Peru declares environmental emergency following oil spill
Gujarat to depict British massacre of Tribals
As the Centre and several States are trading allegations and counter-allegations over the tableaus to be displayed at the Republic Day parade in Delhi, the Gujarat government on Saturday announced the theme of the State’s tableau. It will be based on an incident of tribal massacre ‘worse than Jallianwala Bagh’ that occurred in the State around 100 years ago.
Background
“Around 100 years ago, in Pal and Dadhvaav villages of North Gujarat’s Sabarkantha district, the Britishers massacred 1,200 tribals, an incident worse than Jallianwala Bagh. This Republic Day, the Gujarat government, through a tableau, will present this untold story of bravery and sacrifice of the tribals,” a State government release said.
According to the details, on March 7, 1922, Bhil tribal villagers in Sabarkantha district had gathered on the banks of Her river under the leadership of Motilal Tejawat, to protest against the land revenue system imposed by the British and the feudal lords.
Soldiers from Mewad Bhil Corps arrived at the site and under direction from its officer, Major H.G. Saturn, fired on the tribals. In the unprovoked firing 1,200 innocent tribal were killed, the release added.
“Like a battlefield, the entire area was filled with corpses. Two wells — Dhekhadiya and Dudhiya — were overflowing with the bodies of about 1,200 innocent tribals. Motilal Tejawat was shot twice, and his companions carried him away on a camel to the hill by the river,” stated the release.
It is claimed that the horrific incident, which took place just three years after Jallianwala Bagh, was forgotten but as Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi had “brought this crucial chapter of history before the world.”
‘Statue of Equality’ gets final touches
Works are apace on the 216 ft tall statue of 11th century reformer and Vaishnavite saint Ramanujacharyulu to be unveiled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the sprawling 40 acre ashram of Tridandi Chinna Jeer Swamy at Muchintal on February 5.
The ‘Statue of Equality’, as it is called, was being installed tomark the 1,000th birth anniversary of Ramanujacharyulu. It was built of Panchaloha, a combination of gold, silver, copper, brass and zinc, by Aerospun Corporation in China and shipped to India.
It was the second largest in the world in sitting position of the saint.
Divya Desams
The monument will be surrounded by 108 `Divya Desams’ of Sri Vaishnavism tradition (model temples) like Tirumala, Srirangam, Kanchi, Ahobhilam, Bhadrinath, Muktinath, Ayodhya, Brindavan, Kumbhakonam and others.
The idols of deities and structures were constructed in the shape at the existing temples. The idols were also painted.
Petition on conjugal rights pending for months in SC
A petition questioning a law that forces a woman to return to her husband and denies her sexual autonomy has been pending in the Supreme Court for months without a hearing.
Restitution of conjugal rights, a medieval ecclesiastical law from England codified in several statutes, including the Hindu Marriage Act and Special Marriage Act, owes its survival largely to the fact that marital rape is not recognised as crime.
6-month hiatus
The petition, titled Ojaswa Pathak versus Union of India, was filed in the Supreme Court in February 2019. The case was last heard on July 8, 2021. It was next posted for July 22, 2021. However, the Supreme Court website shows no further dates. Meanwhile, Justice Rohinton Nariman, who had led the Bench which heard the case, has retired.
The furious debate over criminalising marital rape compels a relook at how the provisions of restitution of conjugal rights, though gender-neutral, place an additional burden on women and poses a direct threat to their bodily autonomy, privacy and individual dignity.
Penalty for women
With marital rape not an offence, the provisions of restitution of conjugal rights, when aimed at a woman, takes away her bodily autonomy and forces her to stay with her husband. If a woman does not comply to return to her husband, the court could even attach her property.
Provisions of restitution of conjugal rights like Section 9 of the Hindu Marriage Act and Section 22 of the Special Marriage Act empower a husband or a wife to move the local district court, complaining that the other partner has “withdrawn” from the marriage without a “reasonable cause”.
The petition gives the court the authority to order the “withdrawn” spouse to return to the matrimonial home. Order 21 Rule 32 of the Civil Procedure Code allows the court to attach the property of the “errant” spouse if he or she does not comply with its order to return.
The meaning and extent of key words in the provisions like “withdrawn” or “reasonable cause” are ambiguous. For example, if a woman stays away from her husband for her job, would it mean that she has “withdrawn” from the marriage. Besides, “reasonable cause” would differ from one person to the other.
The courts have over the years dealt with the law of ‘restitution of conjugal rights’ in a chequered manner. Judgments have swung from the idea of ‘sanctity of marriage’ to the necessity of upholding the privacy and dignity of women.
In one of the early judgments in the 1960s, the Punjab and Haryana High Court in the Tirath Kaur case, upheld restitution of conjugal rights, noting that “a wife’s first duty to her husband is to submit herself obediently to his authority and to remain under his roof and protection”.
The courts, in a series of judgments in the 1980s, have supported the law, holding that the denial of marital and sexual life to the husband by the wife by refusing to permanently return to him is an act of both mental and physical cruelty.
Even the Supreme Court, in Saroja Rani case, held that conjugal rights, ie, the “right of the husband or wife to one another’s society is inherent in the very institution of marriage”.
