In a push for self-su ciency, the government has encouraged farmers to grow rice. Too often, ill-conceived policies produce unintended toxic consequences. Had it been capable of properly regulating pollution, rather than winking at it or stopping production altogether, 5,000 workers might still have a job. The embarrassed state government shut the plant. In May, outraged by a planned expansion of the plant, local residents mounted a mass protest. “We have all the institutions and a lot of the right laws,” she says, “but where is the actual capacity, the personnel, the tools?” One example: the giant Sterlite copper smelter at Tuticorin in India’s far south, the subject of environmental complaints for decades. 2 Sunita Narain of the Centre for Science and the Environment, a think-tank in Delhi, says the worthy goals adopted by successive governments tend to lack teeth.
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