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The Hindu Notes for 3rd October 2018

How not to choose among allies

A sanctions waiver from the U.S. may prove to be a rather hollow victory for India

  • In May 2012, Hillary Clinton, then U.S. Secretary of State, visited Delhi on behalf of the Western countries negotiating the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or the nuclear deal, with Iran, to convince India to cut its oil imports from Iran. In her book Hard Choices, she later recounted her tough battle with the Indian government, as she ran through the reasons India needed to help put pressure on Iran to return to the negotiating table for the six-party talks. Eventually, India agreed to cut its imports by only about 15%. But cumulative global pressure had the desired impact on Iran, where inflation had risen more than 40% and oil exports declined from 2.5 million barrels of crude each day to about 1 million. JCPOA negotiations that followed eventually led to a deal hailed by the United Nations, that had quarterbacked the talks all through.

    • Changed times

  • As U.S. officials have led a series of delegations to New Delhi in the last few months, they have had a similar mission, but with a completely different backdrop. For starters, the sanctions that the U.S. now proposes trying to ensure India adheres to have been placed not in order to forge any deal, but because the Trump administration has walked out of the JCPOA. In this the U.S. has no support from any other country involved in the deal, and the UN has expressed grave misgivings about the decision. The U.S. has given no evidence that Iran in any way violated the terms of the JCPOA — in fact, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s June report concluded that Iran’s stockpile of uranium and heavy water as well as its implementation of additional protocols were “in compliance” with the agreement.
  • Unlike in 2012, the U.S.’s EU allies are now working closely with arch rivals like Russia and China to put a “special payments mechanism”, primarily with a view to supporting trade to Tehran to ensure that the Iranian regime does not walk out of the nuclear deal as well.
  • While the U.S. may succeed in squeezing Iran economically, it is increasingly isolated politically, as was evident at the most recent Financial Action Task Force meet in Paris where the U.S. proposed sanctions on Iran for terror funding. Even so, the U.S. has continued on its unilateral path, without a care for the very “rules-based international order” that it so often invokes.
  • For India, the impact of the American sanctions plan would be manifold, regardless of the waiver. To begin with, there is the shock that sanctions would deal to the oil import bill, given that Iran is India’s third largest supplier. There are not only rising costs of oil to contend with, but also the added cost of having to recalibrate Indian fuel refineries that are used to process Iran’s special crude. The second impact would be on India’s investment in the Chabahar port, which would face both direct and indirect sanctions: as shippers, port suppliers and trading companies refuse to participate in the project. When India had opened the tenders for cranes for heavy lifting at Chabahar a few years ago, for example, it found no takers, and eventually was forced to award the contract to ZPMC in 2017. This problem will only get more acute as sanctions kick in, threatening India’s $500 million investment in the port and its $2 billion plan for a railway line to circumvent Pakistan and reach Afghanistan and Central Asian trade lines. Finally, there would be the impact on India’s regional security situation, which could see the Iranian-Arab divide deepen, Afghanistan’s choices dwindle and an angry Iran pitched closer into the China-Russia corner.
  • Most worrying for India is that all of the above outcomes will follow regardless of whether the U.S. gives India a waiver for sanctions or not. While the ‘waiver’ list, which U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has hinted will be issued on Monday, would stave off penalties and allow India to continue some of its trade with Iran, it will not restore the pre-2018 situation. The U.S. has said that it is only issuing temporary waivers, and the waivers are strictly linked to the condition that countries receiving them keep cutting down their purchases from Iran. Along with the JCPOA-linked sanctions, India continues to face sanctions linked to the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, which puts more strictures on dealings with Iran, Russia and North Korea. The waiver is therefore no magic wand to be wished for, as it only pushes the problems for India down the road.