Questioning orthodoxy
However, another series of judgments, especially the one by Madhya Pradesh High Court in the Vibha Shrivastava case, busts the “orthodox concept of the Hindu wife as Dharmpatni, Ardhangini, Bharya or Anugamini”.
“This orthodox concept of wife and expectations from her to subject herself to husbands wishes has undergone a revolutionary change with education and high literacy in women and with recognition of equal rights to women in the constitution and abolition of sex distinction in all walks of life. She is a partner in marriage with equal status and equal rights with the husband,” the High Court noted.
Marriage cannot be a tyranny; the High Court had noted.
In the well-known case of actor Sareetha, the Andhra Pradesh High Court did not mince words when it said, “sexual cohabitation is an inseparable ingredient of a decree for restitution of conjugal rights”.
The High Court said a decree of restitution of conjugal rights gives a spouse not only the right of company but also the right to “marital intercourse” with the other spouse. In short, the provision “coerces, through judicial process, an unwilling party to have sex against consent and freewill with the decree-holder”.
In the Sareetha case, the High Court made it a point to note that “ancient Hindu law treated the duty of the Hindu wife to abide by her husband only as an imperfect obligation incapable of being enforced against her will. It left the choice entirely to the free will of the wife”.
The fight against marital rape and restitution of conjugal rights has gained a new lease of life with the Supreme Court’s nine-judge Bench upholding privacy as a “constitutionally protected right” which gives a person complete authority to decide one’s matters of personal intimacies, sanctity of family life, the home, sexual orientation, etc.
The Supreme Court, in its recent Joseph Shine judgment, concluded that the State cannot exercise authority in a person’s private affairs. “The right to privacy is an inalienable right, closely associated with the innate dignity of an individual, and the right to autonomy and self-determination to take decisions,” the court said.
The court has also held that any interference by the State in a person’s choice of partners causes “serious chilling effect on the exercise of the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution”.
The time is ripe for the top court to pick up where it left off.
A proposal for Indian Environmental Service
Why in News?
The Supreme Court has asked the Government if it will create an Indian Environmental Service (IES) as recommended by a committee headed by former Cabinet secretary T.S.R Subramanian in 2014.
What is the T.S.R Subramanian committee report on environment?
The Subramanian committee was set up in August 2014 to review the country’s green laws and the procedures followed by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF_amp;CC).
It suggested several amendments to align with the Government’s economic development agenda. The report submitted to then Union environment minister, Prakash Javadekar had suggested amendments to almost all green laws, including those relating to environment, forest, wildlife and coastal zone clearances. The committee had three months to submit its report. After it did, a Parliamentary Standing Committee rejected the report on the grounds that it ended up diluting key aspects of environmental legislation designed to protect the environment. The committee suggested that another committee, with more expertise and time, be constituted to review the environmental laws.
What did the T.S.R report recommend?
The report proposed an ‘Environmental Laws (Management) Act’ (ELMA), that envisioned full-time expert bodies—National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA) and State Environmental Management Authority (SEMA)—to be constituted at the Central and State levels respectively to evaluate project clearance (using technology and expertise), in a time bound manner, providing for single-window clearance.
To accelerate the environmental decision-making process, they suggested a “fast track” procedure for “linear” projects (roads, railways and transmission lines), power and mining projects and for “projects of national importance.” The Air Act and the Water Act is to be subsumed within the Environment Protection Act. The existing Central Pollution Control Board and the State Pollution Control Boards, which monitor and regulate the conditions imposed on the industries to safeguard environment, are proposed to be integrated into NEMA and SEMA once the new bodies come into existence.
It also suggested an appellate mechanism against the decisions of NEMA/SEMA or MoEF_amp;CC, in respect of project clearance, prescribing a three-month deadline to dispose appeals.
The report also recommends that an “environmental reconstruction cost” should be assessed for each project on the basis of the damage caused by it to the environment and this should be added into the cost of the project. This cost has to be recovered as a cess or duty from the project proponent during the life of the project. At the tail end, it proposed a National Environment Research institute “on the lines of the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education” to bring in the application of high-end technology in environment governance and finally, an Indian Environment Service to recruit qualified and skilled human resource in the environment sector.
Has the report been accepted by the Government?
The Centre never formally accepted this report and neither constituted a new committee as recommended by the Parliamentary Standing Committee. However, many of these recommendations are implicitly making their way into the process of environmental regulation. The Government has proposed rewrites to the Forest Conservation laws, set timelines to the pace at which expert committees that appraise the suitability of infrastructure projects must proceed, as well as sought to make existing laws consonant with court judgements.
How did the subject of the IES come to the fore?
The Supreme Court was responding to a petition filed by a lawyer Samar Vijay Singh, whose counsel pointed out that matters of environment required special expertise. Currently matters of environmental regulation rests on scientists recruited into the Ministry of Environment and Forests as well as bureaucrats from the Indian Administrative Services. The apex court expressed reluctance at getting into administrative matters of the Government but nevertheless asked the Centre if it expects to go about constituting such a mechanism.
