``We have been hoodwinked. When the Sarigam estate was being planned, we were told it would consist only of engineering units'', alleges former Sarigam village sarpanch Prakash Arekar, who is spearheading the campaign against the pollution triggered by the chemical industries in the vicinity.

That his allegations are not entirely baseless is borne out by a government document dated August 1996, which declares the Sarigam estate (which was set up in 1984-85) eligible for incentives for new chemical industries, indicating that such units did not exist in the estate before that date.

Arekar has emerged as the symbol of the villagers' fightback against chemical industries which, they allege, are making their lives miserable. Says Ashmita Joshi, a student of Sarigam, ``We cannot eat and sleep properly at night, when the chemical factories release their gases. They smell like decaying cattle and trigger nausea, headaches and fits of coughing''.

Her complaints were echoed by everyone this reporter spoke to in Sarigam village. T Z Patel, principal of K D Borlaiwala High School, which is located within two km of the GIDC, says bitterly, ``All chemical industries have gifted us are contaminated water and air''.

The reason for the contamination lies allegedly in the inefficient disposal of effluents. Several units allegedly have low chimneys, which release gases that settle over the nearby villages. Liquid effluents are allegedly allowed to seep out into the open ground, contaminating water and land alike; tests conducted by Italab, a Mumbai-based industrial laboratory, found the chemical oxygen demand and biochemical oxygen demand at 1762.9 and 550 per cent respectively, far higher than the permitted respective limits of 250 and 100 per cent.

Facts that M M Jain,president of the Sarigam Industries Association, does not deny. ``But we're doing our level best to check the pollution'', he says.

The `level best' comprises a common effluent treatment plant and a six-km-long pipeline that will release the treated effluent deep into the sea. But while plant engineer Prakash Kadam claims the CETP is functioning well, the pipeline is awaiting clearance from the Coastal Regulation Zone authorities for the more than a year now.

In the meantime, the industries continue to discharge such chemicals as trimethyl phosphite and acephate into the fields, making them unfit for agriculture. Vikhubhai and Amali are only two farmers whose livelihoods have been threatened by land seeped in chemicals.

While local Gujarat Pollution Control Board officials refuse to comment on the damage, the official apathy and industrial `helplessness' are apparently teaching villagers to fight their own battles. They now regard Arekar as the messiah who will lead them out of their troubles, notwithstanding the fact that two years ago, 14 panchayat members passed a no-confidence motion against him, allegedly at the say-so of the SIA because it found him too hot to handle. While Jain claims his association does not interfere in village politics, panchayat member Arvind Vaisya submitted an affidavit to the Supreme Court, admitting that he and 13 others were bribed to pass the no-trust move against Arekar just six months after he had been re-elected sarpanch. ``We were misled by the SIA'', says Vaisya today. ``We regret our decision. Now we want Arekar to lead our campaign to see chemical industries out of the region''.

Arekar's credentials for the fight are noteworthy. He resigned from his job at a Vapi chemical unit in 1984 and was jailed in 1996 along with 100 others for protesting against pollution in Sarigam. Acting on his petition in 1995, the High Court issued show-cause notices to 176 polluting industries.

GPCB officials refused to comment on this issue as well, but Jain says, ``We have set up a monitoring committee and are also writing to individual industries to ensure they comply with the pollution norms. We have given them one month to pull up their socks; otherwise their electricity and water lines will be disconnected.