    • Iran’s options

  • Meanwhile, little thought has been given to Iran’s reaction if India keeps submitting to the U.S.’s sanctions regime against it. With trade levels receding, the Iranian regime may well lose interest in the Chabahar option, and focus on its main port of Bandar Abbas instead, derailing India’s grander plans for regional connectivity. There is also the worry that all of India’s sacrifices may come to naught, as Mr. Trump may well use the pressure placed on Iran to his own advantage, and possibly open talks with Tehran at a later date. Just months after the U.S. demanded that India close its mission in Pyongyang, Mr. Trump was planning a summit in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
  • Given the heavy costs and in the complete absence of any benefits, it is surprising that the Modi government has not been more vocal in its protest against the U.S.’s actions. In May this year, when asked, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had said very emphatically that India adheres only to “UN sanctions, not unilateral ones”. Yet, all the government’s moves have been to the contrary, as American delegations have been allowed to come to Delhi and issue dire warnings, of the kind Nikki Haley, the U.S.’s envoy to the UN, did. Meanwhile, Indian officials have made a beeline for Washington to discuss the reasons why India deserves a waiver, from both Iran and CAATSA sanctions. According to these officials, the U.S. has been apprised of India’s energy requirement compulsions, and of the cut of about 35-50% in its oil purchases from Iran. On the CAATSA front, the U.S. has also been assured of a significant reduction in Indian defence dependence on Russia, and that no weapons procured, like the recently purchased S-400 missile system, would be used against American interests.
  • As a result, if the U.S. presses on with sanctions, it would be a marked failure of Indian diplomacy. And if the waiver does come through, as is indicated, it will be no victory, but signify an abject submission to the sanctions themselves. With no gains in the offing from a policy of ‘pragmatism’, India may have been better off sticking to principle instead.
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    • A judgment and its aftermath

    Protests in Pakistan over Asia Bibi’s acquittal underline the urgent need to reassure religious minorities

  • The reaction by extremist Islamist groups to the Pakistan Supreme Court’s decision to acquit a poor Christian woman, eight years after she was charged with blasphemy, highlights the country’s deeper problem.
  • After years of religious rhetoric as an essential element of national politics and statecraft, Pakistan often finds itself at the mercy of hardline clerics and unscrupulous individuals seeking to exploit religion for political gain. The result is not only loss of individual liberty but also a state of permanent crisis.

    • Inherent weaknesses

  • The Asia Bibi case has all the elements of Pakistan’s inherent weaknesses. First, the law allowed neighbours with a grudge to persecute Asia Noreen, usually referred to as Asia Bibi, and now, even belated judicial recognition of her innocence seems unacceptable to those rioting in the streets. They want to kill someone against whom the Supreme Court found no credible evidence and are threatening apex court judges as well senior military commanders while trying to force Pakistan to a halt.
  • Ms. Bibi, an illiterate berry picker, was convicted of defiling the name of the Prophet Mohammed. She was accused by her Muslim neighbours who objected to her drinking water from the same glass as them because she was Christian. Under Pakistan’s blasphemy law, her alleged comment is punishable by death. In 2010, Ms. Bibi, at age 39, was sentenced to hang, but her final appeal remained pending until the Supreme Court decision on Wednesday.
  • In intervening years, Ms. Bibi’s case became an international cause célèbre. Earlier this year, Rome’s Colosseum was lit in red in support of persecuted Christians, including her, and Pope Francis described Ms. Bibi, alongside a Nigerian woman who was captured by Boko Haram, as “martyrs”.
  • The Pope’s attention to Ms. Bibi’s case paralleled efforts by the European Union’s Special Envoy for the promotion of the freedom of religion or belief to secure her release by making it a condition for continued European market access for Pakistani products. The Pakistani government was informed that the future of Generalised System/Scheme of Preferences (GSP) status to Pakistan, which allows Pakistan duty-free access to EU markets, would be directly linked to the peaceful resolution of the blasphemy case.
  • The reason the Supreme Court heard Ms. Bibi’s appeal and acknowledged in its judgment what had been widely known — that witnesses against her had either retracted their testimony or contradicted each other — can be found in Pakistan’s severe financial woes. Ms. Bibi got relief she should have been entitled to as a right just because the Chief Justice wanted to help a weak new government struggling to manage the country’s external finances.

