INTERNATIONAL EXPERTS DEMANDED AN IMMEDIATE BAN ON PRODUCTION AND USE OF ENDOSULFAN IN INDIA

          An international group of academics and experts working on environmental and developmental issues had demanded an immediate ban on production and use of Endosulfan in India. In a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan singh, they urged that  India should join the global consenus on the ban Endosulfan  and provide adequate compensation to the Endosulfan  victims.

          They noted that India was the only country to have opposed the recommendation of the peristent organic pollutents Review Committee of the stockholm convention in favour of the global ban on the pesticide.

          They said 60 countries had banned this lethal chemical. India has more convencing reason to ban the pesticide and suport an international ban. The Mortality and grusome morbidity in Kasaragod district, resulting from two dacades of aerial spraying of Endosulfan in the cashew plantations,are compelling enough for India to stand for the ban of this lethal chemical. The tragic congenital deformities,widespread prvalence of cancer, blindness among children,mental growth retrdation, hydrocephalus ( enlargement of head) etc.

They noted the Endosulfan tragedy has been repeated in the Belthengady taluk of Dakshina Kannada district in Karnataka. Twenty years of Endosulfan spraying two times a year, by the Karnataka cashew corporation had affected a large number of people.

Jurist V.R KrishnaIyer has in a letter,appealed to president to take steps to get the maufacture and sale of Endosulfan banned” Healthy life and Endosulfan cannot go to together and are incompatible, he said”I pray thee ban Endosulfan in any form, in any manner, in any chemical composition and make it a crime evidence to manufactureit, to posses it, to store or sell it or consumeit”

Prof. John Kurakar