Within months, toxic effluents including heavy metals like mercury that were discharged untreated into the river had caused fish to die in the river. Young Rahman led a massive rally against the factory the same year, India's first environmental action against pollution, forcing the company to the negotiating table.

It assured the Chaliyar Action Committee, which represents the 3 lakh people living around the factory, that it would demolish abarrage to pump water to the factory and lay a 20-km pipeline to discharge the effluents directly into the sea by 1966. But this was the first of many assurances the Grasim management would go back on.

Forced by swelling public anger, the state government appointed committees to investigate Grasim in 1968, 1973, 1977, and 1982. But each time the company prevaricated on implementing the recommendations. The movement turned militant in 1978 when thousands of people partly demolished a barrage constructed by Grasim to prevent contaminated water from flowing back into the plant. A state minister who visited the area soon after ordered the company to complete the effluent pipeline it had promised. Instead Grasim closed the unit for a few months citing labour problems as the reason.

It was the first of many lockouts ordered, splitting the movement between affected villagers and plant workers for whom the factory was a source of survival. For instance, in July 1985 the company stopped work following a labourstrike. For the villages on the Chaliyar it was a period of reprieve, but for Grasim workers it was a loss of livelihood. Thirteen workers committed suicide demanding the factory be reopened, forcing the government to agree to very favourable terms for the management's reopening the plant.

While Grasim trade unions promised to desist from strikes for the next five years, the government agreed to keep the factory supplied with raw material -bamboo and soft wood.

Grasim, activists say, is responsible for the denudation of vast swathes of lush forests in north Kerala. It devoures 1.8 million tonnes of wood every year, provided by the government at the ridiculously cheap rate of never higher than Rs 560 per tonne. Successive governments in the state have justified the cheap raw material supplies to the factory saying it provided jobs to people. But the Chaliyar Action Committee points out that for every job it has provided Grasim has taken away the livelihood of villagers along the river- mostly farmers,bamboo weavers or fishworkers.

Worse, they are being poisoned to death by the polluting plant which has poisoned the ground water, air and the river that is dying a slow death.Justice K K Narendran of the Kerala High Court observed in a 1982 case filed by Grasim that ``the banks of the Chaliyar, once a health resort, have virtually become hell on earth. At least for one decade the people there are suffering. The petitioner company has liberally contributed to this.''

A health survey conducted in Vazhakkad revealed that 199 persons had died of cancer between 1989 and 1994. Villagers are dying of cancer, asthma, cardiac arrest and chronic bronchitis around the plant, it said.

However, 30 years of protests have only yielded false promises. But the villagers are not giving up. They are now demanding the closure of the factory, and rights groups in the state have called for a boycott of Grasim products.