POLLUTING ENVIRONMENT, YOU MAY SOON HAVE TO PAY CESS

POLLUTING ENVIRONMENT,
 YOU MAY SOON HAVE TO PAY CESS

Soon, you will have to pay for polluting the environment and making the city more livable. The state environment department is in the process of submitting a proposal to introduce environment cess in the cabinet soon. Environment cess will be levied on any activity that affects the environment like stone-crushing, mining, vehicular pollution, industries and big infrastructural projects. The cess levied will be in proportion to the capital investment and extent of production of an industry or an infrastructural project and the cess collected will be utilized for activities related to environment conservation. "The state environment department has practically no funds. There are a large number of industries which are gaining at the loss of natural resources. They may not contribute to pollution but after 10 years, the issue of pollution will be at its peak and we need funds for that. A lot of awareness is needed among people, not just at the urban level but also at the district level. The central government provides grants to secure our water bodies. But this fund will help conserve our lakes and rivers. We just don't want to put the onus of conserving the environment on the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board," said environment minister Sachin Ahir. 

The environment cess will be utilized for purposes like cleaning of lakes, rivers, setting up information centres, collection of data on air and water pollution. "At present, the cess already exists as 'green cess' for mining activities and transport but it's not utilized for environment purpose. One reason was we could not clearly define environment conservation. We will now set down clear guidelines for utilizing the cess, which will be a consolidated fund," said Valsa Nair Singh, secretary, state environment department. She said that the main objective to collect cess was to get funds for the environment. "There is also a principle of polluter price. If you have polluted, you have to pay for it. It's practised in the Western countries," said Singh. The percentage of computing the cess is yet to be decided. CM Prithviraj Chavan has agreed that the money realized from this cess will not go to the environment department but be diverted to a consolidated fund that will be pumped back into the environment.

Prof. John Kurakar