Pollution Control Board's Failure in India
Pollution Control Board's Failure in India
The PCBs have a whole long list of laws and bylaws stating clearly the dos and don’ts but everyone knows how many of them are actually followed or adhered to. Once in a while the PCBs issue notices to certain easy preys but even they wriggle out of their clutches by money or muscle power.
Had the PCBs been alert and active, our cities would have been much cleaner and lesser polluted than what they are. Our rivers would have survived and our green belts would have flourished. It is years of sheer neglect and inaction that has led to such catastrophic environmental damage we see around today. Red tape and political pressure have tied the hands of the PCBs.
It is better to dilute them and set up a new body, with smarter management and lesser flab. Better monitoring and accountability measures from the Centre also need to be ensured to make them work in an efficient way. There is all the acumen and wherewithal with the government to make the PCBs more functional and pro-active but it is just lack of will and concern that makes them so redundant and defunct.
Today it is the NGT which has to chip in and take all important decisions regarding environment protection. Since it is a judicial body, the injunctions are taken seriously, manipulating is difficult and implementation becomes mandatory. But it is only the inefficiency of the PCBs that forces the NGT to take cognisance of every violation. It is primarily the job of PCBs which they are simply not doing.
Their lenient approach only emboldens the violators. Industries are openly allowing their effluents fall into the rivers and water bodies, vehicles are openly flouting emission norms, trees are rampantly being chopped to make way for shopping malls, even burning garbage in the open is freely happening around.
The civic bodies too need to help the PCB in ensuring that the bindings are adhered to. Unfortunately the civic bodies too are lackadaisical and uncooperative. No one is concerned for the welfare of the nation and society. Everyone is for himself. That is the attitudinal folly that does us in and we falter in all aspects of building a civilised and smart society.-Window To News
