- Residents of Rupaheli Kala village in Rajasthan, allege pollution from a nearby factory is causing health and other problems.
- The factory denies violating any norms and the Rajasthan Pollution Control Board has confirmed that emissions are within prescribed limits.
- Many of the residents have left the village and others have announced to boycott the 2023 assembly elections if they don’t get a solution to their decade-old problem.
Fifty-two-year-old Subhash Vaishnav lives in Gulabpura town in the Bhilwara district of Rajasthan. He wakes up at 5 a.m. every day, and after finishing his daily chores at home, he travels 20 kilometres to open his shop, which is located in his ancestral village, Rupaheli Kala. Four years ago, Vaishnav decided to move to Gulabpura, leaving behind his 30-year-old electrical shop and his ancestral house in Rupaheli. Now, every morning he travels to his shop and returns to his rented home at the end of the day. He says it costs him more, but it is necessary to protect the health of his family members.
“I developed a severe infection and breathing problem. My children started facing difficulty in breathing. Although it is a burden on my pocket, my family is safe now,” said Vaishnav while talking to Mongabay-India.
Many residents of Rupaheli Kala village moved out after a factory came up nearby and the air pollution from it was impacting the residents, he says.
The factory, Shantol Green (India) Pvt Ltd, was established here in 2012. It produces hi-green carbon from crumb rubber and uses a continuous tyre pyrolysis, a thermal decomposition process, to recycle crumb rubber and tyre chips. The factory recycles tyre waste into low sulphur industrial fuel oil, carbon black, and steel scraps. In the process, pryrogas, black carbon, and oil mix water are produced as by-products.
Rupaheli Kala’s residents complain that the air pollution has been so severe that the majority of the households now have one asthma or skin disease patient. Around 30 families have moved to the Shashtri Nagar area of Gulabpura town which is now colloquially called Chhoti Rupaheli (small Rupaheli).
A continuous resistance
People living near the factory have held multiple organised protests. The first public agitation took place in 2015 when people of Rupaheli Kala shut down local markets in the village and gathered near the national highway, shouting slogans against the factory owner and district administration. The people claim that they have organised a public agitation at least twice since then and have gone to the Sub Divisional Magistrate (SDM) office every six months with their demand to shut down the factory.
In addition to Rupaheli Kala, other villages around the factory such as Aapliyas, Nangaji-ka-Khera and Chatarpura face the same problem. But Rupaheli Kala, is the most affected village. Recently, all four village panchayats gave a letter to the SDM office at Gulabpura on December 22, 2022, and demanded to shut down the factory. They also announced a boycott of the assembly election scheduled at the end of 2023.
MLA from Asind, Jabbar Singh Sankhala, who represents the people of Rupaheli Kala, has also raised this issue in the state assembly several times since 2021. For example, on March 28, 2022, he asked the government to either shut the factory or find out a permanent solution to the emissions.
While talking to Mongabay-India, Sankhala, who is an MLA from the Bharatiya Janta Party, which is in opposition in the state, said, “I have been hearing their plight and raising the issue in the assembly. The environment is polluted, affecting not only the health of the villagers but also the farmlands. People are forced to migrate. The government must shut down the factory, or we will keep protesting.”
Health problems occurring but need investigation
Ramchandra Purohit, a farmer of Aapliyas village, told Mongabay-India that the factory smoke is at its peak in the early morning, from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. “Sometimes the air gets completely black. The smell of the smoke reaches even the farthest corner of the villages,” he claimed.
“The smoke is high between 1 am to 5 am while we are asleep. But the smell of the smoke is so strong that it makes it difficult to breathe. We have shut all the doors and windows, but still, it reaches inside our houses,” said Ranjeet Singh Rathore, a 70-year-old resident.
Fearing the rise of health-related challenges, people who can afford it, are moving out of the village, primarily to nearby towns of Bhilwara, Gulabpura, and Bijainagar. Some people have built their houses outside the villages, narrate the local people.
“There are some 1500 families living in the village currently, while more than 200 families have already left since this factory started functioning. Every year families migrate to other towns after being fed up with this factory. Our village temple priests and old people used to organise a ‘Ram-Dhuni’ every morning while chanting religious bhajans (religious songs), but they stopped due to air pollution. If the government does not listen, we will boycott elections,” complains Bhawani Singh Rathore, sarpanch of the village.
