Focus on execution

Govt does not need to tweak laws to reduce pollution

The Union government is planning to bring in two crucial changes to the Environment (Protection) Act of 1986. The first amendment proposed is increasing the level of fines from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 1 crore. The second one is more important: The fine can be imposed without going through a judicial process prescribed in the current law and a designated officer would be the final authority to decide the money that needs to be recovered from the polluting entity. On the face of it, these changes will help officials enforce pollution control more effectively and swiftly, as the idea now is to place clear financial disincentives for polluters instead of trying to either shut down all polluting industries or sending the culprits to jail. 

This latest change in approach has been brought about after Prime Minister Narendra Modi reviewed the cleaning of the Ganga, which is the second-most polluted river in the world, and sought a graded response to the problem without everything ending up in court. It is easy to understand the prime minister’s sense of urgency. Mr Modi did make the project a centerpiece of his election promise, but it has been a particularly tricky challenge, with little being achieved despite thousand of crores of rupees of Budget allocations since 1986. Even Mr Modi’s Namami Gange project has failed to make much headway. In February, the National Green Tribunal chided the Union government for “wasting public money” without any effective pollution control in this regard. 

However, there are several reasons why the latest set of amendments is unlikely to yield results even if it is cleared. That is because the proposed changes show no real understanding of why repeated attempts over the past three decades have failed to bring about even an iota of change in pollution levels in the river. For one, taking away the criminality from such acts of pollution is a wrong signal. It essentially means an offender can pay to pollute. The river is a community asset and dumping millions of litres of untreated toxic waste has disastrous health effects which cannot be overlooked because a polluting industrial unit is happy to pay Rs 1 crore. Moreover, the government is not short of funds to remediate damages. Two, by undermining judicial review, the changes could make life easier for the official-polluter nexus, instead of reducing pollution. In fact, the existing law provides enough powers to officials if they want to bring polluters to book. That this does not happen shows the lack of intent on their part as well as the absence of political will. The truth is, far from the bluster of electoral grandstanding, a cleaner environment is still not a big enough constituency to summon political will. Change has to start with more efficient execution of the existing rules; bringing in amendments or new laws is unlikely to help.