    • Zia’s legacy

  • Pakistan’s blasphemy laws date back to the military dictatorship of General Zia-ul-Haq. A series of changes were introduced in the 1980s, making derogatory remarks against any Islamic personage a crime under Section 295 of Pakistan’s Penal Code and punishable by three years in prison; prescribing life imprisonment for “wilful desecration of the Quran”; and punishing blasphemy against Prophet Mohammed with “death, or imprisonment for life”.
  • Ms. Bibi’s case illustrates how blasphemy laws are used to persecute the weakest of the weak among Pakistan’s religious minorities. As a poor Christian from a low caste, she was among the most vulnerable and susceptible to discrimination. And the legal system — which, in theory, should be designed to protect the innocent — failed her in every way until political expediency necessitated otherwise.
  • Laws prohibiting blasphemy or harming religious feelings exist in many countries, although in some places they are rarely used even if they still exist on the statute books. But in Pakistan, which has one of the highest numbers of blasphemy cases in the world, the charge is used widely to settle grudges or property disputes.
  • There is also political advantage to be gained by appealing to the religious sentiment of majority Muslims against Christians, Ahmadi Muslims, and members of other minority communities. The constant state of religious frenzy that Pakistan’s machinery of state maintains as a guarantee of Pakistani nationhood heightens vigilante violence against alleged blasphemers and their alleged protectors.
  • As with her previous trials and appeals, large crowds gathered outside the court in Islamabad on Wednesday demanding that Ms. Bibi’s conviction be upheld, and the execution carried out. In messages sent to the media, Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan asked soldiers to rebel against the Army Chief, saying that the acquittal presumably had the military’s backing.
  • As Pakistan gets increasingly isolated internationally, the military may have sought Ms. Bibi’s acquittal and reported departure to safety abroad to relieve some pressure on Pakistan’s image around the world. She is reported to have left Pakistan and to have been reunited with her husband, daughters and grandchild.
  • The Jamaat-e-Islami, which, like Tehreek-e-Labbaik, has a very strong street presence, has asked its members to come out in Islamabad to demand that the acquittal be reversed. Even the army’s overt protégé, Hafiz Saeed of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, has joined the call for protests over the Supreme Court judgment.
  • Amidst reports of violence, the national media, especially television channels, have gone totally silent about Mr. Bibi’s release. They, too, are under threat from the baying mobs.

    • Imran Khan’s appeal

  • To claim moral leadership, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan attacked hardliners and appealed for calm in a televised address, taking a U-turn from his pre-election rhetoric that had projected him as a defender of the Prophet’s honour and a crusader against blasphemers.
  • According to Mr. Khan, the hardliners were “inciting [people] for their own political gain” and were “doing no service to Islam”. But Ministers have also started negotiating with the extremist clerics, and it is only a matter of time before another U-turn is taken to fashion some compromise with the hardliners.
  • The Supreme Court’s decision in the Asia Bibi case is a small step in the right direction but a long journey awaits Pakistan in reversing the cumulative injustice it has meted out to its religious minorities over the decades.
  • Farahnaz Ispahani is a former member of Pakistan’s National Assembly. She is Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington DC, and the author of ‘Purifying the Land of the the Pure: A History of Pakistan’s Religious Minorities’

    • Green crackers make Sivakasi see red

    India’s fireworks manufacturing hub is up in arms against the recent ban on all firecrackers that are not ‘green crackers’. While it is imperative to switch to less polluting crackers, how robust was the consultative process and the scientific research that formed the basis of the ban? P.V. Srividya reports from Sivakasi

  • A.P. Selvarajan is a man besieged. A firecracker manufacturer in Sivakasi, Tamil Nadu, he was part of a small industry group that met the State Chief Minister, Edappadi K. Palaniswami, in Chennai on October 26. The delegation was seeking relief from the Supreme Court order last week, on October 23, that banned all firecrackers that were not ‘green crackers’. The order had, in one stroke, effectively rendered the entire cracker industry in Sivakasi India’s fireworks manufacturing hub, illegal.
  • According to an affidavit filed by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) in the Supreme Court on August 21 this year, ‘green crackers’ are less polluting, with lower emission levels. However, Sivakasi views the court order as striking a deathblow to the pyrotechnics industry.
  • For Selvarajan, owner of big fireworks factories in Sivakasi, the discomfort has many layers.
  • The MoEF&CC had commissioned a team from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (CSIR-NEERI), Nagpur, to conduct research on ‘green crackers’. In its affidavit to the Suprme Court, the Ministry has mentioned a ‘CSIR-Kaliswari joint facility’, which is Selvarajan’s firm, Sri Kaliswari Fireworks Private Limited, implying an industry partner for the ‘Green Cracker experiment’.
  • If Selvarajan was blindsided by the court order, he had to swallow it. He had agreed to partner with NEERI when its team was in Sivakasi in March for consultations on low-emission crackers. “They visited my facility and my CSIR-approved emission testing laboratory. Since we are one of the oldest establishments in Sivakasi, I felt it was my duty to help with this research for the greater good of the industry,” says Selvarajan, who paid a licence fee of ₹10 lakh to NEERI and participated in what he assumed was a private study for his factory. He also sent technicians to NEERI to teach the basics of cracker chemistry to research students there. “The study began only around June-July this year.” But this seemingly well-intentioned decision has now come back to haunt him.
  • The petition for the firecracker ban was first filed in the Supreme Court, on behalf of three infants, in 2015. In November 2016, in light of Delhi’s air quality having deteriorated sharply after Deepavali, the Court suspended the permanent and temporary licences of all cracker retailers in Delhi and banned the entry of fireworks into the National Capital Region (NCR). The suspension of firecracker licences was revoked briefly in September 2017 on the ground that there were no definitive pollution standards for the industry to adhere to. But in October 2017, just ahead of Deepavali, the court overturned its earlier order and ordered an experimental ban on firecrackers in the NCR. This led to the petitioners seeking an all-India ban on firecrackers. The court asked the MoEF&CC and affiliated bodies to come up with solutions.

