Industrialisation fuels economic expansion, but it often leads to pollution, resource inefficiencies, and environmental deterioration. Panipat, a city of a significant textile and sizeable public sector industrial hub, is ranked 11th among India’s most polluting industrial clusters (2018) and 60th among the world’s worst air-polluted districts (2023). This hazardous environment has sparked the curiosity to know more about such a heavily polluted area in northern India. This research uses a mixed-methods approach, classifying sectors with a longitudinal trend and pattern approach, using use-based categorisation (pre-2016) and colour-coded pollution potential (post-2016). Results showed that there is a significant fall in registrations after 2019, which may be indicated towards institutional changes and MSME policy initiatives, for industrial growth patterns from 2001 to 2022. To quantify industrial risk, a Composite Industrial Risk Index was developed that combines four indicators, namely unit share, land-use intensity, pollutant category, and investment intensity, using both equal and differential-weighting approaches. The recorded results show that industries are performing at the same level of risk, with slight differences in digits, but there are changes in ranking. Despite having fewer units or smaller land footprints, industries like chemicals, rubber, and petroleum-based sectors were identified as having higher risk by the differential-weight model, which gave priority to capital intensity and pollution potential. In contrast, the equal-weight model identified risks associated with land-intensive, densely clustered industries like cotton textiles. This variation emphasises that industrial risk is affected not only by volume but also by both the nature and intensity of operation. The findings point to substantial shortcomings in pollution-focused regulating practices and support industry-specific policies including effective ecological governance, land-use restructuring, and spatial zoning.
Chahal et al. (Thu,) studied this question.