Clemenceau and cobras

THE DISCARDED warship of France, named Clemenceau after the one-time French Prime Minister and War Minister of the First World War time, is set to sail towards Alang in Saurashtra, where it will be broken down and the salvaged metal is expected to yield India some profit.

But there is a huge concern about the affair because the ship contains anywhere from 40 to over 200 million tonnes of asbestos. The trouble is that this asbestos is not in a form to be recovered and used for other purposes safely. It will simply have to be removed and discarded as well.

The Supreme Court of India has asked its Hazards Monitoring Committee for advice. Dr. G. Thyagarajan of the committee is not convinced about letting Clemenceau enter.

But the Union Environment Minister, A. Raja, has been reported to claim that the workers in Alang can safely remove the asbestos. Dr. Thyagarajan counters: "If a ship comes with 1 lakh cobras, will we accept it just because some Indians can catch cobras?" (Come to think of it, death from a cobra, being faster, is kindlier.)

The journal Environmental Health states that of the over 100,000 Indians working with asbestos, 23 per cent are affected by asbestosis but a mere 30 have been compensated.

And what will Clemenceau fetch us? About Rs. 50 crores as scrap. What should our priority be? To paraphrase what Mr. Clemenceau said about 100 years ago about war and the military, Clemenceau is too serious a matter to be left to the government alone. For the sake of our health, let us not allow the ship to enter India.