A worldwide wave to ban those ugly, ubiquitous plastic shopping bags began as early as 2003 in Ireland, and swept the planet over the course of the next five years, infecting countries from the U.K. to China, and cities as widely separated as San Francisco and Melbourne.
In all, plastic bags are either banned or taxed in 15 countries (Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Holland, Spain, the U.K, China, Australia, Eritrea, Rwanda, Somalia, Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda), and parts of the U.S.
It was perhaps inevitable that Delhi, India, one of the most populous cities in the world at nearly 14 million people, would follow suit. The cities of Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Mumbai - and the western Indian states of Maharashtra and Himachal Pradesh - already had bans in place to prevent storm drains being clogged during monsoon season. In January of 2009, the whole of the capital city - Delhi and its suburban expansion, New Delhi - played follow-the-leader by instituting a city-wide ban on the bags, which are implicated in the 2005 floods that killed hundreds in Mumbai.
The ban on plastic bags, introduced January 10, has hit a few inevitable snags, the most prominent being the division between the country's executive branch (which wants the ban) and the judicial, which found some provisions questionably legal. The ban, as it now stands on the books, purportedly bans bags in markets and shops, as well as hotels, hospitals and malls. It also bans bags less than 0.04 millimeters thick, as these are the kind mostly likely to plug storm drains and cause flooding.
In action, the provisions have turned into an outright ban. This is because bag monitors - police and civil inspection units - have no way to determine the thickness of a bag on the spot. As a result, the no-bag rule is being enforced against all plastic, in hopes bag makers, individual Delhi residents (or the beggars who recycle plastic bags to make a living) won't force the issue in court.
Bag manufacturers may, even those who have ramped up to the new standard and those who make biodegradable plastic bags. With the translation from 40 microns to no bags at all, plastic bag manufacturers face bankruptcy and their estimated one million employees a bleak future. On February 12, the All India Plastic Industry Association (Aipa) petitioned the government to reverse the ban, saying the blanket ban is unfair in light of last year's court ruling to raise bag thicknesses from 20 to 40 microns. The government has been given a deadline of March 19 to respond. A standard for biodegradable bags is still making its way through the system.
The makers of paper and cloth bags are finding the new rule a boon to their businesses. Take the case of Rachna Mathur, who started a cottage industry out of her home making cloth bags with friends. Demand has risen so sharply their original cloth purchase is exhausted, and the number of workers has risen from 9 to 50.
As it now stands, if you're caught on the streets of Delhi or its suburban twin with a plastic bag, you probably won't get a fine but you will earn a frown and an official warning encouraging you to ‘get with the program'.
Delhi residents are, however, notorious in their disregard for the government. If the ban is upheld by Delhi's judicial branch, it will succeed on the basis of fines - a preliminary statute imposing either five years in jail or a fine of abut $2,055 in rupee equivalent, with ultimate penalties still on the drawing board. If not, the fate of Delhi rests on the shopkeepers, who have been remarkably cooperative about not distributing. The scales, however, may be tipped simply by the fact that India is among the 10 largest plastic bag manufacturers in the world.
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