LAW AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

 

CLASS- VIII    SPL-III

10.    LAW AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

Introduction

·       Many people faced exploitation or an unfair situation in the market. Markets everywhere tend to be exploitative of people – whether as workers, consumers or producers.

·       To protect people from such exploitation, the government makes certain laws. These laws try to ensure that the unfair practices are kept at a minimum in the markets.

·       Let us take a common market situation where the law is very important. This is the issue of workers’ wages. Private companies, contractors, businesspersons normally want to make as much profit as they can. In the drive for profits, they might deny workers their rights and not pay them wages, for example.

·       In the eyes of the law it is illegal or wrong to deny workers their wages. Similarly to ensure that workers are not underpaid, or are paid fairly, there is a law on minimum wages. A worker has to be paid not less than the minimum wage by the employer. The minimum wages are revised upwards every few years.

·       As with the law on minimum wages, which is meant to protect workers, there are also laws that protect the interests of producers and consumers in the market. These help ensure that the relations between these three parties – the worker, consumer and producer - are governed in a manner that is not exploitative.

·       But merely making laws is not enough. The government has to ensure that these laws are implemented. This means that the law must be enforced. Enforcement becomes even more important when the law seeks to protect the weak from the strong.

·       Through making, enforcing and upholding these laws, the government can control the activities of individuals or private companies so as to ensure social justice.

·       Many of these laws have their basis in the Fundamental Rights guaranteed by the Indian Constitution.

·       According to the 2001 census, over 12 million children in India aged between 5 and 14 work in various occupations including hazardous ones.

·       In October 2006, the government amended the Child Labour Prevention Act, banning children under 14 years of age from working as domestic servants or as workers in dhabas, restaurants, tea shops etc. It made employing these children a punishable offence.

·       Anyone found violating the ban must be penalised with a punishment ranging from a jail term of three months to two years and/or fine of Rs 10,000 to Rs 20,000.

·       The central government had asked state governments to develop plans to rescue and rehabilitate children who are working as domestic servants. To date, only three state governments, namely Maharashtra, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu have published these plans.

BHOPAL GAS TRAGEDY

·       The world’s worst industrial tragedy took place in Bhopal 24 years ago. Union Carbide (UC) an American company had a factory in the city in which it produced pesticides. At midnight on 2 December 1984 methyl-isocyanite (MIC) a highly poisonous gas - started leaking from this UC plant....

·       Aziza Sultan, a survivor: “At about 12.30 am I woke to the sound of my baby coughing badly. In the half-light I saw that the room was filled with a white cloud. I heard people shouting ‘run, run’. Then I started coughing, with each breath seeming as if I was breathing in fire. My eyes were burning.”

·       Within three days, more than 8,000 people were dead. Hundreds of thousands were maimed.

·       Most of those exposed to the poison gas came from poor, working-class families, of which nearly 50,000 people are today too sick to work. Among those who survived, many developed severe respiratory disorders, eye problems and other disorders. Children developed peculiar abnormalities.

What is a Worker’s Worth?

·       If we are to understand the events leading to Bhopal disaster, we have to ask: why did Union Carbide set up its plant in India?

·       One reason why foreign companies come to India is for cheap labour. Wages that the companies pay to workers, say in the U.S.A., are far higher than what they have to pay to workers in poorer countries like India. For lower pay, companies can get longer hours of work. Additional expenses such as for housing facilities for workers are also fewer. Thus, companies can save costs and earn higher profits.

·       Cost cutting can also be done by other more dangerous means. Lower working conditions including lower safety measures are used as ways of cutting costs.

·       In the UC plant, every safety device was malfunctioning or was in short supply. Between 1980 and 1984, the work crew for the MIC plant was cut in half from 12 to 6 workers. The period of safety training for workers was brought down from 6 months to 15 days! The post of night-shift worker for the MIC plant was abolished.

Comparison between UC’s safety system in Bhopal and its other plant in the US:

1.   At West Virginia (U.S.A.) computerised warning and monitoring systems were in place, whereas the UC plant in Bhopal relied on manual gauges and the human senses to detect gas leaks.

2.   At the West Virginia plant, emergency evacuation plans were in place, but nonexistent in Bhopal.

Why are there such sharp differences in safety standards across countries? And even after the disaster happened, why was the compensation to the victims so low? One part of the answer lies in what is perceived as the worth of an Indian worker.

