Industrial survey statistics tell you that more than one-hird — 36.3 per cent — of the total value added by to the raw materials through manufacture in the factory sector of the country comes from Maharashtra (23.66 per cent) and Gujarat (12.64 per cent). Easily, the two most industrialised states of India. Governments of both the states claim they have created immense prosperity in the region. But statistics do not tell you the real story of thousands of workers and farmers. Aniruddha Mohanty is one of them.

Drive down the Mumbai-Pune highway and you will witness the horrible truth of industrialization. Hundreds of industrial units dealing with chemicals and fertilizers dump their sludge along the roadside. Chimneys emit gases that make breathing difficult. ?Industrial units never stop polluting, and people cannot stop working for them. So, it is a treadmill that ends only with a painful death,? says Rajesh Panicker, an industrial worker of Panvel in Maharashtra.

A few hours of travelling northwards of Mumbai will take you to the Vapi Industrial Estate of southern Gujarat. At Kolak village, about 15 km away from the estate, you will get statistics of a very different kind. ?Sixty people have died of cancer in the village in the past 10 years, while 20 others are fighting a losing battle,? says Ganpat B Tandel, former sarpanch (head) of the village council, who has been vehemently opposing pollution of the Kolak river by the industrial estate. Nearly 20 years ago, cancer cases were not so rampant. But factories of the estate, which produce pesticides, agrochemicals, organochlorines dyes and dye intermediates, have been dumping untreated effluents in the river. Most residents of the village are fisherfolk who eat fish from the river.

As per a Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) action plan for Vapi, factories cannot dump effluent in the rivulet Bhil Khadi but have to send it to a common effluent treatment plant (CETP). ?But hundreds of industrial units do not treat their wastes as per the inlet parameters of the CEPT, and are releasing untreated effluents into the Bhil Khadi. It ultimately meets and pollutes the Kolak river and the sea."

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