Red signals from green protests: Impact of Sterlite closure on livelihoods

Sterlite's argument is that there is a case for heightened pollution in the Thoothukudi area, but it has not been conclusively proven anywhere that Sterlite specifically was the cause of it

Amritha Chemicals, a chemical manufacturing unit at Thoothukudi in southern Tamil Nadu, was set up around six years ago. It was one of the many small and medium downstream industries that started operations for which the main raw materials are sulphuric acid and fluorosilicic acid, by-products from the Vedanta group’s Sterlite Copper facility at Thoothukudi. The Amritha Chemicals factory employs nearly 100 people.

Gomathi Engineering is another unit in the same area that does fabrication work for the Sterlite plant. It employs around 200 people and had annual revenues of about Rs 1 crore.

Both units have been closed since