Skip to main content

Chemical industries in Central Gujarat "indiscriminately" using rare groundwater, meant for agricultural farms

Well-known environmentalist Rohit Prajapati has alleged, on the basis of a recent survey of Lunia village in Vadodara district, that chemical industries in the region are indiscriminately and illegally using rare and highly scarce groundwater resources of farmers to continue polluting in the area. "It is shocking that even the Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB) has no idea how groundwater outside the premises of industrial area is being used for industrial purpose", Prajapati has said.
In a letter to the secretary, Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, Government of India, Prajapati, who heads Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti, Vadodara, says, the situation has lately turned so alarming, thanks to the chemical industries, that whatever sources of potable water were available are drying up, and agricultural land is getting destroyed.
Asking Government of India to declare chemical emergency in the region, Prajapati says, "The concerned authority should order in clear terms that no industry of the area will be allowed to use any ground water outside their premises and if any industry is using groundwater outside its premises, it should be immediately fined and prosecuted under environmental law."
Wanting the Government of India to use remaining sources of clean water outside the industrial area for farming and not commercial use, Prajapati says, "Farmers are suffering because of groundwater pollution. They should be given ad-hoc compensation per month per contaminated well."
Prajapati says, the source of pollution in the region is the Effluent Channel Project (ECP) of Vadodara, which passes through 24 villages along prime agricultural. known as the ‘Vegetable Basket of Gujarat’. The 55.6 km long effluent channel was commissioned in the year of 1983 to carry “treated” industrial effluent from industries near Vadodara to estuary of River Mahi, Gulf of Khambhat.
"The channel carries the effluent of Nandesari Industrial Estate and Vadodara Industrial Complex and other polluting industries . Since 2004 the villages around the ECP have experienced groundwater contamination at alarming rates. "The pollution began because of the seepage, leaching, leaking and overflowing of effluent from the ECP and later from a number of polluting industries", Prajapati says.
While several investigations have been conducted by the Central Pollution Control Board, and the GPCB as well as by various agencies, including those in April-May 2015, says Prajapati, the contamination of groundwater continued and even accelerated in Vadodara and Bharuch disricts, especially Luna, Dudhwala, Piludara and Vedech villages.
"Aside from conducting investigations and closing down factories for a few days, no effective action has been taken by the concerned authorities", the environmentalist says, adding, "The matter has not been considered seriously which has led to a crisis situation where the people do not have potable drinking water, water for their animals and good water for agricultural purposes."

Comments

TRENDING

Patriot, Link: How Soviet imbroglio post-1968 crucially influenced alternative media platforms

Adatata Narayanan, Aruna Asaf Ali Alternative media, as we know it today in the age of information and communication technology (ICT), didn't exist in the form it does today during or around the time I joined formal journalism at Link Newsweekly as a sub-editor in January 1979. However, Link, and its sister publication Patriot, a daily—both published from Delhi—were known to have provided what could be called an alternative media platform at a time when major Delhi-based dailies were controlled by media barons.

Morari Bapu echoes misleading figures to support the BJP's anti-conversion agenda

A senior Gujarat activist phoned me today to inform me that the well-known storyteller on Lord Ram, Morari Bapu, has made an "unsubstantiated" and "preposterous" statement in Songadh town, located in the tribal-dominated Tapi district. He claimed that while the Gujarat government wants the Bhagavad Gita to be taught in schools, the "problem is" that 75% of government teachers "are Christians who do not let this happen" and are “involved in religious conversions.”

60 crore in Mahakumbh? It's all hype with an eye on UP polls, asserts keen BJP supporter in Amit Shah's constituency

As the Mahakumbh drew to a close, during my daily walk, I met a veteran BJP supporter—a neighbor with whom we would often share dinner in a group. An amicable person, the first thing he asked me, as he was about to take the lift to his flat, was, "How many people do you think must have participated in the holy dip?" He then stopped by to talk—which we did for a full half-hour, cutting into my walk time.

Breaking news? Top Hindu builder ties up with Muslim investor for a huge minority housing society in Ahmedabad

There is a flutter in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur area, derogatorily referred to as the "border" because, on its eastern side, there is a sprawling minority area called Juhapura, where around five lakh Muslims live. The segregation is so stark that virtually no Muslim lives in Vejalpur, populated by around four lakh Hindus, and no Hindu lives in Juhapura.

An untold story? Still elusive: Gujarati language studies on social history of Gujarat's caste and class evolution

This is a follow-up to my earlier blog , where I mentioned that veteran scholar Prof. Ghanshyam Shah has just completed a book for publication on a topic no academic seems to have dealt with—caste and class relations in Gujarat’s social history. He forwarded me a chapter of the book, published as an "Economic & Political Weekly" article last year, which deals with the 2015 Patidar agitation in the context of how this now-powerful caste originated in the Middle Ages and how it has evolved in the post-independence era.

Caste, class, and Patidar agitation: Veteran academic 'unearths' Gujarat’s social history

Recently, I was talking with a veteran Gujarat-based academic who is the author of several books, including "Social Movements in India: A Review of Literature", "Untouchability in Rural India", "Public Health and Urban Development: The Study of Surat Plague", and "Dalit Identity and Politics", apart from many erudite articles and papers in research and popular journals.

Justifying social divisions? 'Dogs too have caste system like we humans, it's natural'

I have never had any pets, nor am I very comfortable with them. Frankly, I don't know how to play with a pet dog. I just sit quietly whenever I visit someone and see their pet dog trying to lick my feet. While I am told not to worry, I still choose to be a little careful, avoiding touching the pet.

New York-based digital company traces Modi's meteoric rise to global Hindutva ecosystem over several decades

A recent document, released by the Polis Project Inc.—a New York-based digital magazine and hybrid research and journalism organization—even as seeking to highlight the alleged rise of authoritarianism in India, has sought to trace Prime Minister Narendra Modi's meteoric rise since 2014 to the ever-expanding global Hindutva ecosystem over the last several decades.

Socialist utopia challenging feudal and Brahminical systems: Kanwal Bharti on Sant Raidas’ vision of Begumpura

In a controversial claim, well-known Dalit writer and columnist Kanwal Bharti has asserted that a clever Brahminical move appears to be behind the Guru Granth Sahib changing the name of the 15th-16th century mystic poet-saint of the Bhakti movement, Sant Raidas, to Sant Ravidas.