New Systems, Old Habits

Launched in 2014, the continuous monitoring systems for highly polluting industries were expected to usher in a new era of environmental governance in India. But poor planning, hasty execution and lack of enforcement have made the new-age regulatory mechanism a non-starter. Sanjeev Kumar Kanchan reports.

- Sanjeev Kumar Kanchan

INDIA'S POLLUTION monitoring and enforcement systems are in a shambles. As the number of industries is growing by the day, the regulatory system is failing to keep pace. At present, the existing pollution monitoring for most industries is done manually and irregularly. Industries flout norms with impunity, as they know that the regulators have poor capacity to check and enforce the norms. Even if they are caught, the system of penalising them through the courts is so cumbersome that regulators have stopped filing cases.

When India embraced a new-age pollution monitoring regime in February 2014, it was hailed as a move to widen and strengthen the environmental governance in the country. The new system was supposed to be a major game changer to re-calibrate and transform the country’s tardy pollution compliance and enforcement system.