On Poisoning

I have, for the past few years, been reading about poisoning and survival. It started with a news article, I read about a farmer attempting suicide by drinking pesticide. He owed some money to a moneylender! The story is old and dated, it is also a story oft repeated. So I will not go into the specifications.

This post is not about the debt cycle of the poor and impoverished that leads them to poison and suicide. No this is different kind of poisoning I talk about. Industrial Poisoning - a lethal killer, a painful death and in many cases a very painful living!

My awareness and attempts to understand poison started when I was 8 years old. I remember the incident so well cause my aunt was in Bhopal then. She was a teaching in a school in Bhopal. My family called her and then anxiously awaited her return to safe grounds. This was in December 1984. The Union Carbide factory spewed venom into the air and the misery unfolded. The tragedy is well documented, official figures quote that about 3000 people died and unofficially about 15000 people died that night and several thousands still suffer and will be born suffering. The question of why it took nearly two decade and thousands of deaths before the Government took any concrete action in favour of the suffering victims has never been discussed.

This incident triggered of my reading about industrial poisoning and its prevalence in India. Chemical factories in Nandesari industrial Area, the chromite mines in Sukhinda Valley for soda ash factory in Mithapur, the toxic waste dump to name a few in North India etc. And in south India the list is equally unending pharma companies’ letting toxic waste in the Nakkavagu stream in Hyderabad, Manjira River and Nizam Sagar contamination by pollutants from the Guddapotaram-Bolaram-Patancheru industrial axis, Endosulfan poisoning from spraying the cashew plantation in Kerala. The list is so long and unending.

It is a given fact that the marginalised in the community take the brunt of the poisoning. Even so, the full extent of the betrayal of the underprivileged in our quest for development has yet to be appreciated.

The thirst for growth and profit has led our country down the garden path of industrialization. It is pointless to discuss the pros and cons of Industrialisation and the resultant globalisation. Railroads were not built for the benefit of the society; it was built to transport raw materials for development of, initially, the British raj then, for the benefits of the corporates. But the railroads now serve as lifeline to the teeming population in India. Globalisation has its benefits as the learned economists say and it has led to greater opportunities for many million people.

However, development should be sustainable -sustainable both in terms of technology and inclusiveness. India has 50 odd billionaires in country of over a billion. A greater portion of these billionaires have accumulated their wealth poisoning entire communities and future generations and this may not be the best way forward to developing an inclusive society.

Please note that I am not building a case for protectionism – what I reiterate here is the right of healthy living for one and all. Hence it is extremely important to address the effects of Industrial poisoning. Following the ‘Polluter pays principle” many of these issues can be addressed. It does not serve well for the society if the government works hand-in-hand with the corporates to write-off the loss of lives as collateral damage of development.

CSR is the ‘in-vogue’ acronym for corporates. CSR is not just about adopting a school/ village. It is about being responsible to the society one exists in. Corporates need to wake up to this fact.

My astonishment also stems from our collective ignorance or indifference to the incidents and the suffering! 

Yes we see occassional reports on marches by the victims, some do-good activists and few environmentalists. But this barely makes an impact on us - (and now is targeted as anti- development and even more as anti- national) and the media sensationalises it to such an extent that the feeling of disconnect is intensified. We make indignant noises and write ‘letters to the editor’ and then the issue is forgotten until the next time.

The poisoning continues and in India it is the survivor who pays – pays because of ill health, pays the doctors, pays for the medicines, pays with his or her life.