POLLUTION AND PUBLIC INTEREST LAW IN A VILLAGE NEAR UDAIPUR:
M. C. MEHTA's H-ACID CASE
John E. Bonine
Udaipur, Rajasthan, India
26 February 1994
We are in fabled Udaipur, "the Venice of the East." It is a city of lakes and palaces, and of an oft-photographed island called the Lake Palace.
But it is also a land of pollution and public interest law, of attempted intimidation, of steadfast dedication by some committed Indian lawyers, and of courageous action by tribal villagers in the face of attempted bribery and threats.
At the suggestion of India's premier environmental lawyer, M. C. Mehta of Delhi, we contacted and then met Mannaram Dangi today. He is a 42-year-old advocate who practices primarily before the Sessions Court (district court) of Udaipur, in the state of Rajsthan, India.
We met Mr. Dangi at the patio in front of the court. Here, he and other lawyers, along with typists and scribes, meet with clients in small, open-air cubicles and stand ready to appear when their cases are called, like district court lawyers everywhere in the world. With him was Mahendra Kumar Mehta (no relation to M. C. Mehta of New Delhi), another lawyer with a conscience, who decided to accompany us on the field trip that Mr. Dangi had arranged. Our goal was to see first-hand the pollution problems that they are battling, and to meet some of the affected clients.
We engaged a taxicab and headed out to the countryside east of Udaipur. Our destination was a village and industrial "campus" where five industrial companies are set up. Two manufacture toxic pesticides, one apparently makes sulfuric acid, and the business of the fourth was uncertain to me. The fifth company had been in the business of making a product called "H-acid."
The H-acid case has been a good example of the power of international networking. The U.S. Office of the Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide (E-LAW) (and particularly its Staff Scientist, Dr. Mark Chernaik (also a 1993 graduate of the University of Oregon School of Law) and, I believe, its Executive Director, lawyer Bern Johnson, has provided valuable research assistance on the substance for Mehta and Dangi.
The adverse, localized effects of H-acid production were painfully clear. Mr. Dangi informed us that several farm animals of the villagers had died, that some of the villagers had had skin damage, that others suffered respiratory damages, that their wells had been rendered unfit for use, and that some of the land had had its productivity destroyed.
We stopped the car and went up to a house where a village family had suffered ill effects from the pollution. The woman described the burning sensations that the pollution had caused in her throat and lungs, and how it had sapped her of energy. (Nobody has the money to discover whether there have been, in addition, more subtle and insidious long-term effects.) When we asked whether we could take a photograph of the couple, with factory smokestacks towering behind their hut, they declined, however. Despite our assurances that the photos would only go back to the United States for showing to friends and colleagues there, they expressed the fear that the companies might see the photos and cause unpleasantness for them.
Mannaram and Mahendra drove us further along, then stopped the car near some houses whose wells had been poisoned by contamination of the groundwater by the H-acid factory. We walked down a tree-lined lane that presented a picture of idyllic rural life. At the end of the lane, however, when we entered a courtyard, the picture changed to one of loss and suffering. After describing the damages that had occurred, one of the women of the household got a rope, went to the well, and drew up a bucket of water to show us. It had a distinct, reddish-yellow discoloration. They now had to take their water from a tank that was filled by a government water truck.
In 1988, after animals started dying and the villagers began to feel the ill effects of the pollution, they banded together and presented a petition to the anti-pollution authority of the state government. As a result, the environmental authority ordered a 60-day closure of the factory. In 1989, the villagers managed to find a way, through their elected representatives, to bring the problem to the attention of the then-Prime Minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi. Gandhi ordered a permanent closure.
The plant was moved to an industrial area near Bombay, while the company filed an appeal in court against the closure order. Meanwhile, Dangi and M. C. Mehta initiated a case for court-endorsed closure and for compensation, under the original jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of India. (India's apex court has been extraordinarily activist in encouraging public interest litigation and fashioning creative procedures and remedies to bring some justice to the impoverished sectors of its society. For example, the Court allows public interest cases to be brought directly to it, will recognize even a postcard or a letter-to-the-editor in a newspaper as constituting a claim for relief, and will appoint lawyers to take on the public interest cases and later compensate them for exemplary work on behalf of disadvantaged sectors of society.)
Dangi and Mehta's cases are still pending, though they may come to hearing at the Supreme Court in New Delhi next week. Meanwhile, six years after the controversy first arose, the well water is still polluted. As for the factory buildings, they are now used to produce "edible oils" for consumption, we were told. I shuddered at the thought of what might be going into those oils.
