‘Indian exports from polluting firms rising’

In a stinging remark on India’s pollution record, the World Bank has said India’s exports from polluting industries is increasing and more Indians are falling ill because of bad environment. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jun 20, 2011, 01:31:27 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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In a stinging remark on India’s pollution record, the World Bank has said India’s exports from polluting industries is increasing and more Indians are falling ill because of bad environment.

The statement comes at a time when both the US and Europe are talking about imposing a carbon tax on imports from polluting industries in India and China.

India has threatened to take the western world to World Trade Organisation for indulging in unfair trade practice if the ‘unfair’ tax is imposed.

The World Bank, in its appraisal document for cleaning the Ganga project, said the share of the most polluting sectors in India’s exports has increased dramatically during the last decade.

It backed its claim with the data from United Nations on country-wise commerce and trade. The bank told HT in an email response that exports from polluting industries almost doubled to around 20 % between 1997 and 2006.

“The data is consistent with other evidence found in the literature that the share of most polluting industries in India’s exports is increasing. These are typically industries like iron and steel, chemical, paper, petroleum and non-ferrous metals and non-metallic mineral products,” the bank said.

India is not fully in agreement and has said the country’s track record on pollution abatement of exporting industries has increased in the last four years. The bank’s paper says India has initiated new policies to check environment degradation but its impact is yet to be known.

The bank also said the growing pollution footprint is negatively impacting human health and development outcomes with increase in number of cases of water borne diseases.

The bank’s claim has backing of independent government reports indicating rising water contamination of rivers and water bodies.

The Central Pollution Control Board 2009 report on water says that 34 % of water bodies in India were highly contaminated, an increase of about four percentage points in the last five years.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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