The ban on the use of plastic bags in Delhi, coming in a year which has been declared by the United Nations as the International Year of Natural Fibre, is a welcome move. The Delhi government has taken some path-breaking environment-friendly measures in the past, the most significant of which (done under court orders) was to put the entire public transport fleet on a pollution-free fuel, compressed natural gas (CNG). As should have been expected, shopkeepers are crying foul in the same way that transport operators did when buses had to be converted. Traders argue (falsely) that the step has been taken without offering any viable alternative, but even they are not contesting the raison d’être for such a move. The disposal hazards posed by these non-degradable bags and the civic problem they cause by choking drains (Mumbai’s nightmarish deluge of 2005 was the result of this) and rivers (Delhi’s Yamuna is a case in point) are well known. As for substitutes for recycled plastic, these are not lacking, though more will emerge with time. Bags made of cloth, jute, cane, paper and other materials have been in use in the past and can come in handy once again. Besides, plastic can be made degradable by adding suitable additives to the polymer. These alternatives will cost more but they are environmentally harmless, reusable and last longer (which offsets the initial cost disadvantage).
The problem is not with the ban but with the penalty for ignoring it. What is prescribed is a fine of Rs 1 lakh and/or imprisonment of five years. The fine happens to be vastly more than what is prescribed under various laws for far more serious offences, and the jail term is simply an outrageous idea. India criminalises far too many things (including libel, which in most civilised countries is only a civil offence). The argument that it will act as a deterrent does not wash, because all violations of the law should then lead to exemplary jail terms so that no one ever breaks any law. The simple rule is that the punishment should fit the crime, and using a plastic bag should not lead to five years in jail. The fact also is that stringent penalties simply raise the harassment quotient as officials charged with enforcing the law extract what they can by the arbitrary exercise of power. Since officials of a variety of agencies (the departments of environment and health, civic bodies, pollution control boards, etc) have been empowered to enforce the ban, the fillip this gives to corruption can be easily imagined.
The plastic bag problem is not confined to Delhi; coloured and white bags can be seen in most parts of the country, pollutting roadsides, beaches, rooftops, mountainsides, rivers and streams. And as it happens, Delhi is not the first state to prohibit the use of plastic bags. Others have done it before, with very mixed results. Goa was the first in 1998, followed by Himachal Pradesh which proscribed the use of coloured polythene bags in 1999 and extended the bar in 2004 to include all carry bags of less than 70 microns thickness. The latter has been more successful at enforcement than the former and has now become more ambitious: It plans to make Himachal Pradesh a carbon-free state in order to protect its fragile hill ecology. Mumbai banned plastic bags in the aftermath of its flood three years ago. What this makes clear is that merely notifying such a ban does not do the trick, there has to be effective enforcement. In fact, it is worth asking why the matter should be left to individual states? A national law is required, with steps taken to promote the use of environment-friendly alternatives.