Industrial development and water pollution: The quest for SDGs

India has committed itself to achieving the 2030 agenda for Sustainable Development adopted by all United Nations (UN) member states in 2015. There are 17 SDGs in all and some of them specifically focus on economic growth and environmental protection. Amongst the industrially developed states in the country, Gujarat is the leading state with a focus on the manufacturing sector. In fact, the Gujarat model of development is being propagated at the national level for other states to follow. However, the pursuit of high economic growth, centred on the manufacturing sector, is likely to create a negative externality for the environment. A rise in water pollution in the country as a whole and the state of Gujarat in particular has been seen. The pollution of water resources with biological and chemical contaminants is a serious issue affecting the availability of an already scarce resource. The role of water as a resource and as a sink may hamper the growth process if principles of sustainable development are ignored. These principles inherently assume that the economic structure would give due importance to the environmental cost of an economic activity and effective governance would play the role of bridging the gap between economic growth and environmental degradation. This book, while highlighting the need for and importance of industrial development, categorically argues in favour of sustainable developmental efforts. This would mean addressing the issue of severe environmental degradation that has been caused due to indiscriminate discharge of industrial effluents into water bodies such as rivers. Continuing with business-as-usiial is no longer an option. SDGs are part of the global agenda but need to be achieved at the local level. This book is an attempt to build in-depth empirical evidence and offer an analysis that points out the specific issues pertaining to industrial development and water pollution influencing the quest of the country to achieve the SDGs. The major observations influencing the achievement of the SDGs are discussed in the following paragraphs.

Data systems

A reliable time series data is a pre-requisite for a temporal assessment which is required when designing action plans to improve systemic performance. A good quality reliable data system is an ecosystem in itself. While analysing industrial development, it is observed that the data is often gathered without any analysis, to inform or reflect on the policies. There is a lack of a uniform approach in collecting and maintaining data by different agencies. The agencies responsible for the development of industrial estates neither maintain the records of the composition of industries nor have any data about the quantity of water consumed by the industries, and the quantity and quality of wastewater leaving the industrial estates. Their sole focus is the development and selling of the land and/ or sheds. The onus of maintenance of these industrial estates lies with the respective industry associations. With this kind of approach, there is no possibility of achieving integrated water management in an industrial area, a target (Target 6.5) under the SDGs, leading to sustainable consumption of resources or production of wastes (Target 12.5).

Though a single department, the Industries Commissionerate (IC), maintains data for the large-scale industries and the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), there has been no standardisation of data so far. The data heads for the MSMEs and the large-scale industries are different. A similar situation is observed in the case of the data on polluting units and the environment. The data for polluting industries, as well as that on environmental quality, is collected by a single agency, i.e. the State Pollution Control Board (SPCB). There is no uniformity in the data collected by its regional offices with respect to the parameters of water quality (of water bodies and treated effluents from the CETPs) and the frequency with which the data is collected. Large variations are observed in the data collected from its Ahmedabad and Surat Regional Offices. Ahmedabad has extensive data available at regular intervals. However, the same is not available for its Surat office. The registered polluting industries are clearly small in number when compared to the industries registered with the IC. Yet, no attempt has been made to reconcile the data of the polluting industries with that of the IC, so as to bring all polluting units under the ambit of regulation. The pollution control boards have information only about the industries which have approached them for permission. It is very likely that there are units which have not registered themselves with the SPCB and whose activities are, therefore, not monitored. In spite of all these gaps, no attempt by the two related departments to collate their data has been made. There is a lack of exact information available on the quantum of effluents flowing into the water bodies. This has been observed by the courts too (for example, in the Noyyal Pollution case). Without exact information, it is impossible to regulate pollution and improve the conditions on the ground.