There's a paradox at the heart of India’s ship breaking sector. While it happens to be the biggest in the world, it is also arguably the dirtiest. The Alang scrap steel yards, dotting Bhavnagar’s coastline, which are estimated to dismantle around half the world’s ships, have come to be known as the “armpit of the world”. One of the reasons for the international popularity of the Alang yards is that it offers a cheap, and lucrative, alternative to what is otherwise an extremely expensive business. Indian ship dismantling yards do this by bending the norms. Most of the dismantling is effected in primitive conditions, manually. Those appointed to do this run the risk of incurring asbestosis (the scarring of lungs which cause deathly respiratory problems) and cancers, or have to reckon with unexpected explosions, even as the environment in which they work is intensely degraded.

The status of the Alang ship breaking yards has suddenly become a live one, with the French courts ruling that the French aircraft carrier, ‘Clemenceau’, can go to India for dismantling. As The Sunday Express has just reported, there is a sorry lack of transparency on the exact percentage of asbestos in the ship’s structure, apart of course from the other toxic substances inherent in vessels of this kind, like polychlorinated biphenyles, poison gases, fuel oil and lead.