ABSTRACT:
Rice mills produces all kinds of externalities like air pollution in the form of burning of husk, water and land pollution in the form of drained water of the parboiled rice mills and also noise pollution. Dhamtari is the biggest mandi of paddy in Chhattisgarh. Nearly 2132.928 in 2000-01 of paddy came to it for sell. Out of 117 rice mills 48 are located in Dhamtari town within a range of 2 km., 77 rice mills are located in an aerial distance of 5 km. from Dhamtari town. About 1-1.1 lakh people (as per 2001 census) of Dhamtari town and nearby villages are affected by the pollution caused by the discharge of the rice mills. To initiate any non-market policy instrument or market based policy instrument, it is quite necessary to assess the monetary cost of the environmental damages caused by any economic activity. Contingent valuation method has been used in this study to evaluate the monetary cost of the environmental damages.