January 15, 2007

Judged even by a charitable yardstick, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government’s record on environmental matters is poor, if not appalling. While paying lip service to the cause of reversing global warming, the government has refused targeted reductions in India’s own greenhouse gas emissions, which are rising almost four times faster than the global average. Instead, it’s recklessly promoting private transport and energy-intensive appliances such as air-conditioners and washing machines.

The government has passively watched the unremitting pollution of India's rivers and rapid melting of the Himalayan glaciers which feed seven of Asia’s greatest rivers, including the Ganga, Yamuna and Brahmaputra. It has relaxed environmental regulations on high-polluting chemical factories and colluded in promoting an extraordinarily hazardous industry, namely, shipbreaking. Shipbreaking at Alang in Gujarat routinely wreaks a horrible toll on wretchedly poor workers. Last week, three young men died in an accident.

Just last year, the government wanted to welcome with open arms a decommissioned French naval ship, the Clemenceau, for dismantling at Alang although it carried thousands of tonnes of asbestos and a range of toxic chemicals. Receiving and breaking up that ship would have violated the Basel Ban on the trans-boundary movement of toxic wastes. Ultimately, it’s French public opinion, not India’s environment Ministry or Supreme Court, that scuttled the illegal and ultra-hazardous operation.

Worse, the UPA government has been complicit in Mr Narendra Modi’s egregious and unilateral move to raise the height of the Sardar Sarovar dam on the Narmada to 121.92 metres—in violation of the Supreme Court's stipulation that no further construction can be permitted until all those who’ll be displaced are fully rehabilitated in advance.

Raising the dam height is a flagrant breach of the commitment made by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last year, as well as the Narmada Tribunal award which made the project possible in the first place. Dr Singh didn’t play with a straight bat. When the Narmada Bachao Andolan launched a hunger strike last April, he dispatched three Union ministers to the Valley to survey the situation. The Ministers reported that rehabilitation was incomplete. Dr Singh then set up a so-called Oversight Group under former bureaucrat VK Shunglu, overriding his own Cabinet colleagues.

Despite its many flaws, the Shunglu report conceded that some 25,000 families were still to be rehabilitated even at a dam height of 110 m. Little has been done to complete their rehabilitation. Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra say they don’t have the necessary land. Meanwhile, the dam is irrigating only 10 percent of the land it's meant to serve.

But Mr Modi is now preparing to build gates on the dam up to 138.68 metres. This will cause even further displacement—of an estimated two lakh people. This destructive misadventure must be prevented. But it's not clear that the UPA will stand up to the pressure of entrenched interests hell-bent on raising the dam’s height at any cost.

As if this weren’t bad enough, the UPA is vacillating under the pressure of powerful industrial lobbies to further subvert justice for the victims of the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster—in particular, by letting US corporate interests evade their responsibility to clean up the factory site of poisonous chemicals which have contaminated the city's water.

Under Indian law, Union Carbide, which owned the Bhopal plant, is criminally liable for wilful negligence in causing the world's worst industrial accident. It’s also duty-bound to cleanse the plant site of mercury, lead and other toxins, including cancer-causing agents. After Carbide was bought by Dow Chemicals, a $46 billion US giant, its obligation to clean up stands transferred to Dow. India's Department of Chemicals and Fertilisers has filed an initial claim of Rs 100 crores on Dow in the Madhya Pradesh High Court.

However, Dow wants to duck its responsibility. It has drafted the support of the US embassy in India. On December 8, the US Charge d’Affaires urged the government to withdraw the claim on Dow. Now, Dow has found an enthusiastic ally in Tata Industries chairman Ratan Tata. Mr Tata has offered “to lead and find funding” for the “remediation” (cleansing) of the site so that Dow can invest in India.

