Events & Issues

New Delhi, 9 November 2016

Tackling Green Crimes

AWARENESS OF RULES CRITICAL

By Dhurjati Mukherjee

A recent report of the National Crime Research Bureau (NCRB) revealed that environment related crimes in the country came down by over 11 per cent in 2015 compared to 2014 but there was no decline in States such as Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Assam, where the number of violations increased over the past year. The number of green crimes came down to 5156 from 5835. It is indeed surprising that the figure stands so low, keeping in view the large number of crimes both in urban and rural areas as most of these go unreported or the authorities do not take action against the offenders. 

Analysis of the NCRB data showed that nearly 77 per cent of the crimes were related to violations of the Indian Forest Act where the offenders were booked for illegally cutting trees in forest areas, encroaching upon forest land and moving forest produce without permission. There are various other crimes, which occur daily in metros and big cities where emission norms are violated daily by trucks and other types of commercial vehicles, buses and even private cars.

Thus, the report is nothing but pure fancy and extremely surprising. How can green crimes in the whole country be around a little over 5000, when such crimes are quite frequent, taking place almost daily in most States. The last two years of this NCRB data released clearly shows that no action is being taken by the respective State governments to control green offenders and bring them to book. It is already an accepted fact that monitoring of environmental crimes is very poor in the country which is manifest from the low data presented by the report.  

While the Government is duty bound to control pollution and curb emissions, making this cannot happen is indeed a difficult task. When crimes against women are increasing in spite of protests by various groups all over the country, controlling green crimes is a more difficult task. What is worse, that the police and other authorities are themselves not aware of the rules in force and, as such, cannot ensure enforcement.  

One may refer to what Former Environment Minister Prakash Javedkar stated just after signing the Paris accord regarding making emission/pollution norms for major industrial sectors more stringent. Polluting industries such as cement, thermal power, textiles and paper and pulp are on the list. “For all these industries, we have 24x7 monitoring mechanism in place and this would help tracking emissions by any factory throughout the country”, he  stated adding that “if emissions exceed for more than 15 minutes, then the 24x7 pollution monitoring devices sends alerts and action is taken against the polluting unit”.

But unfortunately this has yet to become a reality and it is not known whether the present Environment Minister would strictly enforce these regulations. In such a situation, controlling emissions and pollution would be an uphill task.

Meanwhile, though a stringent law on civil penalties providing for hefty fine and jail term has been proposed for offenders of green norms, this has not yet come into effect. It is understood that the law on civil penalties would act as a deterrent as it would have provisions for “heavy penalty against violators”.

Whether it is violation of air, water, sound or soil pollution rules as also those related to mining and forests Act, the offenders are not brought to book due to the fact either because of lack of awareness of rules or wanton corruption. There is thus a need to make the law enforcing authorities in the various States aware of the prevailing rules and see to it that these are strictly enforced.

Even now most members of the enforcement staff are ignorant of the modus operandi of taking penal action. How this will be done remains a big challenge and if proper efforts are not taken in this regard, the problem would accentuate in the coming years.

Commitments made by India after the Paris accord and the endeavour by all countries the world over to bring down emissions, gains much significance. It goes without saying that only formulating rules at the highest stages without ensuring that these are enforced at the lower levels makes little sense. One may mention here that lack of governance in various sectors has been a long standing problem in the country and it is more focused and grave in this area.     

The citizens also have a responsible role to play in ensuring the violation of green rules and regulations are not allowed to continue. The Government would do well to organise awareness programmes at all levels, specially for the law enforcing agencies to ensure that violation of green crimes are immediately penalised. Unless this is done, political announcements would have no meaning and pollution would go unfettered. 

The crux of the problem is that the regulatory institutions in the country are weak and not geared to take action. Possibly there is no directive from their higher authorities to take stringent action for violators. Thus, there is lack of good and efficient governance which is reflected in various parameters – whether it is doing business in the country, attendance and duty of doctors, nurses and school teachers in their respective organisations, lack of performance evaluation etc. It would not be out of place to mention here that even big business houses are not only allowed to violate pollution norms but also default in bank payments through the patronage of politicians and the bureaucracy. 

At a time when pollution has had a disastrous effect on the human race and when there is world-wide concern about the future effects of global warming, it is imperative that action has to be initiated and not just promises made by politicians. The involvement of retired judges of district courts could be requisitioned for monitoring the work of law-enforcing agencies in the realm of violation of green rules and regulations. Moreover, the message should be sent that green crimes have to be dealt with an iron hand to the lowest tiers of the administration.—INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)