Shielding the corrupt and the unruly

Gnani First Published : 20 Feb 2011 10:57:00 PM ISTLast Updated : 20 Feb 2011 06:34:29 AM IST
With Spectrum hogging the national attention space, another national disaster suffers in ignorance and indifference. The Neros of Tamil Nadu Karunanidhi and Jayalalithaa are playing different tunes to different sections to woo their votes while Tirupur burns.
Tirupur has been earning through its textile industry around Rs 9,000 crore per annum from exports and another Rs 2,000 crore in the local market. All at a cost. Noyyal river died, polluted by the 750 dyeing units for decades killing agriculture, affecting lakhs of farmers. Successive regimes of Karunanidhi and Jayalalithaa simply did not care. Tirupur has been a major financier for all political parties. And when the Tirupur Marxist MLA defected to DMK recently, very unusual for a Left party legislator, the party openly accused him of collecting funds from textile industry to grease the palms of ruling party leadership to wangle beneficial government orders. Karunanidhi’s government violated the Supreme Court’s order that the ‘polluter must pay for the damages’ by handing over Rs 320 crore to the dyeing units for setting up ineffective effluent treatment plants which they were reluctant to use in any case. And when the court finally ordered the listing of pollution control officials for proceeding against them, Karunanidhi’s government pleads for a revision order to condone the officials. The government has a consistent record in shielding the corrupt and unruly. With the court closing down polluting units, Tirupur has to now decide whether to live and let others live or to kill others and get killed. The industry now admits that the much touted zero-liquid discharge never really took off. Spokespersons have openly stated it is impossible to have zero liquid discharge and the solutions they offer are worse than the malady. The suggested marine discharge will kill the fishing community the same way it ruined the farming community. In Gujarat, marine discharge upto 12 kilometres itself has been a dismal failure and threat to environment. Tirupur would have to carry the effluents hundreds of kilometres by pipe. Industry’s demand for supply of good potable drinking water by the municipality to mix with effluents and dilute them is an atrocious proposal to waste more water than now polluted. And at the root of all troubles of Tirupur lies not incompetent technology but total corruption of pollution officials. Some years back Prof S Ramaswami from Louisville University demonstrated through trials that zero discharge of both liquid and solid waste was possible through evaporation technology but the board officials ignored the idea, lured by benefits from promoters of reverse osmosis technology unsuited for dyeing units. Karunanidhi and Jayalalithaa, meanwhile, maintain a stony silence about Tirupur’s woes. At stake is the livelihood of millions of farmers and industrial workers. Government is dead. Long live the Government.
Gnani is a Tamil writer, theatreperson and film maker.
gnanisankaran@gmail.com
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Tirupur based Dyeing Units can go in for "Solar CSP" based Evaporation, which can help minimize this problem. I am currently looking to offering this Solution for the same. By Krish
2/21/2011 4:49:00 PM Gnani may be right, viewing killing agriculture, drinking water issues in Tiruppur. But AIADMK jaya has many success story like the tough handling of Veerappan, Lottery Mafia Martin, kanthu vatti, katta panchayttu, illicit poisonous arrack brewers and sellers, their syndicate, sand quarrying only through PWD, SHG, successfully bringing discarded Veeranam water, supplying water through tanker lorries and good trains, managing four years draught, but today people drink can water. All lakes, government lands are all encroached. Even prime private property holders are brutally attacked and their property grabbed. It is only Jaya who hit nail when it was red in the 2 G. She openly declared that AIADMK would support UPA for taking action against 2 G knowing fully well that Congress under Sonia will not pardon Jaya for having spoken facts that India with one billion people does not need to import a leader from Italy. So, comparing Jaya with DPA now at the present state of things appears highl By K.S.Nagarajan
2/20/2011 4:31:00 PM Remember , you killed the city . Gnani you always lie for your pride and image and blow up things . Today you are kindling things for millions of people to loose job . By True Man
2/20/2011 3:24:00 PM Post your comments *