Byrnihat, in Ri Bhoi district of Meghalaya has become the cynosure of all eyes for hitting an international high as the most air polluted ‘city’ in the world. That Byrnihat, a one horse town, with a few ferroalloy factories on a busy highway beat heavily industrialized ‘global’ cities boggles a normally reasoning mind.
Surely, it is some kind of a joke, some smart aleck social influencer playing a prank. But no, it is a fact. At least so because this is the conclusion reached from the data generated by a global ranking institution, so this can only be disputed at your own peril. How tiny-miny Byrnihat could spew out so much dirt into the air that it reached the top of the pollution spewing club of the world will remain a wonder in the debating and yakking circles in the state.
What this has done is that it has created in this picture of rural Byrnihat, the most wonderful caricature of the model of modern development. Experts say there is a correlation between high air pollution and high economic activities and high economic growth as can be seen in any given region in the world. To make a naive comparison, is this correlation reflected in the situation that Byrnihat or its home state find themselves in? The infrastructure visible in Byrnihat and surrounding villages is not comparable, even by a long shot, with that in the cities it out-polluted. In the highly polluted cities people traded their air quality to gain wealth and prosperity, high-class schools and educational institutions and there is reasonably good health and medical infrastructure. People of Byrnihat have the same world class respiratory diseases, lung failures, heart diseases, tuberculosis, skin problems, and such diseases rampant in these mega cities. But where are the world class hospitals and medical institutions to handle this fall-out of being the most polluted ‘city’ on the globe for Byrnihat.
So where or into whose pocket did the wealth created by generating so much air pollution flow into?
It wasn’t as if there were no environmental laws in place in Byrnihat. The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) and the Meghalaya State Pollution Control Board ((MSPCB) had been repeatedly firing off notifications against the pollution created by the factories in the Export Promotion Industrial Park and its extension. But these entitled and privileged owners of these units invariably escaped with a slap on their hands and a small fine of a few lakh rupees. Here it is important to point out that the same experts say that the factory owners across the world gain some profit by not adhering to the pollution control laws. So overlooking pollution pays for owners. But it is a loss for the surrounding population and the environment. Therefore, the global call for polluters to pay must also be applied here in these remote spaces. .
Then again, in the Byrnihat case, we have two neighbouring states, Assam and Meghalaya, blaming each other for making this border town, which they share, into a top world-class polluter. Meghalaya put the entire blame on Assam for failing to control the factories on its side of the state, while claiming that the hill state has been cracking down on the factories which disobeyed the law. Assam is sure to make a rebuttal, but it is most important to remember that pollution per se has no boundaries and that its impact is felt by everyone everywhere including the polluter themselves who think they’re safe in their air-conditioned humidified mansions.