Farms near the factory have black dust covering the field. Scratch the surface of the plants shows up the carbon accumulated on them. Ghisaji Jat (70) and Ramnath Jat (60), two brothers and owners of land at Rupaheli Kala village, dug up the black dust covered soil to reveal the brown, the actual colour of the soil.
“Since this factory started, production has gone down by more than half. Due to the impact of carbon, many plants stopped bearing fruits, and I had to cut off all those trees in 2016,” claims Ghisaji, who grows pomegranate on his 25-acre land.
Sachin Panwar, a member of a Gurugram-based non-profit, Society for Indoor Environment, says that it is possible to have health problems by consuming poisonous gas. Emissions from burning plastics and rubber are complex toxic compounds and may include many phenols and benzenes apart from SOx and NOx. Long-term exposure to a high level of air pollutants has been directly linked to cancer by many studies worldwide.
Arun Sharma, Director of ICMR, National Institute for Implementation Research on Non-Communicable Diseases, Jodhpur, commented on the allegations made by the villagers. He said, “It is a high possibility for people to have asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) if they come in contact with any form of smoke continuously for some time. But these issues should be scientifically investigated before reaching any conclusion. Cancer depends on whether the smoke contains carcinogenic agents that can cause the deadly disease. It needs investigation with proper equipment.”
Factory denies allegations, clean chit from pollution board
However, the factory denies these allegations. In an email reply to Mongabay-India, Nirmal Sutaria, Director, Shantol Green (India) Pvt Ltd, refuted the claims made by the villagers.
He replied, “Allegations are wrong and mal-intended. Many employees have been working in factory premises for the last ten years, and not even a single case of alleged health problems has surfaced. We are doing their regular health check as a good practice. The village is away from the factory; on the contrary, our employees and their quarters are on factory premises. They are spending 24 hours in our premises and never had any issues as alleged by these villagers.”
Describing the process of the factory, Sutaria said that they manufacture recovered carbon black and fuel oil from crumb rubber and sodium silicate from soda ash. “It is a closed-loop process plant where the material is processed without exposure to the open environment. It is a continuous pyrolysis process, which NGT and CPCB already recognise. In continuous process, the plant works without stopping and the process is fully atomized with all safety equipments,” replied Nirmal in the email.
He added, “We have NOC (no objection certificate) from the Pollution Control Board and a factory license also.”
The official response to Mongabay India from the Rajasthan State Pollution Control Board (RSPCB), confirms Sutaria’s claim. It says that the unit has installed adequate air pollution control measures. The tyre pyrolysis process occurs in the absence of oxygen in a completely closed “retort reactor” below 750 degrees Celsius temperature. Flue gases are treated through wet scrubbers before discharging it into the atmosphere through a chimney 30 metres in height.
In response to Mongabay-India queries, the RPCB says that it has conducted inspections twice in 2022, in May and December, and found the emission within the prescribed limit.
Bhairon Singh Kanawat, a senior nursing staff at the local Primary Health Centre and a resident of Rupaheli Kala village refutes the factory’s claim about employees not getting affected. Posted at the centre for the last 27 years, he said that factory workers also suffer from various diseases like asthma and skin allergies. “These workers are usually from Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh tribal areas. They usually work here for a year as their health starts deteriorating more afterward. They come to the clinic frequently to get medicines.”
On March 16, 2023, in reply to the question put by MLA Jabbar Singh Sankhla, minister of climate and environment Hemaram Choudhary said that from time to time, Rajasthan State Pollution Control Board has tested the pollution level in the village, and everything was found within the limit.
Following the demand by the MLA Jabbar Singh Sankhla on March 16, the minister Hemaram Choudhary said in the assembly, “I will soon order the pollution control department officials to again go to the village and investigate the complaints made by the MLA and villagers. If the pollution level is found to be higher than the prescribed limit, we will take action against the factory and shut it down.”
Banner image: Women of Rupaheli Kala village show the impact of pollution due to the factory nearby. Photo by Parul Kulshrestha.
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