Devil’s Playground

By Prabhat Sharan

The Verdict Weekly

A random epidemiological survey carried out last month jointly by the state government’s health and agriculture department, revealed that 2,210 victims of Endosulfan poisoning in Kasargod, with nearly 200 deaths due to cancer in last eight years

By Prabhat Sharan

The Northern border of God’s Own Country - Kerala has become a Devil’s Playground with sprinklers and aircraft spewing slow fuse painful death amongst Kasargod district natives. The death spit that has transmogrified the green ribbons of Kerala into killing fields is the most-banned pesticide in the world-Endosulfan. Ironically, though banned by the state government of Kerala in 2005, following protests, the Union government continues with its deranged experiment, keeping its thumb on the fast-forward button. Quoting orchestrated, quarter-baked callous and indifferent researchers, the Union government has once again appointed a committee into the matter. The result: Coffers of manufacturers continue to over flow and so do the numbers of coffins in the districrt.

For over a decade, Kasargod has been witnessing a silent genocide through the spraying of Endosulfan on its fields. Though a popular pesticide amongst farmers growing cashew crops, the toxicity of the chemical leads not just in a slow painful fatality and deformation amongst adults, but the exposure attacks neo-natal infants by mutating the growth pattern.

Countless researches, surveys and plethora of reports have indexed the adverse effect of the usage of Endosulfan - children born with stag-horn limbs, scale-like skin, protruding tongues, eye deformities, extra fingers and toes, cleft palates, club feet and harelips; of those suffering from hydrocephalus (progressive enlargement of the head, convulsion and mental disability), dermatitis, renal diseases, respiratory disorders, cognitive and emotional deterioration, memory loss, impairment of visual-motor coordination, blindness, cerebral palsy, epilepsy and infertility; of young girls and boys who have undergone multiple surgery and artificial limb modification; of young mothers who have opted for repeated abortions instead of giving birth to headless/limbless/deformed children; of young men and women who look like children; and, of children who look like stunted grandparents.”

However, despite such tragic outcome, the Indian government has refused to concede to the wails and cries of people. Ironically, even though the neighbouring countries, looked down upon as less advanced, have banned the usage of Endosulfan long, long time back, India continues to be the world’s largest consumer, thanks to the Union government’s patronage to the manufacturing companies.

Kerala agriculture minister Mullakkara Ratnakaran conceding the deathly effects, pleads helplessness in the face of smugglers who carry out a thriving clandestine intra-state trade of Endosulfan. “The Kerala government banned its usage in 2005, but then it is readily available in the neighbouring states,” he stated to newspersons.

Prof M A Rehman, an anti-Endosulfan activist, talking to THE VERDICT, from Kasargod shrugs away the dubious stance of Kerala politicians. Pointing out that after the October 15th meeting in Stockholm of Persistent Organinc Pollutants Review Committee, wherein scores of countries acquiesced to Endosulfan ban demand, Union Minister for Agriculture K V Thomas (hailing from Kerala) had the temerity to root for the pesticide usage. Of course, Thomas was just parroting the Indian stand at Stockholm.

But then Thomas is not alone in this dubious dance. According to Rehman, Kerala government is also playing a dubious game in the entire issue. “Since it is well documented that hundreds of people have died due to Endosulfan exposure and thousands are suffering with slow fulminating serious latent ailments but Kerala government has come out with token payment for victims, terming it as ‘relief rehabilitation package”.

“First of all the very payment is so less that it is not worth mentioning and then this verbal jugglery, the term “compensation,’ is not used because that will drill the nail straight into government lies.”

Endosulfan Action Committee (EAC,) a conglomeration of organisations working for the relief and rehabilitation of the affected people, in its study state that there are at least “8,000 to 9,000 victims still suffering the debilitating effects of the aerial spraying of Endosulfan done mainly in the three cashew plantations (total area 4,715 hectares) owned by the Plantation Corporation of Kerala (PCK) until 2002, when a ban was first imposed by the Kerala High Court.”

Today in Kasargod district, PCK is looked down upon as a cannibal beast out to suck the blood of villagers. Though the State Agriculture Department started cashew trees in 1963 in the region, it was in 1978 that PCK started taking over the plantations.

In 1980s, PCK started its death spray thrice a year, in the cashew plantation hills. For the state-run company it was cost-effective annihilation of tea mosquito bug which causes yield losses in cashew plantations- a major forex churner for the government.

And since then Kasargod villagers who initially watched the jaw-dropping spraying of chemical by the helicopters never realized the slow-death that was enveloping their skin, water ways, food and even fuel wood.

According to EAC reports, “the PCK ignored stipulations that such aerial spraying of pesticides should be done very close to the canopy level or that the same pesticide should not be used continuously for such a long time in an area. Copters often flew much above the stipulated three metres above the cashew trees to avoid power lines and thus caused the spread of the highly toxic chemical to a wider area. The water and soil in the villages were contaminated severely. Even the possibility of the bugs acquiring immunity because of long-term exposure was not considered by the PCK.”

