The capital city of the country has experienced some turmoil in recent weeks, stemming in the immediate instance from the move to close or relocate a large number of industries defined as "polluting". As the order would affect the livelihood of 10 to 15 lakh workers who would be left with no material means of support, this has inevitably led to protest not only by such workers and their employers, but also by a wider section of sympathisers and human rights activists.
 
There is one strand of middle class reaction to these developments - which is also largely reflected in the print and visual media which cater to this class and the elite - which seeks to express the entire argument in terms of a fight between "green" environment-friendly citizens (the good guys) and dirty polluting industrialists (the bad guys, who could almost have stepped out of some children's cartoon). This position lauds the Supreme Court judgement for being forward-thinking even as it derides politicians for pandering to "special interest groups" such as petty industrialists and their workers.
 
Thus, the environmental activist and lawyer M. C. Mehta, whose original public interest petition can be said to have started this particular ball rolling, has declared that "the Supreme Court of India has played a dynamic role in evolving judicial relief system for environment protection and sustainable development in India". The capital's English-language media is abuzz with plaudits for such intervention, even as it insists on the rigorous enforcement of these decisions no matter what their costs in terms of lost employment and destruction of livelihoods of a very significant share of the city's population.
 
The current process effectively began in  March 1995, when the Supreme court issued orders to the Central Pollution Control Board, directing it to issue individual notices to some 8378 units, indicating that "these industries have to stop functioning in the city of Delhi and be relocated elsewhere". In July 1996, the Court directed that the time had now come for the concerned industries to stop production and move out by the end of November. This referred to 168 industrial units in Delhi which were considered to be polluting and/or operating in nonconforming areas in violation of the Master Plan of Delhi.
 
This judgement, which was passed by the Supreme Court without giving any proper hearing to the workers or their unions, provided for a mere one-year's wages as retrenchment benefit for the workers that they would be entitled to in case they could not be provided alternative employment in the new sites. Incidentally, the order also provided a land-use package wherein the owners would be able to retain 32 percent of the real estate, 68 percent going to the government.
 
A revised judgement in December 1996 enhanced the retrenchment benefit to six-year's wages and made the availability of 32 percent land to the owners conditional on actual relocation. The closure option was thus made more difficult, and the potential for and timing of relocation have subsequently become the focus of the debate between the Delhi Government and the Supreme Court.
 
There are many points of opposition to such a process, and several of these have been forcefully expressed by workers and their representatives, and even by the owners of units and politicians with an ear to the ground. The most significant of these relate to the denial of the rights of workers to their livelihood, in the urge to assure some others a more "pollution-free" environment.
 
It has been pointed out that in Delhi, two-thirds of the atmospheric pollution is caused by vehicular traffic and the dominant part of the water contamination is caused by untreated sewage flowing into rivers and canals. It is therefore not just unfair to make workers the prime victims of a sudden drive to clean up, it is also illogical and bizarre.