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A just punishment

THE ONLY DETERRENT to future commercial vandalism of the kind perpetrated on the rock surfaces overlooking the Kulu-Manali-Rohtang highway of Himachal Pradesh is the imposition of punitive fines on the firms which are guilty of defacing the geological formations as well as the state agencies which have turned a blind eye to such offences. The Supreme Court has followed up the imposition of a Rs. one-crore penalty on the State Government, with a Rs. 2-crore fine on the offending firms. These fines will finance a Rs. 5-crore corpus that will be used to pay for restoration of the rocks which were defaced. The largest penalties have been imposed on prominent companies such as Coca-Cola, the Birlas and Pepsi. The Court has also served notice that it is considering imposing additional punitive fines on the offenders. Moreover, it has decided to take things further and ask other State Governments to respond about similar instances. As travellers by road and rail are aware, vandalism of rock surfaces takes place all over the country, though nowhere is it as widespread as in Himachal Pradesh. Unfortunately, tourists too do not think twice about defacing our natural and man-made heritage by inscribing personal messages.

The Court must be commended for the remarkable speed with which it has handed down a ruling in the rock case. However, it was fortuitous that the desecration — which is what the crime amounts to since these are formations that took shape millions of years ago — came up before the Court. If it was not for the media which reported the vandalism, it would not have come to the notice of the Judiciary. The response of the offenders to the initial reports of the defacement of the rocks was astonishing. State Government officials initially claimed that they did not know what offence had been committed and later tried to defend themselves by arguing that they had limited manpower to prevent such acts of commercial vandalism. The response of the companies was no less shocking. One of the cola companies tried to wash its hands of the matter by claiming that it was an act committed by its franchisee bottlers. A couple of other companies went further and tried to erase their advertisements by causing further damage to the rocks. The two multinationals that produce coloured sugar water that is harmful to health and which involves marketing expenditure that runs into hundreds of crores every year were not the only ones guilty of defacing the rocks in Himachal Pradesh. Other companies, large and small, have branded the Rohtang Pass. But Coca-Cola and Pepsi stand out, not because of their profile and the number of their advertisements on the rocks, but because they would not have dared commit such offences in their home countries. The two companies, whose re-entry into India was seen at different points of time as test cases of the Government's welcome to foreign investors, are increasingly showing themselves in a poor light. Coca-Cola lobbied hard since 1997 to avoid meeting its commitment to divest 49 per cent of its equity by June 2002. It has now succeeded in persuading the Industry Ministry to accept its proposal for divestment by private placement by early 2003. Besides, both companies, which have now entered the bottled water business, stand accused in a number of rural areas of monopolising sources of drinking water which is causing considerable hardship to the local population.

There are bound to be some questions about the alacrity with which the Supreme Court has acted on the rock case. This is not the only or the most important environment issue that demands judicial attention. But the Court has proved itself in other "green" matters; the criticism usually has been that it has been hyperactive in this area. In any case, the Court cannot address all environment problems. It can only hope to goad the Executive into action by its intervention in a few high-profile cases.

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