One worker can easily replace another. Since there is so much unemployment, there are many workers who are willing to work in unsafe conditions in return for a wage.

Making use of the workers’ vulnerability, employers ignore safety in workplaces.

Enforcement of Safety Laws

·       As the law maker and enforcer, the government is supposed to ensure that safety laws are implemented.  It is also the duty of the government to ensure that the Right to Life guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution is not violated. What was the government doing when there were such blatant violations of safety standards in the UC plant?

·       First, the safety laws were lax in India. Second, even these weak safety laws were not enforced.

·       Government officials refused to recognise the plant as hazardous and allowed it to come up in a populated locality.

·       When some municipal officials in Bhopal objected that the installation of an MIC production unit in 1978 was a safety violation, the position of the government was that the state needs the continued investment of the Bhopal plant, which provides jobs. It was unthinkable, according to them, to ask UC to shift to cleaner technology or safer procedures.

·       Government inspectors continued to approve the procedures in the plant, even when repeated incidents of leaks from the plant made it obvious to everybody that things were seriously wrong.

·       This, as you know, is contrary to what the role of a law making and enforcement agency should be. Instead of protecting the interests of the people, their safety was being disregarded both by the government and by private companies.

New Laws to Protect the Environment

·       In 1984, there were very few laws protecting the environment in India, and there was hardly any enforcement of these laws. The environment was treated as a ‘free’ entity and any industry could pollute the air and water without any restrictions. Whether it was our rivers, air, groundwater - the environment was being polluted and the health of people disregarded.

·       Thus, not only was UC a beneficiary of lower safety standards, it didn’t have to spend any money to clean up the pollution. In the U.S.A., this is a necessary part of the production process.

·       The Bhopal disaster brought the issue of environment to the forefront. Several thousands of persons who were not associated with the factory in any way were greatly affected because of the poisonous gases leaked from the plant. This made people realise that the existing laws, though weak, only covered the individual worker and not persons who might be injured due to industrial accidents.

·       In response to this pressure from environmental activists and others, in the years following the Bhopal gas tragedy, the Indian government introduced new laws on the environment.

·       Henceforth, the polluter was to be held accountable for the damage done to environment. The environment is something that people over generations will share, and it could not be destroyed merely for industrial development.

·       The courts also gave a number of judgments upholding the right to a healthy environment as intrinsic to the Fundamental Right to Life.

·       In Subhash Kumar vs. State of Bihar (1991), the Supreme Court held that the Right to Life is a Fundamental Right under Article 21 of the Constitution and it includes the right to the enjoyment of pollution-free water and air for full enjoyment of life. The government is responsible for setting up laws and procedures that can check pollution, clean rivers and introduce heavy fines for those who pollute.

Environment as a Public Facility

·       In recent years, while the courts have come out with strong orders on environmental issues, these have sometimes affected people’s livelihoods adversely.

·       For instance, the courts directed industries in residential areas in Delhi to close down or shift out of the city. Several of these industries were polluting the neighbourhood and discharge from these industries was polluting the river Yamuna, because they had been set up without following the rules.

·       But, while the court’s action solved one problem, it created another. Because of the closure, many workers lost their jobs. Others were forced to go to far-away places where these factories had relocated. And the same problem now began to come up in these areas – for now these places became polluted. And the issue of the safety conditions of workers remained unaddressed.

·       Recent research on environmental issues in India has highlighted the fact that the growing concern for the environment among the middle classes is often at the expense of the poor. So, for example, slums need to be cleaned as part of a city’s beautification drive, or as in the case above, a polluting factory is moved to the outskirts of the city. And while this awareness of the need for a clean environment is increasing, there is little concern for the safety of the workers themselves.

·       The challenge is to look for solutions where everyone can benefit from a clean environment. One way this can be done is to gradually move to cleaner technologies and processes in factories.

·       The government has to encourage and support factories to do this. It will need to fine those who pollute. This will ensure that the workers livelihoods are protected and both workers and communities living around the factories enjoy a safe environment.

Conclusion

·       Laws are necessary in many situations, whether this be the market, office or factory so as to protect people from unfair practices.

·       A major role of the government, therefore, is to control the activities of private companies by making, enforcing and upholding laws so as to prevent unfair practices and ensure social justice. This means that the government has to make ‘appropriate laws’ and also has to enforce the laws. Laws that are weak and poorly enforced can cause serious harm, as the Bhopal gas tragedy showed.

 

 

 

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