    • The devil in the detail

  • K. Mariappan walks into his office and heads straight to a wall-mounted shelf that is lined with the framed pictures of deities. A short prayer later, Mariappan, the general secretary of the Tamil Nadu Fireworks and Amorces Manufacturers Association (TANFAMA), turns around and settles into a chair across the table.
  • “There is no such thing as a green cracker,” he says. He has been repeating this to the media ever since the court ban on all crackers that are not ‘green’.
  • The court order, which was issued when Deepavali was barely two weeks away, included other strictures too: a ban on the use of barium salts in cracker manufacturing, and also a ban on using series or joint crackers (garlands/laris) on the ground that these caused noise pollution and generated way too much garbage. But all these decisions by the court were based on suggestions from the MoEF&CC which the judiciary swiftly accepted and worked into its order.
  • According to Sadhana Rayalu, NEERI’s scientist on the project, ‘green crackers’ operate on a technology called Safe Water and Air Sprinklers (SWAS). “When a material absorbs water, it generates heat, which aids the bursting of crackers,” she explains. “In a ‘green cracker’, a reactant such as aluminium absorbs the water, generating a lot of heat, which enables the explosion. Then the same water also acts as a dust suppressant.”
  • But those in TANFAMA are not impressed. If there is one thing that both the firecracker industry and the Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organisation (PESO), the industry’s licensing body, are keen to avoid, it is aluminium coming in contact with moisture. “In the laboratory, if it produces sound, in factories it causes accidents,” says Mariappan.
  • Rayalu clarifies, “Aluminium was just an example. It could be any inert material, like, say, zeolite.”
  • Constrained by his interaction with NEERI, Selvarajan measures his words carefully. He does not believe that a result in the laboratory will automatically move to the industry level. “Some chemicals available at laboratory grade cannot be replicated at the industry grade,” he says. “Even NEERI knows what is possible and what is not.”
  • Whether a cracker is ‘green’ or not is determined by its emission levels. Vijaykant, a young entrepreneur in Sivakasi, had taken part in an experiment by the CSIR that was conducted in his factory in mid-August this year using ‘flowerpot’ crackers that had magnesium instead of aluminium. “The first prototype exploded like an atom bomb. We tinkered around a bit, and the second time, it behaved more like a flower pot. Theoretically, magnesium has lower emission levels but NEERI has not yet shared the actual figures with the industry,” he says.
  • “There is one team working on the chemical formulation for ‘green crackers’, and another on sound monitoring. We cannot lose sight of performance efficiency, which is going to be the key for product commercialisation,” Rayalu says.
  • Fireworks manufacturing units are graded on the basis of their scale of operation, nature of licences, and whether they are in the organised or the unorganised sector. PESO, which comes under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, is the licensing authority for units of higher capacity (in terms of chemical handling and production). The second category, of smaller units or ‘DM (district magistrate)-licensed units’, are monitored by the local revenue and police departments.
  • Sivakasi’s firecracker manufacturers claim that PESO, the sole licensing authority for the industry, was not consulted at any stage in the ‘green cracker’ research. But Rayalu has an explanation. “PESO,” she says, “was not taken into confidence during chemical formulation because we tried a lot of permutations and combinations and did not want to bog them down with the developments. We formally approached PESO three weeks ago. We will seek their opinion after the research is done and the final conclusions are at hand. Nothing goes without PESO’s approval.”
  • The industry, however, believes that the MoEF&CC sidelined PESO. As if to lend credence to the allegation, on October 30, a week after the order, the Controller of Explosives, Faridabad, Haryana, in an affidavit said that barium is required in the manufacture of 60% of the products. It even listed the products, dismissing the MoEF&CC’s claim that barium salts were unnecessary. But the ban on barium was not lifted.

