JOIN USThe ever-growing mechanisation, electrification, chemicalisation and sophistication have made industrial jobs more and more complex and intricate leading to increased dangers to human life in industries through accidents and injuries. In fact, the same underline the need for and importance of industrial safety.
India has continued to witness a series of industrial disasters during the last 33 years after the Bhopal gas tragedy, including a chlorine gas leak in Vadodara (2002) that affected 250 people, a toluene fire at Mohali (2003), a chlorine gas leak at Jamshedpur (2008), and boiler furnace explosion at the Unchahar power plant (2017) which killed 43, affecting more than 80 people.
None of these industrial disasters were of as gigantic a magnitude as the Bhopal one because of early intervention, but fear remains whether India has become fully prepared to take on a Bhopal-like situation.
While the Bhopal tragedy forced corporate India to take many preventive measures, including undertaking mock-drills and use of better technology, the government too enforced new legislation to deal with its aftermath.
In an effort towards the 'abolition of Inspector Raj', many state governments imposed restrictions on inspection by inspectors, leading to the constitution of inspection teams which could visit any factory once in a year only after getting permission from a competent authority. As a result of this, the number of factory inspections reduced, and in turn, the accident rate increased.
Abolishing 'inspector raj' might seem good on paper, but it's not practical. Liberalising certain rules might be better than their complete annulment. The Factories Act is a social enactment and the officers through whom the provisions are enforced are experts in various fields. So, how can they assess the causes to control any mishap in a factory by sitting in their offices?
Many state governments also set up their own expensive and sophisticated Industrial Hygiene Laboratory, possessing equipment such as noisometer, audiometer, mercury analyser, personal sampler, etc to monitor health parameters at workplace. In some states, these labs have not functioned even for a single day, as the government failed to sanction staff to run it, leaving the costly equipment to simply lie locked up in the store.
The Factory Inspectorate finds it difficult to enforce statutory legislations because of manpower shortage. The state government, too, has spared no efforts to lower the morale of this staff. This has reduced the Factories Act to a mere 'paper tiger', whose provisions are being flouted with impunity by powerful industrialists.
Even as our prime minister talks about the 'Make in India' programme, the government, in order to improve the business climate, wants to give fast-track clearances without looking at its impact on the industrial safety.
The World Bank along with International Finance Corporation, which comes out with the Doing Business Report is demanding simplification of labour regulations and improvement in business climate, and the Government of India has been toeing this line.
The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion has identified about 400 plus reforms, some of which have an adverse impact on industrial safety. The government, as part of these reforms, is dismantling the inspection system which overlooked regulations to a self-certification system or third-party certification. Abolishing inspection will give the capitalists a free pass to function as they please.
The labour ministry has notified a compliance regime based on self-certification for startups. In liberalising labour inspection systems, India has violated the ILO Labour Inspection Convention which it has ratified. The convention states that the establishment should be inspected as often as possible and at any time even without prior intimation.
Liberal inspection systems and self-certification are an invitation to more disasters. The recent disaster at Unchahar should be an eye-opener to the fact that business left to its own will not be able to deliver on its social obligations. It needs a great deal of transparency and checks and balances to deliver the social good. Ease of doing business need not mean ease of diluting labour safety.
Thirty-three years after the Bhopal disaster, it is pertinent to ask: is India any better prepared today to deal with a similar tragedy? The question acquires greater urgency amid a robust move by the government to promote manufacturing by foreign companies in India.
(The writer is former Deputy Director of Boilers, Government of Karnataka)