space Basel Action News, Vol 1, #1

By RAVI AGARWAL of BAN in India, January 1998

Lead Ash, Battery Scrap, Zinc Ash, Waste Oil and even old ships laden with PCBs and asbestos meant to be broken, are increasingly being labeled `Destination India'. In the case of zinc and lead wastes alone, India imports over 70,000 Mt. and 50,000 Mt. (1995) respectively through its 7 major and over 100 minor ports. Import data from other ports is almost impossible to obtain, since almost none of them are computerised. Moreover custom clearances can take place from over 1000 customs depots scattered throughout the country, each manned by a few clearing officials having to deal with over 100 assorted consignments each day. Hence despite the Indian Government's claims, in the Courts, the Parliament and the media, that the situation is under control, the ground reality is actually quite different. Regulating hazardous waste is never easy, and if the commitment to do so is lacking, then the task is an impossible one.

On paper, India was probably one of the first countries to legislate hazardous waste import rules as early as 1989, soon after it actively participated in a G 77 move to initiate the Basel Convention. Though this may have made it look good in the International community, the efforts ended at that. For the next 6 years, i.e. until 1995, these rules had not been reflected in the Import rules. No one knew hazardous waste imports were not allowed, and so, simply no one checked for them. Later, when they did show up in the Import regulations, they were not defined: unless a consignment was labeled ` hazardous waste' (and obviously non were), it was again not checked, and the trade merrily carried on.

Even today, though categories of hazardous wastes have been defined, guidelines to determine their hazardous nature are absent. The import rules lay down a detailed Prior Informed Consent (PIC) procedure to be followed by the exporter or the exporting country. However, till date, not a single PIC has ever been filed. The Environment Ministry has authorised only 7 importers for fixed quantity imports: over 150 have been regularly importing. Court orders too have not been fully implemented. Greenpeace campaigner Nityanand Jairaman, discovered to his horror that even a year after the Delhi High Court banned the import of hazardous wastes, most ports were not aware of the ban.

Despite injunctions in the Delhi High Court in April 1996 and the Supreme Court in May 1997, environmentalists have tracked hazardous waste imports till as late as July 1997. The waste traders are obviously not bothered. But this does not mean they have been quiet. The Waste Industry has been lobbying at all levels to make a case against India ratifying the Basel Ban in the forthcoming Conference of Parties (COP IV) to be held in Malaysia in February this year.

Consequently the Government has been speaking with a forked tongue. While the Minister of Environment has publicly assured environmental groups of their commitment to ratify the Basel Ban, the Planning Commission, the highest body which advises the Prime Minister on policy issues, last month issued press statements that the Basel Ban was discriminatory to India, detrimental to its development and hence must not be ratified. For the Planning Commission to issue statement on specific issues is extremely rare and unusual, especially while a Supreme Court appointed NGO Governmental Joint Committee on Hazardous Waste was holding its first meeting. In October 1997, the powerful Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) under the influence of the waste processing industry also recommended that India not ratify the Basel Ban.

The main business dailies have published editorials condemning environmentalists for opposing the import of `valuable' waste and damned them as `international conspirators'. All this goes to prove the obvious: India has become a haven for dumping waste. Cheap labour, poor environmental standards, a sieve like import regime, and a growing market for cheap raw material are all here.

Besides, as the custom authorities concede, once a consignment lands on Indian shores, the issue of legality becomes a theoretical one. There is no provision under Indian law for the consignment to be returned to the sender, and legal or otherwise, the country is saddled with the hazardous waste. Delhi alone, one of the over 1000 such warehousing locations, has currently 108 containers of hazardous wastes lying unclaimed. Alang, in the State of Gujarat, has become the world's largest yard for breaking old imported ships. Casualty: one reported worker death per day. Of course, heading the exporters list for all wastes is the richest and largest non party to the Basel Convention, the USA.

900 million people, almost one sixth of the human race live in India. Numerically India is but one of the 118 signatories to the Basel Convention. In actuality, India's responsibility to it has to be far greater, both as a leader of the developing world and as a representative of these people -- hardly something to be bartered away by a handful of short sighted policy makers. Its workers, caught between choices of starvation and a toxic death, toil in completely unprotected conditions for less than a dollar a day, exploited by the largely low technology, and polluting waste reprocessing units. There is no reason whey they must pay the price for the countries development, while a powerful industry, supported by an uncaring Government, laughs its way to the bank.

END

Ravi Agarwal is director of Delhi based environmental group, Srishti and is a member of the Basel Action Network.