Environmental `laws' that change nothing

Environmental `laws' that change nothing
Ravi Agarwal

Last month one more environmental law came into being. This time to regulate the manner in which urban waste was to be dealt with in our cities (Municipal Solid Waste Management and Handling Rules, 2000). It was probably high time that this aspect of urban living received some attention, especially since for many years, NGOs and citizen’s groups had been doggedly showcasing that community efforts can make for cleaner surroundings.

Singlehandedly they were innovating solutions around local strengths of ragpickers, low cost technologies such as composting and vermi culture, and goading people to take responsibility and participate. Surely, the solutions lay in ‘how’ we lived and consumed, or institutionalised our communities. Such a rich resource would provide real ‘expertise’ and one would imagine foster new partnerships at a formal level. No such luck. ‘People’ were nowhere to be found in this law for the people. No participation, leave alone disclosure of information. The ‘institution’ of civil society had lost out to the institution of the ‘real’ experts once more.

Adding insult to injury was the fact that two other waste laws, both on issues citizens had campaigned strongly on for years plastics and medical waste also had the same exclusion. By their very nature, waste laws impact the everyday lives of the citizenry, for they deal with how people live. The State had taken over public campaigns, and turned them from issues of social change into those of ‘technology’, both literally as well as metaphorically. Not only did it legitimise ‘garbage machines’ instead of catalysing social change, but also defined the process exclusively in terms of technical ‘standards’.

The plastics law story is particularly amusing. For two years citizens, including schoolchildren, literally came out and campaigned against them. Not only protesting the menace of the polybag but also trying to educate consumers and even find alternatives like jute and recycled paper bags. Complex thoughts such as linking waste to producer responsibility or the intricacies of the recycling chain were communicated through simple appeals. Professional communicators would have been proud. From recognising the problem to even finding solutions, the community was doing it all. What did ‘Paryavaran Bhawan’ do? Make a silly law banning bags less than 20 microns thick for food! Micron? What is it? How do I as a common citizen detect this? You do not. Nobody does actually, for nobody has enough micrometers to check all the thin plastic bags we make in this country. As far as the State was concerned, problem solved, case dismissed!

The laws also ‘prescribes’ who the super cop or ‘Regulator’ will be, but no one has to be told what s/he does or uncovers. Public information and disclosure is avoided like the plague. That super cop who is meant to protect you says ‘do not worry’ we have someone checking the water, the toxicity of plastic, or the killer dioxins coming out of medical waste incinerator stacks in the midst of housing clusters. If you believe this to be true, you have a hope. There is probably no one doing anything. What is not known will not hurt anyone. And if ‘they’ do know, it cannot be revealed. It all propriety information, in case you had not guessed, even if it is a risk everyone is facing. How come information about the contaminated groundwater beneath a city’s waste dumps, or of the high level of pollutants from its medical waste burning was never made public? Simply since the law has no provision for this to be done. And as recent suspensions in the Pollution Boards show, there is money to be made by keeping quiet.

Making laws without formalising public participation and information disclosure is actually playing foul with people. The extent of public involvement becomes the prerogative of an empowered State, which sets into motion processes, which do not necessarily complement existing dynamics. In one stroke, from being central change makers, people become disempowered outsiders.