In Byrnihat, the industrial town on the Assam-Meghalaya border that has repeatedly figured among the world's most polluted places, the Meghalaya government's response to a viral investigation has been remarkably narrow.

After an inspection on 29 June, the Meghalaya State Pollution Control Board (MSPCB) said the white plume seen in journalist Sarthak Goswami's widely shared video emanating from Umiam Distillation Pvt Ltd (UDPL), a grain-based ethanol plant in Byrnihat's Export Promotion Industrial Park (EPIP), was merely water vapour and not smoke. The board also said the plant was operating within prescribed pollution norms.

UDPL has echoed that position. It says the viral video unfairly singled out one factory in an industrial cluster comprising dozens of units, that it operates pollution-control equipment including electrostatic precipitators (ESP) and a zero liquid discharge (ZLD) system, and has itself called for an independent source-apportionment study covering the entire Byrnihat industrial estate.

Perhaps all of that is true. But even if every one of those claims is accepted, they answer only one question while leaving the central one untouched.

If the visible plume is steam, if UDPL is compliant and if several polluting units have already been shut over the years, why does Byrnihat continue to rank among the most polluted places in the world?

That is the question the official response does not answer.

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