New Delhi: Governments are great at talking the talk on environmental safety and public health, but their actions often fall short. This is often the case when it comes to taking on polluting industries, as government records show.

So, what happens when lawmakers actually step up and try to hold the government accountable, and demand real action to protect public health from a polluted environment?

The tussle between former Jammu and Kashmir parliamentarian, Hasnain Masoodi and the Union Ministry for Environment, Forests and Climate Change shows us that, once in a rare while, it makes the government sit up, take notice, and get into action. And, yet it takes time for this to translate into actual change. 

In July 2019, Masoodi, the then Lok Sabha MP for Anantnag, asked the Union Ministry for Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MOEFCC) whether the Union government had any plans to study the air pollution caused by over 20 cement factories and limestone mines operating in the Khrew-Khonmoh area, a cement manufacturing belt extending from Srinagar to Pulwama in Kashmir.

This was a month before the Union government revoked the special status of Jammu and Kashmir state and downgraded it to a Union territory under its direct control. This was done in the name of bringing development to the people of the region. 

Due to unchecked air pollution from the cement factories, people in Masoodi’s constituency suffered frequent respiratory problems. This troubled him deeply.

“The cement factories and limestone mining had adversely affected not only the health of people of Khrew, but also saffron and almond cultivation which is the backbone of the local economy,” Masoodi told The Reporters’ Collective. 

“The factories spewed so much dust that the air people breathe was visibly polluted,” he added.

Perturbed, Masoodi asked the environment ministry if it had conducted any study on the damage done by the cement industry to agriculture, horticulture and saffron cultivation in the area. 

The then Union environment minister for state (MoS), Babul Supriyo replied to Masoodi. He said such a study to specifically look at pollution from the cement plants had not even been thought of. 

But, he assured that the Jammu and Kashmir state pollution control board will study the carrying capacity of the area for pollution – the limit of emissions that an area can bear without breaking permissible pollutant levels. Such studies are carried out to restrict or ban polluting industries in an area reaching its peak capacity. 

Masoodi’s concerns about the impact of polluting cement industry on public health and the environment were well-founded. Studies available online show that cement dust can cause various respiratory diseases, lung function impairment and cancer of the lungs, stomach and colon. 

Over the years, media reports and public complaints had already raised concerns about the impact of cement industries. Doctors were alarmed by the high frequency of respiratory ailments, as well as skin and eye diseases prevalent among the people of Khrew.

MoS Supriyo’s claim that a study by the state pollution control board was underway, was treated as an assurance in the lower house of Parliament – the Union government was now required to come through on it in three months.

In this Part 7 of the Parliament Defied series, we show how the Ministry of Environment, instead of following through on its assurance and monitoring the grave issue of air pollution that has mired the lives of the people in Khrew-Khonmoh belt, shook its hands off its responsibility and got the assurance dropped by Lok Sabha’s Committee of Government Assurances that monitors the Union government’s promises.

A year after the parliamentarian had first asked the question, instead of acting to safeguard people’s health in Anantnag the Ministry of Environment reneged on its commitment.

The Union government did not share the report from the state pollution control board. But, in March 2020, it asked the Lok Sabha committee to drop the assurance. In other words, it meant not to demand the report from the government in future. 

Why? The Ministry of Environment had a convoluted explanation. 

It said that the “assurance considered by the Committee is a routine function of the Ministry i.e. the implementation of Construction and Demolition Waste Management Rules, 2016”. 

The type of carrying capacity study the ministry promised is conducted under the Environment Protection Act and can be used to restrict or ban harmful industrial activity if the pollution levels are in excess. 

The ministry, in its back-and-forth with the committee, maintained that it was ensuring effective implementation of relevant rules and consulting stakeholders while stating that a new policy intervention was not in the works. It requested the committee to “not interpret the statement as an assurance”.

The parliamentary committee obliged. The assurance was dropped a few months later, in August 2020.

Masoodi’s concerns had been ignored by the government, at least publicly. Behind the scenes, however, the government was in action. A review of government and parliamentary records reveals that by October 2020, the Ministry of Environment had received a report from the J&K Pollution Control Board. The board indicated that this report was specifically submitted to fulfil the assurance made in Parliament. 

The government neither made it public nor sent it to the committee – where it had ensured the assurance was killed. 

