The issue of shifting the tanneries from Calcutta to the new Calcutta Leather Complex at Bantala, which has been one of the Supreme Court's (SO main concerns, has become a paradox of sorts. The NGO, Nagarik Manch, which has been the most vocal organisation on the pollution issue, has been arguing strongly against the relocation.

In the last SC hearing on August 31, the owners had clearly informed the apex court of their decision. "Their stand had been bolstered by the fact that both ,National Environmental Engineering Research Institute and the Central Leather Research Institute (CLRI) have held in successive reports that these units need not be shifted, that they can be fitted with effective effluent treatment plants right where they are located today; and that the CLRI has already developed the low-cost indigenous technology needed for this," Nabo Dutta of the Manch told DTE in the first week of September.

The Manch and its trade union supporters allege that the shifting would mean a bonanza for the speculators' lobby, spearheaded by real estate operator Sadhan Dutta, Jyoti Basu's friend and advisor, who 'owns the Development Consultants Ltd (DCL). They also point out that Bantala is situated in the ecosensitive wetlands area. Thus, safeguarding Calcutta's environment would, in this case, take a heavy toll on the environment just outside the city.

The trade unions argue that the tanr@eries employ 20,000 people direcVy and about 2 lakh people indirectly and they will go jobless for the 2 years that the CLRI says it would take@: to build the new complex. However, they say, even a 1991 Unitdd Nations Development Programme study says that a common effluent treatment plant could be set the present location itself.

Besides, the project is too "grandiose", as even top PCB officials agree. Says P I Bishoi, manager of Rishi Exports, a tannery unit with 40 workers, "it will be very, very expensive to shift. No roads or power connections have been made ready at Bantala."

Meanwhile, in at least 2 sites in Tangra (China Town), where tanneries had to be closed down, land has been bought by contractors for commercial purposes, sources say. According to local workers, the builders' lobby is furiously active now. And residents cannot forget how, during the 1992 riots, some slums here were allegedly razed to the ground by property dealers' goons.

MAX MARTIN