Institution Building

The idea of India importing seven million tonnes of dung from Holland at $420 million is preposterous. The developed countries have, of late, resorted to dubious measures to dispose off hazardous and environmentally unacceptable waste as well as non biodegradable items like plastics because they have realised the magnitude of the irreparable damage likely to be caused to their environment by such unwanted material continuing to remain in their country. They resort to all tactics including delivery them free of charge, dumping ship-loads on unguarded shores of developing countries and making false declaration of products. Such unethical practices create formidable environmental and health problems in the recipient countries which are not equipped to handle such onslaughts.

The value of dung as a biomass is tremendous and the Dutch are not foolish to export such value material unless they are convinced that the best method to save their environment is to dispose off this highly hazardous dung by duming on poor countries. Behind the attractive labels like “envirodung”, lie and effort to defraud the poor Third World countries.

The dung imported in wet condition would create insurmountable problems. Vast areas in Gujarat will become uninhabitable. Wet dung would proliferate a thousand times mosquitoes and other injurious insects which already inflict considerable suffering on living beings. Leaching into the soil would cause great harm affecting our underground acquifers adversely.

If the idea is the of drying the dung or subsequent marketing, it will have lost its essential value as the micro-organisms, so essential for turning the soil into a living medium, will have vanished in the process.

Almost anything can be legitimised in the name of the almighty dollar in today’s context. Incidentally, there is no mention of dung as a tradeable commodity, even in the final text of the Uruguway Round of GATT. Therefore, an entirely new foreign trade regime and duty structure will have to be worked out for this.

It would also be instructive to find out how much of Third World land is being used up, directly or indirectly for First World purposes. To discover what we are losing in terms of total nutrients, in the process – or, in other words, a nutrient – transfer analysis needs to be undertaken. Nutrient transfer analysis will provide a clearer picture of the extent to which we are mining our soil and exporting our soil fertility. The prospects of once again getting critical in terms of dependencies on the basic food grains front, as a result, is just too frightening to even contemplate here.

In Netherlands, the increasing acidity of surface waters, due to free dispersion of dung, has become such a major issue that it has invited serious governmental structures and regulation for the handling and disposal of dung. Currently, European laws do not permit open dumping into the seas. Till date, Africa was the favourite dumping ground, but since then the Africans have become wiser and refused to allow this practice, India has becomes the hot favourite.

Korah Mathen

The greatest danger lies in the introduction of unwanted dangerous pests in our country. The imported dung will definitely bring in new varieties of such pests, which will be difficult to control because the predators are absent in India. Moreover, the possibility of indestructible mutations of these pests evolving and entering new territories has become a real threat.

Billions of dollars are spent every year in the USA to guard against invasion of pests. However, the experience is that no pest can ever be eradicated totally because of the immense potential of the original pest developing more dangerous and indestructible mutants.

The need for augmenting the biomass quantum can never be over emphasised. Indian cities generate over 100000 tonnes of biodegradable organic city waste every day and this can be turned into an ideal soil conditioner through the action of earthworms and micro-organisms, what is popularly known as vermiculture. Instead of importing the dung from Holland and aggravating the problems in India, it would be more appropriate to turn the city waste into soil conditioners through vermiculture.