|
During the past 30 years the industrial section in India has quadrupled in size simultaneously the major waste generators in India including the petrochemical, pharmaceutical, pesticide paint, Dye, petroleum, fertilizer , asbestos, caustic soda, inorganic chemicals and general engineering industries.
The bulk of industrial pollution in India is caused by the small and medium scale industries (SMIs) sector. A small scale unit is defined as any industry whose plant and machinery are valued at less than 1 crore (Government is planning to increase this to 5 crore).Though quantity of industrial waste generated by individual SMIs may not be large it aggregates to be as large percentage of the total since almost 3 million SMIs are widely scattered throughout the country. SMls account for over 40 percent of the total industrial output in the country and generate over 44 percent of hazardous wastes alone as compared to 13 percent generated by the large scale industry (Gulati 1997; B.M. Prasad,) Also SMls normally do not budget for resources to meet regulatory standard. The rate of growth of SMls has also exceeded that of the industrial sector as a whole.
Government policies have been biased toward small industries as employment generators even though small industries are highly polluting the SSI policy has no thought on the environmental planning. Promotion of small enterprise as widely seen as a desirable way to achieve sustainable development for that result however, their pollution problems, amount others, must be overcome. To deal with the effluent in these SSIs the concept of Common Effluent Treatment plan (CETP) was introduced with a hope that not only it would help the industries in pollution abatement but also as a step towards the clean environment.
Accordingly the ministry of Environment and Forests instructed various state pollution control Boards, to examine the possibilities of establishing CETPs in various industrial estates in the respective states. Even central assistance up to 25 percent of the total cost of the CETP is being provided as a grant to the common effluent treatment plant on the condition that the State Governments would give a matching contribution. The remaining cost have to be met by equity contribution by the industries and the loans from financial institutions.
|
