May.01 : “Bas bas bada bole/ ab kuch kariye/ ho koi to chal zidd phariye/ kariye ya mariye hai.../ Nowhere to run/ nowhere to hide/ this is the time/ just do or die!” The song from Chak De India goads you on with the right dose of dread. (I am never sure of Hindi lyrics but it’s something like: okay, enough said, now do something, take up the challenge, do it now or perish…)

The curious case of Cobalt-60 in the capital should have the same effect on us. With every twist this tale of radioactive scrap was screaming: Clean up now or perish! At every step it reminded us of how vulnerable we are to catastrophes, how alarmingly callous we are even in dealing with radioactive material, how blissfully indifferent to the extensive damage to life we continue to cause through our criminal negligence. This was not behaviour fit for any responsible nation, certainly not a nuclear power.
First we jabbered on about the Cobalt-60 being thrust on us by evil external sources. Was it a “dirty bomb” in the making? It revealed how chillingly inadequate our import regulations were. We had no clue where the radioactive material had come from, who had sent it, or how it reached one of the busiest and most populated markets of the country.
As one of the world’s largest importers of scrap metal, our disinterest in knowing what kind of hazardous material we are bringing into the country is alarming. We have more than a billion people. We have been the target of cross-border terrorism and internal extremism for decades. We are too cash-strapped to handle crises with much efficiency and fairness. We are too corrupt to stop a disaster in mid-flow. We claim to be a superpower. We love red tape and ridiculous formalities in triplicate. Then why on earth do we not screen the hazardous waste that we import? Why don’t we need our imports to meet standards of safety?
Sadly, this self-proclaimed Asian giant is actually a gigantic garbage collector. We buy international trash from the developed countries, we lust after their e-waste, toxic waste, hazardous waste, their decrepit computer parts, their rubbish rich in asbestos, mercury, lead and other deadly stuff. We are the friendly neighbourhood kabadiwallah to the world. Then we sort through all that junk — however toxic, however radioactive — melt the contaminated metal and make new metal, and put it back into the supply chain.
Last year huge shipments of Indian steel were denied entry in Europe and the US because they were found to be contaminated by Cobalt-60. The year before, the French discovered that elevator buttons exported from India had unacceptable levels of Cobalt-60. India admitted that they were made from radioactive scrap. The everyday items we export, like steel bars or handlebars, have been rejected by the more responsible nations on account of their radioactive content. They protect their people. And what do we do? Apart from bringing in radioactive and other hazardous trash, that is?
We sell most of our goods made from recycled metal to our own people. We expose our underpaid, undernourished workers to the enormously high doses of radioactivity and toxicity as they eke out a living processing contaminated waste. The Cobalt-60 contamination in Delhi produced dramatic results this time — one worker died and several are in hospital — but usually it is not as spectacular. It is a continuous process of endemic exposure that kills them slowly, through various chronic ailments and diseases like cancer, where nobody takes the blame.
But this time the blame was fixed. Which brings me to the second absurdity — the radioactive material was traced to the prestigious Delhi University. The Cobalt-60 was in a Gamma Irradiator that was lying unused in their chemistry department for 25 years, locked in a room. Now they needed the room and decided to auction off the Gamma Irradiator as junk. As the scrap dealers dismantled the machine and sold off various parts, the radioactive metal spread through the congested market, contaminating unsuspecting workers, till several of them took seriously ill and were hospitalised. That’s when the hunt for the source began, leading ultimately to Delhi University.
Fortunately, the university apologised. Unfortunately, it gave ridiculous explanations. The person who bought the machine back in 1968 had retired, they explained, and the current staff didn’t really know much about the dangers. Besides, they had miscalculated this chunk of Cobalt-60’s radioactive life, and had thought it was now safe. Calculating the radioactive life of Cobalt-60 is pretty easy — it depletes by 50 per cent every 5.27 years. If this is the state of knowledge and intellectual ability in one of the country’s highest seats of education, one shudders to think of the scholarship we are now unleashing on the world.
Now for the third absurdity: apparently the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) has no proper inventory of such radioactive sources in hundreds of machines lying all over the country. They have no interest in radioactive material that India got before 1983, the year the AERB was set up. That would be too exhausting. Anyway, it was the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre’s (Barc) responsibility to dispose of radioactive material. Which they have been doing sporadically — we have all heard hair-raising stories of Barc recovering lost radioactive needles from scrap markets and hospital drains and even crematoriums.
The list of absurdities could be endless. What is the most absurd however is the total disregard we have for human life as we try shortcuts to development. Ragpickers and scrap dealers — the mainstay of our recycling industries — are routinely trashed by the country they keep clean and that depends on them substantially for industrial growth. We are unmoved by little ragpicker children digging through rubbish heaps, by them being blown up by grenades they pick up, by the exposure to toxic and radioactive material that kills them slowly. The radioactive terror in a congested West Delhi scrap market may not move us too much.
Also absurd is the belief that hazardous waste affects only the poor. The middle classes are exposed as well. Radioactive metal is very likely to be present in the steel we all use everyday. Toxic waste in water doesn’t only affect our soft drinks, but contaminates all that grows in it. The fruits and vegetables we eat are full of heavy metal and pesticides. Our hospitals don’t maintain proper disposal rules, thus exposing everyone to all kinds of contaminations. We can’t look the other way anymore. Cleaning up is more than urgent. Bas bas bada bole/ ab kuch kariye.

Antara Dev Sen is editor of The Little Magazine. She can be contacted at: sen@littlemag.com

Antara Dev Sen