    • The ban on barium

  • While the ‘green cracker’, as it exists now, is a work in progress, the MoEF&CC’s affidavit to the Supreme Court gave it an air of certitude. The Court had asked the MoEF&CC for “short-term measures/actions it proposes to tackle pollution due to firecrackers this Diwali”. In August this year, the Ministry responded by suggesting the use of ‘green crackers’ or SWAS, but without mentioning either the status of the research or a timeline. It did say, however, that they could be produced subject to PESO approval. At this point of time, according to Rayalu’s account, PESO had not been shown any of the research developments.
  • Strangely enough, and conspicuous in its absence from all these developments has been the Fireworks Research and Development Center (FRDC). Created under PESO and with its campus in Sivakasi, the FRDC was set up with the specific objective of researching and “developing environment-friendly crackers”. Its website talks about its excellent infrastructure. “They have been around for 12 years, operating under the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, but without any encouragement for research,” says Mariappan.
  • K. Sundaresan, Deputy Chief Controller of Explosives, PESO, Sivakasi, did not respond to queries.
  • Adding insult to the industry’s court-inflicted injury is the MoEF & CC’s assertion in its affidavit that “barium nitrate only gives an attractive green colour and the court may consider its immediate banning.” The Court immediately banned the use of barium salts in firecrackers. In practice, this translates into an indirect ban on the industry as a whole as 60% of its products require barium. Mariappan is scathing in his criticism of the ban: “Anything that emits light needs barium, while something that only explodes does not need barium. Barium added to aluminium gives off white light. When PVC [polyvinyl chloride] powder is added to barium, it lends a green colour to that light. A ban on barium effectively means a ban on flower pots, chakraas, pencils, sparklers, and aerial fireworks.”
  • For Selvarajan, the CSIR’s own ‘industry partner’, this spells an end to all ‘traditional’ fireworks. “They assumed barium is for colour. But it is for light,” he says.
  • The industry asserts that it has always responded positively to change. According to Mariappan, in 1998, when a petition came up in the Kolkata High Court seeking a lowering of firecracker noise levels to 65 db (the decibel level of a clap), the industry approached the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and initiated its own study under the DRDO’s Defence Institute of Physiology and Allied Sciences. The government, too, did a study under the CSIR-National Physical Laboratory. The Central Pollution Control Boards’s National Committee on Noise Pollution Control discussed the findings. “Until then, there had been no comparable statutory standard on noise levels,” says Mariappan.
  • Another focus of the MoEF&CC’s recommendations has been the ‘series’ or ‘joint’ crackers (garlands), also banned last week by the top court. Mariappan points out that the noise standards for ‘joint’ crackers were settled 20 years ago. The rules prescribed a noise level ceiling of 125 db for a single cracker, when measured at a distance of 4 metres. For a string of crackers, a single piece from the string is tested and using a formula, the decibel level for the total number of crackers is calculated.
  • “These rules were upheld by the Supreme Court in 2005,” says Mariappan, adding that it permitted ‘joint’ crackers up to the ‘1,000 series’. “The PESO-controlled units do not manufacture them. Only those in the unorganised sector do so.” But he may be incorrect in this. In Sivakasi, ‘2,000-wala’, ‘5,000-wala’ and ‘10,000-wala’ series crackers gleam on the racks at an exclusive retail outlet of a popular firecracker brand. Evidently, the noise standards have not been a deterrent.
  • Ramachandran, a former Indian Army man who now runs a sparkler unit, was unaware of the details of the court order when this writer met him. Nor was he aware of the ban on barium salts, which is an important raw material for sparklers. “What are you saying?” he asks, when told about the ban. “Without barium I will have to shut down!”
  • Besides the PESO and District Magistrate-licensed units, there is also a category of unorganised units that fall in the grey zone of illegality. While many of them are units operating in stealth even after their licences have been revoked, there are also scores of ‘home units’ where women manufacture firecrackers as ‘job works’ outsourced to them by factories.