The state pollution board confirmed Masoodi’s allegations. In fact, it said that the area was “critically polluted”. This is a term the government uses for dangerous levels of pollution and when regulations require penalisation and immediate restriction on polluting industries. 

The cement industry in the area had played its role in causing the air pollution, the report said. 

Despite acknowledging the issue, the state pollution board deflected the responsibility by partly blaming the people for the “consumption of substantial amount of wood in Hamams for heating purpose in domestic as well as religious places during winters.” 

“The burning of agricultural waste products, twigs and leaves of trees for charcoal formation required by the people in winters to keep themselves warm from biting cold, are also responsible for causing air pollution,” the report added. 

People’s need for heating had been equated with the profit-making cement industries’ violation of pollution norms. 

The board did say, the “ill-effects of air pollution on health of people can’t be ignored”. It recommended prohibiting the establishment of new polluting cement manufacturing units, implementing an action plan to check air pollution, requiring the industry to create a green belt of trees, and urging the government to put up air quality monitoring systems.

Official records show the alarming report wasn’t enough to prompt the government to take substantive action. The pollution from the industries continued unabated. The cement and stone crushing units kept pumping dust into the air and the local residents kept complaining about it.

Two years passed. 

Masoodi did not relent. In March 2022, he raised the issue again in the Lok Sabha during the ‘zero hour’. In this period, parliamentarians can raise issues of concern without advance notice.

He demanded an independent inquiry into every cement unit in the Khrew area and their status of environmental compliance.

Every polluting unit is required to get government approvals under environment protection laws, which include regulations on the prevention of air and water pollution and the disposal of harmful waste. These approvals come with terms and conditions designed to restrict their harmful impacts on the environment. Under the laws, industries must comply with these regulations to be allowed to operate.

“Pollution Control Boards are supposed to study and monitor the pollution levels of an area, the impact of polluting industry, and give clearances to industries based on their studies. But, when they don’t do that, they become facilitators of polluting industries rather than regulators,” Masoodi said. 

Masoodi’s demand led to a chain of letters between the Ministry of Environment, the Central Pollution Control Board, and J&K’s state pollution control board. The central board asked the state body, in July 2022, to provide the environment compliance status of all cement industries in the Anantnag parliamentary constituency. Repeated reminders had to be sent before the state board woke up. 

In October 2022, the J&K Pollution Control Board provided a status report on nine cement plants located in the Anantnag constituency. They gave all the cement plants a clean chit.  

The citizens continued to live in the critically polluted zone as the typical bureaucratic diversions continued. 

Masoodi didn’t give up. He wrote to the central board yet again demanding an independent evaluation. The demand made sense. If the state pollution control board were to find the cement plants polluting, it would as much be an indictment of their monitoring of air pollution in the constituency over the past years. 

The parliamentarian raised the issue for the third time in Parliament in December 2022. 

The ministry partly relented. While it did not constitute an independent committee it sent a central official team to Khrew in March 2023.

The joint team found that all cement plants and their associated mines were violating environmental protection laws. 

It found that none of the factories maintained the green belt, as per the regulations, and around 30 stone crushers were operating in the area without any dust control measures. The team also noted that “illegal mining was observed/suspected in most of the mining sites”.

The team recommended that the Central Pollution Control Board instruct the cement plants or the J&K pollution control board to ensure that the cement plants are complying with environmental norms. It added that an environmental audit should be conducted.

It suggested a third-party audit to address the issue of illegal mining.

The team report was an eye-opener. It was tabled in Parliament in December 2023 in response to Masoodi’s questions. The ministry said that legal notices had been sent to seven cement plants for violating environmental norms.

The report wouldn’t have seen the light of day if not for Masoodi’s fourth intervention in the Lok Sabha. His actions compelled the Union government to table both the latest central report and the earlier 2020 state report, which exposed the cement and limestone plants as major polluters in the Khrew area. 

Over three years after the initial inquiry, the Union government was forced to acknowledge the crisis in Anantnag. Did it work to stop the pollution? That is another story to investigate. Masoodi, now out of Parliament, said he has not observed much change on the ground. 

“An environmental audit needs to be conducted to find the real environmental impact of the cement industry, and also of limestone mining. One should consider the area’s proximity to Dachigam National Park, the habitat of critically endangered Hangul (Kashmiri red deer),” he added.

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