Dow has long eyed India’s growing market. To acquire a toehold here, it has repeatedly tried to reach technical collaboration agreements with Indianoil and other public companies. But it was stopped in its tracks by the petroleum Ministry. Now it's worming its way back through collaboration with Reliance Industries and offers to set up plants in West Bengal and even Madhya Pradesh, where it has darkly hinted, it could employ relatives of the Bhopal gas victims!

That would only add insult to injury. The gas disaster killed over 3,000 people within the first week and inflicted unspeakable chemical damage upon more than 100,000. This has caused a further 15,000 deaths and terrible suffering for the survivors. Their vital capacity has been undermined by disorders of the lungs, other organs and the immune system.

After 1984, a second tragedy visited Bhopal in the form of a grossly unfair and collusive settlement imposed upon the victims by the Indian government, which settled their compensation claims for a paltry $470 million and totally extinguished Carbide's civil liability. Most victims got as little as Rs 25,000 for a lifetime of suffering. The bulk of this went into the pockets of corrupt officials and usurious moneylenders.

All that now remains of Carbide/Dow's liability is the criminal prosecution of its top directors, including former Carbide chairman Warren Anderson, in addition to the obligation to clean up the factory site. The Indian government has done its best to subvert the prosecution. It claims it cannot trace Anderson to serve a warrant on him—although his address in a posh New York suburb has been widely publicised!

Letting Dow off the liability book will further compound the injustices heaped upon the Bhopal victims and rub even more salt into their wounds. Yet, Dow insists it’s not legally liable despite being Carbide's successor. This claim mocks at all legality and at the elementary “polluter pays” principle, which is respected even in the US. Dow's position is a crude form of blackmail. The UPA will disgrace itself if it succumbs to it.

Mr Tata is pursuing this strange and deplorable pro-Dow role as co-chair of the Indo-US CEO Forum, of which Dow president Andrew N Liveris is also a member. Mr Liveris has met Prime Minister Singh at least twice. These meetings were facilitated by Mr Tata. Congress party spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi is Dow’s lawyer. Top UPA functionaries are lobbying for a committee of secretaries to examine Mr Tata's proposal for a corpus fund to be established jointly by Indian and US companies to clean up the Bhopal site—on condition that Dow is let off the hook.

The Forum and the US-India Business Council are rooting for resolving “legacy issues” like Bhopal through “dispute settlement mechanisms”, which would "send a strong positive message to US investors".

There are numerous links between Dow, Tatas and former Indian and US officials. Keshub Mahindra, former chairman of Union Carbide India, and an accused in the Bhopal case, has served as director of several Tata companies. Former State Department official David Good, who worked against Anderson's extradition to India, heads the Tata corporate office in the US.

Mr Ratan Tata's new role raises many questions about the changing nature of Indian business groups. Mr Tata’s family has a formidable reputation as pioneers who set up India's first steel mill and ventured into electrical and automobile engineering, civil aviation and numerous other fields. They were strongly committed to indigenous industrialisation. And they were long known for not asking for favours from governments.

JRD Tata personified some of these values and kept a dignified distance from power-brokers and influence-peddlers. But even he had his weaknesses: obsessions with “discipline” and population control, and the conviction, which he expressed during the Emergency in a New York Times interview, namely, "the parliamentary system is not suited to our needs."

The present, globalising, phase of capitalism has produced further distortions in Indian businessmen’s attitudes. The Tatas are furiously acquiring businesses abroad, including the European steel company Corus, which is four times bigger than Tata Iron and Steel. They used to take pride in contributing to the larger community through education, housing, healthcare and cutting-edge research. They no longer do Once tolerant of trade unionism, they have become increasingly hostile to it.

The Tatas now actively solicit generous government support, protection and patronage, and threaten to pull out of industrial projects if they don't receive it—like any other industrial entrepreneur. Singur is a prime example of this. The Tatas' environmental record, whether in Orissa, Andhra, Gujarat or Jharkhand, is disappointing. They should not tarnish it further by cravenly lobbying for Dow and working against the Bhopal victims.—end--