Ranchi, June 10: The principle earlier was ?pollute & pay?. Now it is ?pay & pollute?.

When environment control laws were put in place, the idea was that polluting units would be penalised. But the controlling authorities themselves becoming corrupt, it is the people who are being punished and pollution control boards which are getting paid. Pollution control boards, say experts, can safely be renamed ?pay and pollute boards?.

There is of course a pollution control board in Jharkhand too with a failed politician as its chairman and an unqualified member-secretary. The bloated board has as many as 170 people employed with it. Their break-up is even more interesting since there are 95 casual workers, according to the member-secretary.

Asked to describe their job-profile, the member-secretary claimed they are posted at the headquarters and the four regional offices of the board at Jamshedpur, Hazaribagh, Dhanbad and Deoghar ? and they do all the manual work.

The number is absurdly high because on a given day the board can only send out 10 teams, not more, since there are only 10 engineers at its disposal. In other words, each of the teams theoretically has the luxury of carrying around nine casual workers to carry the equipment. That would make the board one of the most active boards in the country and the state government has been generous in allowing it an annual budget of Rs 4 crore.

It is a different story when the board is asked to spell out what it has done. There is a serious shortage of experts, the member-secretary blithely informs, and services of 25 more engineers will be required for the board to function normally, he claims. It also claims to have notified several norms, which are even better than national norms.

For example, the board has fixed the emission norm in Jharkhand to be 150 mg per Nm3 as against the earlier norm of 350 mg/Nm3. What the member-secretary fails to mention is that the national emission norm is 1,200 mg/Nm3 and even a state like Maharashtra follows a norm of 250 mg/Nm3. More stringent emission norms mean that virtually no industrial unit can match it, thus making it easier for the board to either harass the unit or let it go for a consideration.

Sources say the board has been reduced to a ?corrupt clerk? whose job is confined to issuing NOCs (no objection certificates) and consent letters to new industrial units, often without verifying the claims. An industrialist, who operates a sponge iron unit, says he had never followed emission norms. But he never had any difficulty getting certificates, he claimed.

The board has no answer when asked for the steps it has taken to combat water-pollution in Damodar and Subarnarekha. Environmentalist R.K. Sinha, who has been associated with both Damodar and Subarnarekha ?Bachao? campaigns, says the board is responsible for the sorry state of the rivers. The board can shut down the units that fail to comply with the norms. But its reluctance to use the powers is testimony to its intent.

The member-secretary reluctantly admits that the industrial units may not be operating pollution-control devices, especially at night, to save electricity. But then he declares that the devices have been installed all right and the board has checked it. More philosophically, he informs, ?It is common throughout the country.?

He goes on to claim that cases have been lodged against Bihar Sponge Iron and that orders have been issued for closure of several industrial units. But asked for a list of such action taken, the disarming reply is that the board is yet to compile the list or an ?action taken report?.