Sterlite Expansion violates human rights

S Pasupathi, 25, starts her day administering four different medicines to her two-year-old son Harish, who suffers from incessant wheezing and chest congestion. She and her husband Selva Raj, a welder in Tuticorin, Tamil Nadu, need to take the child to hospital every week, spending around Rs 1,000 on his treatment and medicines. “He was fine until a year ago,” said Pasupathi, carrying the restless child on her hip. “The doctors say living in the vicinity of the Sterlite plant is the problem, but they do not write that down as the reason for his wheezing.”

The plant she is referring to is a copper smelter of Sterlite Copper, a unit of Vedanta, one of the world’s largest mining and metals conglomerate. Set up in 1996, it lies at the edge of Tuticorin town and has the capacity to produce 4,38,000 tonnes of copper anodes per annum, or 1,200 tonnes a day. Sterlite plans to expand it into the world’s largest smelter in a densely populated area. Over 4.6 lakh people live in eight census towns and 27 villages within a 10-km radius of the plant, according to the project’s Environment Impact Assessment report of 2015.

For over two decades now, activists in Tuticorin have been accusing Sterlite of contaminating the region’s air and water resources. According to the Environment Impact Assessment report, the smelter’s main pollutants are sulphur dioxide and particulate matter. People living around the plant said they were initially unaware of its harmful effects, but have come to hold it as the chief cause of their ill health. “In every household of our village, at least a couple of people are suffering from some kind of illness,” said Selva Raj. “Children are the worst affected.”

In January this year, when they heard Sterlite was planning to double the smelter’s capacity by setting up another plant, fears around their health and safety grew stronger and they launched an agitation. It is centred around Kumarredyapuram village, which lies off a dusty road a short drive from the plant. For about two months, the villagers and activists supporting them have been gathering in the shade of a neem tree, holding large banners calling for the government to shut down the plant. On February 12, they took their demonstration to Tuticorin. There, it grew into a massive protest as around two lakh people, according to the activists, turned out in their support on March 24. Since then, several celebrities, mediapersons and politicians have visited Kumarredyapuram in a show of support.

In Kumarredyapuram, the villagers alleged that pollutants from the Sterlite factory were causing breathing disorders, skin diseases, heart conditions and cancer, among other health problems. “It starts with throat irritation, then breathing difficulties and asthma, then we get fits and wheezing,” said Maheshwari, a 35-year-old resident. “Most women here also suffer from extreme pain during their menstrual cycle.”

“We are only now moving away from superstition and starting to understand the science behind diseases,” said S Sundaramoorthy, an active protestor in the village. “We are now realising that asthma and wheezing could be due to the environment we live in.”

The signs had always been there, though. “We could taste the pollutants in the water,” said Baby, a 28-year-old villager, adding that they have stopped using groundwater altogether. “We cannot even rinse our mouths with the water anymore.”

In the town, Pasupathi suspects her mother, who died of cancer last year, may have fallen victim to the smelter.

Sterlite officials have often claimed that there is no evidence to link the factory to illnesses among the people living around it. But Nityanand Jayaraman of the environmental non-profit Chennai Solidarity Group has disputed this assertion, writing that a study by the Tirunelveli Medical College in 2008 had proved otherwise but it was deliberately kept under wraps. The study, which covered 80,725 people residing within a 5-km radius of the smelter, found 13.9% of the population suffering from respiratory diseases. “The attributable cause is...the presence of gases, mixture of gases and particulate matter,” the study found. A large number of women reported menstrual disorders but the researchers stated that an “in-depth study” was required to identify the cause for this.

The study was designed well, said Dr Rakhal Gaitonde, a public health researcher, but it lacked in-depth analysis. As such, it did not offer a robust idea of the health effects of copper smelters. “At gut level, it makes a lot of sense that people living next to industries that are openly flouting safety norms will suffer from ill health,” he said. “The problem is when you sit down to do a study, you have to deal with statistical data. But local communities rarely have the resources to conduct such in-depth studies to prove negative impacts of pollution. Why doesn’t the industry prove it is not the cause? The industry uses a lack of evidence to say that there is no problem in the area.” more