Several news reports documented the warning signals - dead birds, frogs and fish in the streams and rivulets; cattle, and wildlife found dead in the plantation areas; and local people experiencing acute endosulfan toxicity symptoms after the spraying sorties over their villages. But the Centre as well as the State as well as PCK ignored and shrugged it off as ‘alarmist studies.’

By late 1990s studies by independent organizations started revealing residues of Endosulfans in blood and breast milk of villagers and its linkages with cancer, and reproductive and nervous system disorders along with psychiatric problems and visual impairment amongst children.

A public outcry and plethora of court cases forced the government to impose a temporary ban which within a year was adjusted to just aerial spraying. However, in August 2002, the Kerala High Court ordered an interim ban on the usage following following an epidemiological study conducted by the National Institute of Occupational Health (NIOH,) Ahmedabad, linking the eruption of symptoms plaguing the people in the region to the use of the pesticide. The interim ban sparked of studies and committees by successive governments in a bid to get a green signal for Endosulfan usage. The question of a total ban on Endosulfan in Kerala continues to swing on the pendulum from one end to the other, with government-appointed committees trying to give a clean chit in opposition to the empirical evidence.

Ironically, even as the opposition to Endosulfan usage is growing world-over the morbidity patterns from other districts like Idukki, Wayanad and Palakkad as well as Dakshina Kannada reveals a similar sinister path indicating the increasing usage of the pesticide. This finding is not startling given the clout which Indian pesticide manufacturing cartel wields. India is one of the largest producers of pesticides in the world and continues to be the largest producer and user of Endosulfan, with reportedly over 60 manufacturers and formulators involved in its production and sale. Allegations are rife about the nexus between pesticide manufacturing cartel and government and regulatory bodies.

For example, India’s top three manufacturers - among them the public sector Hindustan Insecticides Ltd. (HIL), Kochi – together produced 9,500 tonnes of Endosulfan between 2007 and 2008, and 5,500 tonnes of it was used domestically, according to one report.

HIL, ironically, is based in the heavily polluted industrial belt on the banks of the Periyar river in central Kerala and is a Government of India enterprise. It is today one of the largest producers of endosulfan in India, manufacturing 1,500 tonnes of endosulfan (technical grade) and 1,900 kilolitres of liquid Endosulfan a year, both for use within India (not in Kerala) and for export. But there are equally prominent manufacturers of “crop protection chemicals” in the private sector too, such as Excel Industries Ltd, EID Parry and Coromandel Fertilizers Ltd. Interestingly, even as the Indian government has pulled out all the stops to block the international conventions seeking to ban Endosulfan, an MNC like Bayer has gone ahead and stopped its production this year.

The Endosulfan victims of Kasargod are once more at epicentre of a chemical quake ripping through their lives. And people from Kasargod are hoping in words of Dr Meriel Watts, co-ordinator, Pesticide Action Network Aotearoa New Zealand, “We can only hope that by then the Indian government will have come to realise the enormous embarrassment to it, that is being caused by its delegate, and by its conflict of Interest: the Indian government owns Hindustan Industries, one of the manufacturers of endosulfan. This type of conflict of interest is unheard of in international conventions, and India’s behaviour is threatening to wreck both the conventions."

Factfile

Usage history and ban

ENDOSULFAN HAS been used in agriculture since the early 1950s, but is now banned in over 62 countries, including those in the European Union and, following widespread protests, United States of America too banned its usage due to its high toxicity to humans and other organisms and its quality of persistence in the environment.

Incidentally, the USA ban was announced by its Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on June 7, 2010, with the following words: “The EPA is taking action to end all uses of the insecticide Endosulfan in the United States. Endosulfan, which is used in vegetables, fruits, and cotton, can pose unacceptable neurological and reproductive risks to farm-workers and wildlife and can persist in the environment.”

It is also banned in Sri Lanka and several Asian and West African nations due to confirmed evidence of its acute toxicity, potential for bioaccumulation, and role as an endocrine disruptor.

Effects and Symptoms

Endosulfan is an organochlorine pesticide like the widely banned DDT and Dieldrin. Since they tend to persist in the environment and bio-accumulate in humans and other animals –in liver, kidney and fatty tissues-such pollutants are of concern “because of their long-term subtle effects on hormones, the immune systems and reproduction,” according to a study carried out by UK-based Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF.)

The spraying caused unusually high incidence of central nervous system disorders like cerebral palsy, congenital neurological disorders, cancers, body deformations, reproductive disorders and miscarriages.

Male school children exposed to the pesticide Endosulfan showed delayed sexual maturity, according to a study published in Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP).

Producers: India is by far the largest manufacturer of endosulfan, with the state-owned Hindustan Insecticides Ltd (HIL) and two private companies producting the pesticide. China manufactures small amounts, and Israel also manufacturers an unknown amount. In fact an Israeli company, Makhteshim Agan, has just started manufacturing pesticides in Andhra Pradesh; it is not yet known whether they produce endosulfan or not.

Though China supported India at the last POPs Review Committee meeting, its support may not last as the communist country has a better record of banning highly toxic pesticides.

Prabhat Sharan is a Senior Journalist with interest in social, working class, wild-life conservation, media, philosophical and literary studies. He can be contacted at sharanprabhat@gmail.com