Elephant corridors to be restored in south Bengal
The fragmented and patchy forests of south Bengal have emerged as one of the hotspots of human-elephant conflict in the country, resulting in loss of lives of both humans and pachyderms.
At times, the conflict results in law and order problems. In November 2021, a herd of 50 elephants came within 5 km of east Burdwan town, prompting the district administration to impose prohibitory orders in several gram panchayats in the region.
Between 2014 and 2019, as many as 2,381 human deaths were recorded in elephant attacks across the country, of which 403 (over 16%) were reported from West Bengal. The State, however, is home to less than 3% of the elephant population and records a high death count of pachyderms in conflicts.
Minimising elephant-human conflict is the pressing need of the region and wildlife organisations and experts have now taken up the task of undertaking ecological restoration of elephant corridors in south Bengal.
‘Degradation of forests’
“The degradation started not just with increased agricultural activities in the region but also participatory joint forest management such as community forestry, which changed the very nature of the forest to make it commercially viable, not considering the biodiversity of the region,” said Diya Banerjee, an ecologist from Uttarayan Wildlife, who is leading the five-year restoration project.
It is also aimed at creating a balanced ecosystem so that humans and animals can coexist in consonance with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.
Abhishek Ghosh, who is associated with the project, said there are 180 to 200 elephants in the region, but due to fragmentation of forests these herds are no longer following traditional migration. “This is the reason that sometimes we see elephants entering towns in Burdwan and Bankura and Medinpur,” Mr. Ghosh said.
Billed as the innovative solution to the perennial problem of river pollution in Gujarat, the State government’s ambitious ?2,300-crore sub-sea effluent disposal pipeline project remains a non-starter even as the pollution in the rivers has gone beyond critical level due to increasing industrialisation.
The State government, after floating the tender in 2020, has not moved on the project and is now apparently considering re-working it.
Background
In 2020, the government, after the delay of several years, came out with a mega plan to lay the pipeline network to carry industrial effluents directly into the deep sea to save Sabarmati, Mahisagar, Vishwamitra and Bhadar, which have become critically polluted due to unbated discharge of industrial effluents into them.
The industries had welcomed the government’s initiative to build a 300 km effluent discharge infrastructure on public private partnership (PPP) basis. Of the cost of ?2,275 crore, the government contribution was around ?1,660 crore while industries had committed ?615 crore as their share.
Sabarmati River Pollution Problem
In Ahmedabad, the Sabarmati river remains perennially polluted because more than 1,500 industrial units, mostly textiles and dyes, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, located in Ahmedabad city and outskirts dump their effluents, often untreated, directly into the river killing its ecosystem.
Similarly, industries in Vadodara dump their effluents into Mahisagar and Vishwamitra and the textiles hub Jetpur in Rajkot district into Bhadar, Saurashtra region’s main river.
Under the project, treated effluent from 11 common effluent treatment plants (CETP) of Ahmedabad and one each from Kheda, Vadodara and Jetpur will be discharged into sea through pipelines that would be laid several kilometres in sub-sea.
Accordingly, three pipeline routes were finalised: from Ahmedabad to the Gulf of Cambay of 350 million litre a day (MLD) capacity at ?1,480 crore, Jetpur to Porbandar of 80MLD capacity at ?665 crore and Vadodara to the Gulf of Cambay of 60 MLD capacity at ?130 crore.
The government had said it would be beneficial for nearly 4,500 industrial units in Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Kheda and Rajkot.
However, the State government has recently informed the High Court, which is hearing a suo motu public interest litigation (PIL) about pollution in the Sabarmati river, that it is “reworking the deep-sea pipeline project after the High Court bench sought to know the status of the project”.
Stumbling blocks
According to sources, the project has run into several stumbling blocks. The local fishermen have objected to the Jetpur-Porbandar pipeline on the ground that the effluents would pollute the sea and kill fishes and marine ecology that would affect their livelihood.
“We have strongly objected to any such move to pollute the sea and kill our livelihood,” said Jivan Jungi, a fisherman and activist in Porbandar.
Peru declares environmental emergency following oil spill
The Peruvian government on Saturday declared a 90-day “environmental emergency” in damaged coastal territories, after an oil spill that saw 6,000 barrels of crude oil pour into the sea.
Peruvian authorities say that this measure will allow for “sustainable management of the affected areas,” through “restoration and remediation” work.
Emergency crews in white biosafety suits are using shovels to remove the oily sand, which is then transported to toxic waste dumps.
How did the spill happen?
The oil spill came out of a tanker belonging to the Spanish energy firm Repsol. The incident occurred at the La Pampilla refinery, some 30 kilometers (around 19 miles) north of the Peruvian capital of Lima in the Ventanilla district of the port city of Callao.
According to the refinery, the spill was caused by freak waves, which resulted from the eruption of a volcano in Tonga.
The Italian-flagged “Mare Doricum” tanker was transporting 965,000 barrels of crude oil when it was hit.
Currents spread the oil to distances more than 40 kilometers from the refinery, tarring some 21 beaches, according to Peru’s Health Ministry. The ministry recommends avoiding these areas, which it classifies as “unhealthy.”
