The Hindu Business Line : Add `pollution' to your knowledge

ACCOUNTING is highly polluted, thinks a general reader of published statements, even as elected representatives of the profession would glibly state that this is a pristine vocation, much to the disbelief of their own brethren.

But it is never late to work for mending opinions, and never inappropriate to get one's hands dirty by engaging in cleanup.

A good place to start is Managing Industrial Pollution, by S. C. Bhatia, published by Macmillan India Ltd (www.macmillanindia.com). What we can't measure, we can't control.

Thus, any talk about pollution would be as fruitless as haranguing on corruption-free society, if we don't know the size of the problem.

Accountants pride in being good in measurements, so if you were asked to calculate the per capita BOD load in kg per day, for a town that has a population of 20,000, sewage of DWF 25 litres per second having average BOD of 325 mg per litre, and containing industrial waste to the extent of 2.5 litres per second having a total BOD of 202 kg per day, what would be your answer?

Ah, those abbreviations, you may gasp, but there are many more in the book, if you are keen on pollution knowledge, rather than knowledge pollution.

Thus, AFR is air fuel ratio, ESP is electrostatic precipitator, CASP is carrier activated sludge process, RBC is rotating biological contactor, and EIA is environment impact assessment.

Suddenly, you become nostalgic about tax tomes, and so wonder, whether CAs need to get into a terrain that belongs to engineers. However, remember that management of pollution and waste is growing in importance, not only because of increased awareness but also due to high cost involved in effective tackling of the problem.

Also, penalties are heavy for companies that fail to measure up to benchmark levels of cleanliness.

The book is a mini-course on environmental science, designed as a self-study kit, complete with case studies, solved examples, summaries and so on.

The author would introduce you to MINAS, the minimal national standards, to be followed by all industries in the country, and more crucially to EA, environmental audit.

Do you know that EA, as a policy instrument for abatement of industrial pollution was introduced in India by the government more than a decade ago.

"This policy envisages annual environmental performance reports that will be submitted by the industry to pollution control boards and aims to determine the concerns and responses of industry with respect to environmental issues. It also aims to identify the information and technological gaps, incentives and programmes that are important for the integration of environmental concerns into decision-making at all levels," explains Bhatia.

There are three phases to EA, viz., pre-audit, on-site audit and post-audit. This is not just a routine certification for satisfying procedural requirements of a regulatory body, "but is applied to even the smallest endeavour that involves any natural resource."

There is also `pollution audit'. The author defines it as a thorough assessment of the extent to which a company's products and processes may be contributing to environmental degradation.

"Where pollution is concerned, what people think you are doing becomes as important as what you are doing."

So, audit should include all pollution sources, both real and imagined, advises the book. A recent example is of a coke factory in Kerala that was forced to close its works when people feared degradation of groundwater.

There is wealth in waste, don't forget.

BooksOfAccount@TheHindu.co.in

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