Subrahmanium. Besides, they have only identified 29,000 farmers while the affected population is 10-fold. The authority assessed the crop loss based on the level of total dissolved solids (TDS). "But TDS does not serve the purpose as wells are open and have high TDS due to sediments,' says Vinni Kapur, managing partner of Tanmac India. "The report considers only crops. What about health impacts and water contamination?' queries A Gowtham Singhee of the Vellore Citizen's Welfare Forum.

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