No other country, even a poor one, can be cited as dealing with a disaster in such a cavalier manner as India has dealt with its Tamilnadu oil slick disaster. The poorer countries would have taken help of others if their own resources were not enough. But India did not and could not handle the disaster by itself. True, India had never faced such an oil spill disaster before. But that does not explain the gross negligence and dereliction of duty by India’s officialdom.

All glory to the ill-equipped volunteers and the fishermen who fought their utmost to clean the oil spill with simple gloves and buckets. The oil slick affected the environment and the livelihood of fishermen. It also greatly damaged marine life in the area. The volunteers were joined in by the Indian Coast Guard though it was informed late.

The oil spill has not vanished altogether; its remnants have since spread up to Cuddalore, some 215 km to the south and is moving towards Pichapuram mangrove, about 270 km south. In the north the slick is moving towards Pulicat mangroves, about 37 km away. If these mangroves are affected, it will be another disaster of a gigantic magnitude.

It has been a herculean job for those who jumped in to clean the oil and sludge. They are reported to have nearly completed it on the beaches around Chennai but for some residual cleaning. By latest estimates, over 187 tonnes of the pollutant has been removed. But how are these being disposed off?

There is a report that the sludge is being buried in the neighbouring villages. Seven pits are reported to have been found at Kuppam and Bharathinagar villages. This is highly dangerous for the health of the local villagers.

The volunteers have already suffered short-term immediate effects of oil contamination on their health. They have had irritation of the skin, eye and throat as well as headaches, nausea and vomiting. But what about the long-term effects of the haphazard cleaning operation? A fact-finding team has found out that lacking protective measures, these valiant people were exposed to benzene, toluene, xylene and other harmful and carcinogenic chemicals. There are also nine heavy metals in that oil like zinc, lead and arsenic which are not even bio-degradable.

Will the perpetrators of this gigantic crime be punished? The entire issue is currently before the National Green Tribunal (NGT). How long NGT will take to reach a verdict is anyone’s guess. Will there be exemplary punishment for the polluters, adequate compensation to the affected and proper assessment of environmental damages? Will the guilty ones be indentified and punished?  These questions are yet to be answered.

To recall the onset of the disaster that took place on January 28. A ship, Maple, offloaded LPG at Ennore port (currently called Kamarajar Port) and was on its way out. Meanwhile, another ship Dawn Kanchipuram, with 21141 tonnes of toxic heavy furnace oil, was coming in. The two ships collided and oil gushed out from Dawn Kanchipuram.

Nobody knows how the collision happened and initially there was an attempt to hide the fact by the authorities. For two days, there was practically a blackout of news until the oil slick reached the shores. But who is responsible for the disaster that followed after that? Again, there are no clear cut answers. This is where our wonderful system of multiplicity of authorities comes into play.

The Maple is owned by a British company while Dawn Kanchipuram is owned by an Indian company based in Gurgaon. The captain of Dawn Kanchipuram has already blamed the port authorities for the accident and the disaster! The blame game is on.

Besides the question as to who is responsible for the accident, another big question is: Was Kamarajar Port Limited (KPL), responsible for delaying the disaster mitigation operations, or is it the Central Government, or the State Government? What about the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) and where does it figure? The answers are not clear. What is even worse is that the KPL first denied that anything had happened at all!

The denial by the port authorities was surely a criminal act and a betrayal to the nation by the men in authority, for it not only showed gross dereliction of duty but also utter callousness to the environment and human safety.

Former Union Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan in an article in The Hindu (23 Feb) has pointed out: “By the time the Coast Guard was informed much later in the morning, great damage had already been done. The National Oil Spill-Disaster Contingency Plan (NOS-DCP) was sanctioned in 1993, drafted in 1995 and adopted in 1996. In the two decades since then, the plan has routinely been updated and revised to reflect the latest in international safety and regulatory standards. Evidently, the only thing it reflects is a complete failure in action”.

She also charged: “The Indian Coast Guard has been demanding, for over 20 years now a State contingency plan from States. This was reiterated as recently as August 2016 in the 21st annual meeting of the NOS-DCP and during the most recent meetings of the State Coastal Zone Management Authority. Despite this, Tamil Nadu has not furnished such a plan. For the past three years, the Tamil Nadu Maritime Board has been working on a draft for the plan. The State now needs to tell its people why a local contingency plan has not been put in place. The regulatory deficit is so glaring that no probe is required to prove it”.

Charges and denials apart, the disaster has focussed on the abounding criminal negligence on the part of our bureaucracy and governance besides the men involved directly for the accident. The state of Tamilnadu has been more concerned with the electoral politics of winning power than in mitigating people’s miseries and environmental protection.