News analysis

INDIA: ITC’S ENVIRONMENTAL AWARD

Health advocates in India have expressed exasperation that The Energy and Resources Institute–TERI–has made a prestigious award to ITC, the country's largest tobacco producer. TERI's director general is Dr R K Pachauri, who chairs the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This most important institution was joint winner of a Nobel Prize in 2007 for its work on global warming and sustainability. Hence the TERI award, for ITC's work on water shed management, carries a great deal of prestige, and will no doubt be added to the growing list of corporate social responsibility honours that the company proudly flags up on its website.

The highly respected Voluntary Health Association of India–VHAI–was among the health agencies which wrote to Dr Pachauri to protest at how inappropriate it was to make the award to a company whose products cause such a massive burden of ill health and premature death. It was well established, wrote VHAI, that health-destroying industries such as the tobacco industry, were trying their best to achieve a corporate makeover, showcasing their work in positive developmental efforts and downplaying the huge profit they make by selling tobacco products. But the reply it received, from the TERI corporate awards staff rather than from Dr Pachauri himself, was all too predictable: the award was given for ITC's sustainability initiative only.

Nevertheless, Indian public opinion is changing, thanks to the tireless efforts of increasing numbers of non-governmental organisations and their volunteers. Together they have raised the country's consciousness to a level that generates spontaneous protest at such news. One particularly appropriate if darkly humorous response to the TERI award came from a cancer surgeon at the famous Tata Memorial hospital in Mumbia, …