    • The business cycle

  • Nadar lodge in the Sivakasi bazaar area is desolate. On any other day, it would have been swarming with buyers and agents from across the country. A street away lives fireworks agent Ganesan (name changed) who brings buyers and seals firecracker deals for the smaller manufacturers. He also has a supply network with ‘home units’ that make bijilis (individual units of the ‘series’ crackers) as ‘job works’. Ganesan says that he had feared a ban and was relieved that there was no ban on the bursting of crackers.
  • “Business will be as usual,” he says. He does not know what a ‘green cracker’ is and how it is different from the crackers they are currently selling. Listening to us and looking up from his notebook, his son chimes in, “In school, our class teacher told us not to burst crackers as it degrades the environment.”
  • Sivakasi’s firecracker industry has its own business cycle. Every year, a month after Deepavali, agents and buyers trickle in to strike deals with the producers. Orders are floated and costs are negotiated even for the next year. Between mid-January (after Pongal, the harvest festival) and March, orders are negotiated and struck at the prevailing price, which depends on the demand at the time.
  • Rajendra Raja, Secretary of the Indian Fireworks Manufacturers Association, in Sivakasi, says that buyers and traders are now confused by the court’s order, especially as dispatches are made on a part-cash, part-credit basis. “Now they all are calling us to ask if they can return the goods. After the payment of the Goods and Services Tax, how is that even possible?”
  • Another dimension of the impending crisis relates to public sector banks in Sivakasi, whose exposure to the firecracker industry is estimated to be ₹1,500 crore. Like a ‘joint’ cracker, the fortunes of the two sectors are intertwined —if one goes off, the other will too.

    • Footing CSIR’s bill

    On October 29, at a press conference by the Minister for Environment in Delhi,the director of the CSIR-NEERI, Rakesh Kumar, referred to unresolved questions about how much the CSIR will get paid for the ‘green cracker’ technology.

  • The CSIR-NEERI’s ‘Green Cracker’ project, budgeted at ₹65 lakh, is to be officially funded entirely by the CSIR. But Selvarajan’s firm paid ₹10 lakh for the research. NEERI undertakes research and development for private entities on payment of a research fee. That is one reason why Selvarajan had assumed that the Sri Kaliswari-CSIR partnership was for a private project.
  • On August 29, after the MoEF&CC’s submission to the Supreme Court, Selvarajan sent an email to the CSIR flagging the reference to the ‘CSIR-Kaliswari joint facility’ as a testing facility for research for the entire industry. The mail said: “Studies undertaken by you was meant for the Sri Kaliswari Group of factories and not meant for the whole industry. Also, the alternate formulations which you refer [to] were not disclosed or its performance demonstrated to the satisfaction of me or my group of factories.”

    • Referring to an internal mail by the CSIR-NEERI to PESO,on August 29,, Selvarajan adds, “It is categorically stated that no member of TANFAMA was present to witness the trial or study as mentioned in your mail to PESO.”

  • Lastly, alluding to secrecy, the mail said, “Under Explosives Rules 2008, no formulation or composition for fireworks is a secret as it is to be displayed on the labels of boxes under Rule 15 of the Explosives Rules, and patented formulations are not heard of under the Rules regulating Fireworks industry in our country.”
  • Without resolving this question of who will pay the CSIR for the research, there will be no further study on ‘green crackers’, says Mariappan.
  • “The industry came up on its own in the 1920s, thanks to the initiative of our forefathers who were illiterate and not scientists. We, the fourth generation, are educated and have access to science and technology. We gave our inputs to the CSIR, but it wants to make money from us with some cock and bull stories,” he says.
  • In response, Rayalu says that the CSIR is still working on the royalty issue.
  • “We can, of course, manufacture crackers with lower emissions,” says Selvarajan.
  • “But for that, raw materials need to be properly identified, and mixtures and combinations should be studied. We have the expertise and the wherewithal for research, and the help of FRDC and PESO. But why this sudden haste?”
  • “Even the phasing out of highly polluting diesel engines has been given time till 2020,” adds Mariappan.
  • “If the court had just issued a directive for research and development to be done on time for next Diwali, that would have served the cause so much better,” says Selvarajan.
  • At the time of the article going to press, the court had issued partial relief to retailers for sale of crackers that were already produced.