Environmental Law Strike 1

Courts are not just the purview of stuffy men and women billing obscene fees in order to pervert the course of justice. The judiciary is not just a tool of oppression for the wealthy and powerful. Under the right circumstances, courts really are a place where argument and logic can win out over money and influence, where the strength of an advocate’s reason and rhetoric can overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles and where justice can be won for the poor and disadvantaged.

 

India is blessed with over 200 separate pieces of environmental legislation, none of which are enforced to the fullest extent of the law. However, the Executive is, as a whole, apathetic, corrupt, hopelessly bureaucratic and beholden to industrial and commercial interests.

 

Fortunately the Supreme Court of India has been committed to holding the Executive to task and forcing them to enforce the law. In response to hundreds of Public Interest Litigations (PILs), the Supreme Court of India has ordered the closure or relocation of hundreds of thousands of industries, ordered the instillation of all manner of pollution controls and held individuals, organizations, corporations and the government responsible for the damage they have caused the environment.

 

For example, consider a successful environmental lawsuit that forced the politicians to start doing some good.

 

Buses and auto rickshaws all have ‘CNG’ stenciled prominently on their exterior. Since Delhi traffic is still wretched, commuters have a long time to look and ponder the meaning and origin of those three letters. The meaning is that the vehicle in question runs on compressed natural gas, a much cleaner, lower carbon fuel than petrol or diesel. The origin of this shift was the Indian Supreme Court, who at the behest of a petition by M. C. Mehta, one of India’s most prominent environmental lawyer’s, ordered that CNG be adopted.

 

In 1985, Mehta began his litigation to limit vehicular emission. At that point, it was unclear what the eventual outcome of the case would be. What was abundantly clear was that New Delhi was suffering from horrendous pollution. Cars running on diesel or leaded petrol produced a thick cloud of smog and haze that made lives miserable and short. All of this was in violation of Indian’s constitutional right to a clean environment, enshrined in Article 21  and the Executive’s duty under the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act of 1981, the Environment (Protection) Act of 1986 and Motor Vehicles Act of 1939 to ease pollution.

 

Like all changes environmental policy, the case was complicated and took years to litigate. On July 28, 1998, the Supreme Court issued its ruling. The bus, autorickshaws and taxis would all be converted to CNG by the end of March, 2001 and leaded petrol would be phased out.

 

It was a clear win and that should have been the end of the matter, but here in India, a court ruling is just the beginning of another fight. The Delhi Administration was using the matter’s complications to delay, perhaps inevitably, any implementation of the Court’s order. The Court did not take kindly to this type of delay and said, on 4 April 2001:

 

“…Government of Delhi’s response has been extremely tardy, to say the least. No serious attention was paid to the order of the Court by the Administration and it appears that even private operators got encouraged by this tardy response of the State Administration and they also did not take appropriate steps to comply with the order of the Court dated 28^th July, 1998.”

 

If you please excuse the brief aside, Ajay Makan and Sheila Dikshit were two of the politicians admonished by the Supreme Court for failing to abide by the Court’s order to implement CNG. In this past election season, both campaigned on the issue, proving once again that truth and election politics have, at best, a tangential relationship.

 

In this case, as in many others, litigation was a viable alternative to grassroots mobilization. One man, using the judicial system already in place, can effect change grossly out of proportion to his size. Here, a decent, but surprisingly un-footnoted paper, from Jawaharlal Nehru University and Resources for the Future, makes a point that this was not a grass-roots movement. NGOs, mine included, were acting for the public and in the public’s name, but were never elected and never existed before any groundswell of opinion. Mehta accomplished his objective, cleaner air, without having to mount a grassroots campaign. He just concentrated on getting the Court to do exactly what they get paid to do: enforce the Indian Constitution and laws.

 

It only takes one voice to persuade a court. It does not have to be a very loud voice. Sometimes the courts can produce justice. And the courts can have a very loud voice indeed.

 

Environmentalists have many tools at their disposal and need to use every one. We need to do what works, unless it jeopardizes the very thing we are fighting for or our basic principles. So, unless wearing a suit is against your moral code, head to the tailors, because it might come in handy.