IN the rush to attract investments and generate more tax revenues, state governments across India have for years been ignoring the gross violation of environmental laws by industries.

Many thriving industrial estates are today disaster zones, endangering the lives of residents living in surrounding areas and destroying water bodies and the flora and fauna.

State governments have been promoting sprawling industrial estates outside large cities, many of which are focussed on specific sectors – like pharmaceuticals, chemicals, petro-chemicals – and scores of companies from that particular segment set up a presence in the industrial area.

In their enthusiasm to attract the maximum investments, state governments pay little heed to problems of pollution. Over a period of time, many of these industrial estates – most are established on river banks or near the sea to ensure water supply – generate so much of pollutants that they destroy the water bodies and contaminate vast tracts of land. The pollution also impacts the health of residents living in proximity to the industrial estates.

States like Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh have attracted billions of dollars in investments over the decades, especially in industrial areas. Most of these states also have pollution control boards, headed inevitably by politicians. Many of the boards are also staffed by corrupt officials, who ignore the blatant violation of anti-pollution laws by units in the industrial estates.

A visit to some of these estates outside the large cities indicate how many of the companies have been violating environmental norms, dumping chemicals, industrial wastes and even toxic elements, destroying rivers, farms and the countryside.

Some of the most notorious industrial estates in India include Patalganga, less than 100 km from Mumbai; Ankleshwar, which is on the outskirts of Vadodara in Gujarat; and Patancheru, barely 30 km from Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh. All three have emerged as major chemical, petrochemical and pharmaceutical hubs, with top domestic and international firms having their operations.

Environmentalists and organisations such as Greenpeace have dragged the concerned state governments and pollution control boards and the polluters to courts, which have over the years warned the authorities about the dangers of unchecked pollution, and instructed them to take action.

Governments react typically, ordering clean-up drives and imposing fines on some of the polluters; but within weeks of the court judgement, or some expose in the media, it is a return to the bad old ways, with industrial units merrily going about their tasks, dumping untreated pollutants and contaminating the land.

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THE latest episode relates to Patancheru in Andhra Pradesh, where shocking pollution levels have led to a global furore, forcing even the Indian Prime Minister’s Office to order a probe into the incident.

Joakim Larsson, an environmental scientist from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, conducted extensive tests of treated waste water at Patancheru and found a deadly cocktail of 21 different active pharmaceutical ingredients in it. He got the samples cross-checked at two laboratories to confirm the presence of drugs like ciprofloxacin in the water.

Larsson presented his findings at a scientific conference in the US recently, leading to worldwide outrage on the presence of such a large number of antibiotics in the water. Scientists fear that the local population, which consumes the water, might be imbibing the drugs unknowingly, leading to catastrophic consequences. Worse, a host of bacteria might develop immunity to antibiotics like ciprofloxacin.

The Swedish researcher found antibiotics used in the treatment of diseases ranging from hypertension, depression, gonorrhea, ulcers and even liver ailments in the water. The highest levels of ciprofloxacin and anti-histamine drug cetirizine were found in the wells of six villages, and 50 per cent of the drugs that were detected were at levels that had not been recorded elsewhere in the environment anywhere on earth.

Larsson noted that the 100-odd drug companies located at the Patancheru industrial area were apparently spewing out nearly a 100 pounds of ciprofloxacin daily, enough to treat 100,000 people. The findings have resulted in Patancheru being dubbed as one of the most polluted places on earth, with drug residues that were detected being 150 times of the levels found in the US.

The ‘treated waste water’ from the factories that are dumped into the river by the pharmaceutical companies – which include some of the largest Indian players – seep into the groundwater. Fish and other marine life and even livestock consume the water, passing off the drugs to humans through milk, poultry products and meat.

Worried about the impact this could have on the Indian pharmaceutical industry and the nation’s image globally, the PMO last week ordered the environment ministry to send teams to analyse the water.

The Indian government fears that the negative publicity generated by the findings of the Swedish researcher would result in environmental activists urging consumers and other buyers to boycott Indian pharmaceutical products.

The Andhra Pradesh Pollution Control Board (APPCB), which should have cracked down against the polluters years ago, initiated belated action last week by shutting down the plant of a mid-sized firm, SMS Pharmaceuticals Ltd. Some of the large drug-makers who have a presence in Patancheru include Dr Reddy’s Laboratories, Aurobindo Pharma and Matrix Laboratories.

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WHILE the Swedish environmental researcher managed to bring the problem of polluting drug units to the global limelight, activists have been highlighting the dangers for several years. In fact, the Indian Supreme Court set up a monitoring committee about eight years ago, directing industries to cut down on their effluents in Patancheru.

Environmental activists and NGOs have been crying themselves hoarse about the devastating pollution caused by industrial units in Patancheru, but successive governments in Andhra Pradesh have been ignoring them.

“In addition to the pollution of moving water resources, infiltration from wastes dumped on the ground and seepage into the water table in some places, has caused the ground water to become a cocktail of toxins, unfit for any use,” Greenpeace India warned about five years ago. The National Geological Research Institute (NGRI) conducted a study and found arsenic in abnormally high quantities, close to around 700 times above permissible levels.

According to Greenpeace, the once-clear lakes of Patancheru are in various toxic colours including virulent red and poisonous green. “The paint, plastic, chemical and bulk drug industries on the estate routinely dump their waste into the stream.

Pollution to this stream has destroyed approximately 2,000 acres of farmland besides contaminating the ground water system…Open wells, dug wells and tanks have become useless and redundant. The heavy metal concentrations in the water have increased five to 20 times the permissible limits. The ground water is no longer potable,” noted the Greenpeace study.

Studies have detected the presence of nearly a dozen metals, arsenic and pesticides in the milk of mother’s nursing their babies. There is a high incidence of cancers and a variety of ailments, besides the presence of many abnormal children.

Environmental activists describe Patancheru as “an ecological sacrifice zone,” and the effluent treatment plants as “a fraud on the people.” There are just two such plants for handling the waste churned out by 500 bulk drug and other pharmaceutical firms in Patancheru.

Many of the units don’t even bother to use the treatment plants, and discharge the untreated effluents directly into water bodies. Activists also accuse the pollution control board of turning a blind eye to these gross violations of environmental laws.

But corrupt officials and conniving politicians ignored these findings for years. Even leading companies that routinely talk about corporate governance – and even win awards for sustainable development – blithely brush over these findings and go about their dangerous ways.

Besides the devastating impact of the effluents on humans and plant and animal life, the Patancheru crisis could have a disastrous effect on Indian pharmaceutical exports.