Last week, the US Environmental Protection Agency announced a ban on the use of the insecticide, while countries such as Australia are also reviewing their policies and are expected to extend the ban. About 60 countries worldwide have banned the use of endosulfan, dubbed a close cousin to DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane).

India is among the few countries (along with Brazil and China) that has not banned endosulfan. The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, which has imposed a global ban on 20-odd toxic chemicals including DDT, is also considering imposing a ban on endosulfan.

India is also one of the few countries that has not banned the use of DDT. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), India has curbed the use of DDT over the years; today, it is mainly being used as a weapon in its diseases vector control battle against malaria and kala-azar.

Incidentally, both DDT and endosulfan are manufactured in India by state-owned Hindustan Insecticides Ltd. Organisations such as Greenpeace have been battling pesticide producers for continuing to manufacture chlorinated pesticides that are banned globally.

According to Greenpeace, Hindustan Insecticides, along with a few other companies, have converted the Periyar river and inland creeks in Kerala into “a cesspool of toxins, which have alarming levels of deadly poisons like DDT, endosulfan, hexa and trivalent chromium, lead, cyanide.”

The Eloor industrial area in Kerala has been dubbed as “a toxic hotspot of global proportions” by Greenpeace. Recently, the International POPs Elimination Network (IPEN), a global network for a toxic-free future, ranked Eloor 19th in a list of 40 POP (persistent organic pollutants) hot spots in the world.

Kerala, in fact, has emerged as an environmental battle-ground with international and domestic NGOs taking on both state-owned companies and multinationals. The state government - now a coalition of left parties - has been batting on the side of environmentalists, but they face strong lobbying from industry associations and the federal government.

In 2001, the battle against endosulfan was launched in Kerala, when the then state government imposed a ban on its use following studies that revealed that constant spraying of the pesticide in the cashew plantations for 20 years had resulted in a series of abnormalities among village children.

Studies indicated that the pesticide had contaminated several villages and endosulfan was detected even in the bodies of boys exposed to the pesticide. It had affected their reproductive organs.

Worse, nearly 150 persons were suspected to have died following constant exposure to endosulfan and the state government paid hefty compensation to the relatives of the victims. The disaster was described as next only to the Bhopal gas tragedy in terms of magnitude; the Bhopal disaster, the worst industrial disaster globally, saw the leakage of 40 tonnes of methyl iso cyanate (MIC), a highly toxic chemical used for the production of pesticides. About 20,000 persons died following the leakage of MIC from the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal in 1984, and thousands more have suffered a host of ailments.

Earlier this month, a local court in Bhopal came out with a timid verdict, sentencing about half-a-dozen Indian executives of the American multinational two years in jail. They were later released on bail. The then American CEO of Union Carbide (later acquired by Dow Chemicals), Warren Anderson, had been mysteriously released from Bhopal days after the disaster; he has been avoiding arrest and extradition to India all these years.

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INDIA is today the world's largest consumer of endosulfan, with nearly 10,000 tonnes of the pesticide being produced every year. About half of it is consumed domestically and the rest exported.

But there is a strong, pro-endosulfan lobby at work in India, which is resisting all calls for a global ban on the pesticide. According to its defenders, endosulfan is an extremely cheap pesticide that is affordable by a majority of farmers. Endosulfan is sold in India for as low as Rs220 a litre, whereas other substitutes - manufactured by European pesticide majors - are sold for more than 10 times that price.

For almost 50 years - during the second-half of the 20th century - European (especially German) pesticide giants dominated the endosulfan business globally. But about five years ago, they began marketing newer - and more expensive - pesticides, phasing out stuff such as endosulfan.

The Indian pesticides industry accuses its counterpart in Europe of providing funds to NGOs and environmental groups, which take up their cause globally, by labelling some pesticides as dangerous or toxic and harmful for humans. European pesticide manufacturers account for nearly a third of the $35 billion global business, whereas Indian firms have less than a tenth of their share.

But Indian producers fear that European manufacturers do not want them to expand their global market share and have launched a campaign against them, just as European pharmaceutical majors are raising a series of objections to scuttle growth of the Indian drugs industry.

Indian delegates to the POPs review committee meetings have also accused European countries of trying to get a global ban on endosulfan just to protect their patented products. But many European representatives and environmentalists allege that India is trying to politicise what is a purely scientific and environmental issue, just to protect its domestic industry.

Besides the risk to humans, endosulfan has also affected aquatic and terrestrial wildlife. It has dispersed across the globe and traces of the pesticide have been found in the fat cells of birds and fish even in the Arctic region.

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DESPITE India's official postures at international meets, there is growing concern in the country about the increasing incidence of pollution caused by pesticides and fertiliser. The government recently, in a bold move, unveiled a new fertiliser subsidy policy, encouraging farmers to reduce their dependence on nitrogen-based fertiliser.

Studies have shown that excessive use of synthetic nitrogen fertilisers in Punjab, Haryana and parts of Uttar Pradesh have resulted in contamination of groundwater. A recent study by Greenpeace in farms across Muktsar, Bhatinda and Ludhiana showed that most wells in the area were contaminated with nitrates; 20 per cent of all sampled wells had nitrate levels above the safety limit of 50 mg per litre as established by the World Health Organisation.

The sampled farmers used an average of 322 kg of nitrogen per hectare, which was 53 per cent higher than the state average of 210 kg per hectare, says the Greenpeace report. “This nitrate pollution in the groundwater is clearly linked with excessive use of synthetic nitrogen fertilisers as the higher the application of nitrogen (urea), the higher the nitrate pollution found in the groundwater from the same farm,” says Dr Reyes Tirado, scientist at Greenpeace Research Laboratories in the University of Exeter, UK, who conducted the study. “The nitrate pollution found in this study is remarkably high given that the groundwater in this area is quite deep, and it is generally assumed that deep groundwater would be cleaner and less polluted than shallow water.”

Other studies reveal that the heavy use of insecticides and pesticides in farms across Punjab has resulted in the detection of uranium in samples of cattle milk, mustard seeds and wheat, leading to neurological disorders and stunted growth among children. Tests conducted on hair samples of 150 neurologically disabled children in the state also revealed high levels of uranium, lead and aluminium, caused mainly by excessive use of pesticides and fertiliser.

Concerned about such dangerous trends, the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) recently called for a long-term farm policy so that current crop patterns are diversified and the use of chemicals and pesticides are gradually reduced.

According to Dr Swati Piramal, president, ASSOCHAM, farmers should be given incentives to encourage them to go in for short-term commercial crops and to diversify into horticulture, floriculture and also take to poultry and animal husbandry.