Hyderabad, India, 12 March 1994
I provide here a little essay that I have been writing, summarizing a toxic field trip that I took today here in India. It was not a pretty trip, and it was not a pleasant experience. But I think you should know the stakes for which some lawyers fighting.
John E. Bonine
I have just descended into Hell. I never want to go back. If I had to confront environmental problems of this magnitude, I don't know if I could even continue to do the work that we all do.
The stench of toxic chemicals overpowered me and others on a field trip today to an industrial zone near Hyderabad, India. Some call that place the most polluted zone on Earth. But we had to put up with it for only a couple of hours. The villagers that we visited nearby have had to suffer the effects for seven years.
The occasion for our visit was the first National Workshop on Environment and Law of ICELA, the Indian Council on Enviro-Legal Action. ICELA was formed by M. C. Mehta, India's most famous and most successful environmental lawyer, and by some of the country's top scientists, by a former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of India, and others.
Mehta kindly asked me to give the keynote address to the conference. I did my best to be inspirational as well as informative. It is fortunate that our field trip followed, rather than preceded the session, for after that descent into Hell I would not have had the stomach to say anything positive or optimistic at all. All I could think of was appropriate punishments for the company officials and "development" advocates who could permit such scenes of horror to exist in a civilized country.
I now know what Indian scientist-activist Dr. Vandana Shiva really means when she uses the phrase, "the dark side of development."
The scenes that I saw were very dark indeed. We entered the industrial factory zone, drove past pharmaceutical companies, chemical plants, fertilizer plants, steel plants, and came to a large, black pool -- a small lake, really -- that was an unlined pit for toxic waste the color of a moonless midnight.
But there were more pits, and more: fourteen in all, we were told. And they went down 60 feet or more. And there it contaminated the groundwater thoroughly for miles. We started to walk along the bank of one, to take photographs, but suddenly the wind shifted and we had to stick our shirts over our noses and hurry quickly back to the road. I could only imagine the molecules of toxic substances that were entering my lungs.
The people of the nearby village don't have to imagine such things, nor did we for long, for the evidence is all over their bodies. When we drove up, a group of about 20 villagers were waiting for our arrival, which had been arranged by a local medical doctor-turned-activist. Over the course of an hour, the crowd grew and grew, people coming from their houses, bringing photographs and Xrays and children who could not walk.
Someone brought a bottle of liquid to the table from one of the ponds. It was, as we had seen earlier, completely black. Then they brought a bottle of water from the wells that provide the water for the village.. It was a disgusting gray.
A young girl, about seven years old, put forward a puffy hand that was deformed from just putting it in the water.
A man showed his leg, which had pink sores.
A woman came up. She looked thin, like someone starving in Somalia. Her long arms dangled wanly at her side; her veins showed through the thin skin, as blue. She was only thirty years old. She has no appetite, she explained, and is losing weight. She has been working at Industrial Castings.
Another man came up; he has been getting a fever regularly for the last 18 months. An old woman, a second one, a young girl came up, another young girl. They all displayed their arms, with skin diseases.
A man came up to the table where M.C. Mehta and I sat, pulled up his shirt, and showed wounds on his stomach, from cancer.
An elder of the village came. His wife had had symptoms that ultimately ended in lung cancer. She had died. His brother's wife also died of lung cancer.
The elder himself, up to 51 years had never had diseases. When the air pollution started in the past seven years, he went into fits, convulsions. Toxic epilepsy again. Dr. Krishna Rao, the medical doctor-activist, said he has seen about 15 cases of these fits in this village. The cause, he said, is because of the absence of oxygen in the air; it is substituted with things like sulfur dioxide.
During the meeting, another man came to the table. His entire central nervous system was affected.
A young boy came and was seated on the table. The boy had healthy limbs, but was unable to walk. He had damage from toxic pollution to the spinal cord.
Another man came, smiling shyly, and shaking, as if with Parkinsonson's Disease. He was quadriplegic, having no use of any limbs. He had been healthy three years back. He said he was 33 years old. He had been an agricultural laborer, fit to do all the heavy, physical work. In the last three years he could do nothing. The industrial estate was set up in 1984, and there were three years before the pollution started, in 1987.
People went back to their houses, then brought Xrays and displayed them. A young boy of just six years of age (who has lived his entire life ih the pollution), pulled up his shirt and showed external lesions; the doctor said that he was also suffering from lung lesions. His father stood behind him and showed his own Xrays, for he was also suffering.
An old man of 60 years, who looked 80, wearing a turban, was dragged up to the table, unable to support himself at all. Another man came up and showed a leg disfigured with white lesions.
I was paralyzed with the emotions of the meeting, and could only gaze blankly out into the air after a while.
Dr. Rao said that M.C. Mehta should speak. He told them that their case was making its way through the Supreme Court of India. India's highest Court allows public-interest cases to be filed directly with that Court, because they involve a constitutional matter, protection of the right to life. As far as I know, only Pakistan has undertaken a similar approach, and it was based on the Indian example.
The village elder said that they had gone to the health department, and nothing had happened. A professor who works with the doctor assured them that they would win, and that there would be at least some monetary compensation.
But it was obvious that there would never be adequate health compensation. And unless polluters who would cause such harm to their fellow humans are put in jail or, better, chained alongside their waste pits for several years, there will be no oral compensation either.
The most heart-rending impression that I got was when a man showed pictures of his wedding day. Dressed in colorful wedding finery, he and his bride with bowed head sat on a mat, covered with flowers.
But, he explained, during the ceremony, he went into convulsions from the pollution. The bride's relatives then beat him up, and the marriage was broken. He had toxic epilepsy. And he is sad and all alone.
At the end of the evening, he came up to our jeep before we left, and pressed three of the color photographs into our hands. We were to take these happy, but tragic, pictures with us.
I could say and do nothing, except fold my hands in the sign of respect that says "Namaskar" but that meant, "You poor, poor soul."
I guess I never before completely realized that being a public-interest lawyer in the Third World required such a strong stomach. It certainly requires a special breed of advocates.
Some incredible lawyers like M.C. Mehta are battling, against all odds, to put an end to tragedies like this. But it will take years of their lives -- indeed, the rest of their lives.
And all they will get are jealous glances from other lawyers, snide remarks in the hallways, veiled or not-so-veiled threats or offers of bribes, to induce them to discontinue such work.
In comparison, the rest of us are almost armchair activists. India has a national treasure in M.C. Mehta and a very few like him. There need to be thousands like him, not just in India but in every other country -- and certainly in my own.
Fortunately, Sri Mehta recognizes that he cannot carry this burden alone. He and a former Chief Justice of India, P.N. Baghwati, have established the Indian Council for Enviro-Legal Action (ICELA), to conduct seminars around the country and thereby seek out other advocates who are willing to make the same life-commitment that he has.
He speaks at universities and law schools and organizes students into teams of environmental investigators and activists, who can start workingon these problems and learn what it means to make this commitment in life.
The rest of we need to focus on the fact that real environmental protection, real environmental law, must be social justice law -- an environmental justice movement, a human rights approach, a commitment to the lives of our fellow humans.
And frankly, all of us need to visit Hell for a few hours. I wish I could take you there. But I am never going back.