As we talked to the family at the first farmhouse to which we had been taken, the old patriarch of the family, whom Advocate Dangi referred to as a "centenarian," lay on a cot in the courtyard and listened. As he listened, he home-spun yarn for the family's use.
The old man wore only a loin cloth, his thin arms and legs and wizened visage presenting a picture of timeless India. I could think only of Mahatmah Gandhi, the British-trained lawyer who became the great liberator of India. Gandhi had moved out of the judicial system into direct action late in life, shed his lawyer's garb, taken to wearing only a simple loin cloth, and spent an hour every day home-spinning yarn as he preached self-reliance to the great masses of India and helped them overthrow an Empire.
As we moved to leave the courtyard, exchanged farewells with the family and the patriarch, hands folded in front of us in prayer-like fashion, the old man rose feebly from his cot. He came up to me and grasped my hands. Then he reached up to take my head in his hands. He turned my head into the sun and squinted to get a good look, compensating for his failing vision. It was a touching moment, which brought tears to Anne's eyes as she looked on. As we walked back down the lane, one woman called after us, "Don't go. You should stay." But our task is to support local lawyers doing this kind of work, not to participate in the work ourselves.
At another house, an old woman told us that the government-provided substitute water supplies were inadequate in quantity. There was enough to drink, but not enough clean water in which to bathe. Meanwhile, the fields must be irrigated with partially contaminated water from a nearby canal, leading from a small pond that has been polluted. At that house, another woman drew up a bucketful to show us the contamination. What should have been clear, life-sustaining water looked instead like a strong, red tea. The family told us that they had spent three years, on-and-off, digging their well, but had never been able to use the water from it.
Walking back from that house, I asked Mannaram if he was being paid for his work on the case. Not at all, he replied. Why, then, did he do the work? I asked. It is something that he simply must do, he explained. His friend Mahendra later said to me as we walked along, "There are not many Lincolns or Gandhis in any country, are there?" "But there are obviously a few," I replied.
I asked Mannaram what drew him into environmental law and volunteer public interest work. He was a student activist long ago, he answered, and had been engaged in rural social work before he became a lawyer.
Finally, he took us to meet with the villager who had been the sparkplug in getting the community together to fight this problem. We were led into the courtyard of a house, charpoys (string beds) were pulled out for us to sit upon, and we discussed the nature of village environmental activism in India, and the problems of public interest law work. I asked if they had had problems in pursuing the protests and the case.
"The company tried to split the community," one answered. They offered money to some people. "The lawyer for the company offered me 25,000 rupees personally if I would drop the case," Mannaram told me. There were also threats lodged against some in the village. But the village pressed forward.
I am always fascinated by home-grown, home-spun activism where it might seem unexpected to our Western minds. "Some people in my country say that in a poor country like India the people are too busy with getting food and shelter to worry about the environment," I said to the village activist, to see what response I would get.
Everyone present shook their heads vigorously. Each person competed with the others to negative my comment. "That is not true," the village leader replied, and Mahendra seconded him. "Water and air are as necessary as food for our lives," he said. Mannaram added that there are countless environmental groups at the village level in India. They care very much about how pollution harms the quality of their lives.
I told them that our office in the U.S. had done some research work for their court case, and that I was here to report back in a first-hand way to those who had provided that research. Of equal importance, I explained, my goals included letting others in the U.S. and the rest of the world know about the important and creative environmental litigation work being carried out in India, and how environmental law had penetrated deeply into India's legal system.
After we were served tea, we reluctantly took our leave of the village, photographed the factories from a distance one more time, and headed back to Udaipur. I had gained a new level of respect for the work done in the countries of the South by locally based lawyers like this. They might not even call themselves environmental lawyers, but that is what they are. They should be an inspiration to us all.
Like the "private public interest lawyers" in the U.S., the ordinary lawyers of India who have decided to donate their time and skills to helping their fellow humans are rewriting the book on what it means to be an environmental lawyer in our world.
Mr. Mannaramj Dangi, Advocate
4, Shastri Circle
Udaipur (Rajasthan) 313001
INDIA
(no telephone, but messages can be left at Hotel D Kerala next
door to his office, at 91-294-25126)
Mr. Mahendra Kumar Mehta, Advocate
54, Shreenath Marg
Udaipur (Rajasthan) 313001
INDIA