The media isn't discussing this, but after such a huge ecological disaster, this shipping company is backing away from its responsibility. On May 25th of this year, a ship named MSC Elsa 3 sank off the coast of Kerala, taking with it Calcium Carbide, furnace oil, and millions of plastic pellets, which polluted the entire coast of Kerala. What followed was an environmental catastrophe that Kerala is still recovering from, but the company responsible wants to pay less than 2% of the actual damage.

The Disaster That Changed Kerala's Coast

When MSC Elsa 3 went down, it wasn't just a ship sinking. It was an environmental bomb exploding in slow motion. The Calcium Carbide reacted with seawater, releasing toxic gases. The furnace oil spread across the water surface, creating an oil slick that killed marine life for kilometers. But the worst part was the millions of plastic pellets, tiny nurdles that are the raw material for plastic manufacturing. These pellets spread across Kerala's entire coastline, infiltrating beaches, mangroves, and fishing areas.

The plastic pellets are so small that they're nearly impossible to clean up completely. They look like fish eggs, so marine animals eat them, introducing plastic into the entire food chain. Fishermen found dead fish washing up on shore for weeks. The beaches that were once pristine became covered with a layer of white plastic beads. Tourism took a massive hit as beaches had to be closed. The ecological impact will last for decades because these pellets don't biodegrade.

The Human Cost Nobody Talks About

Apart from the environmental damage, fishing was banned for months, causing huge losses to Kerala's fishermen. For a state where fishing is not just an industry but a way of life for hundreds of thousands of families, this was devastating. Fishermen who go out to sea every day to feed their families were suddenly told they couldn't work. Their boats sat idle. Their nets gathered dust. Their income dropped to zero overnight.

The government estimates the damage of this ecological disaster at ₹9,500 crores, factoring in environmental cleanup, loss of marine life, impact on tourism, and the economic losses to fishing communities. This isn't an exaggerated number. When you calculate months of lost fishing income, the cost of cleaning millions of plastic pellets from hundreds of kilometers of coastline, the long-term ecological damage, and the impact on Kerala's coastal economy, ₹9,500 crores might even be conservative.

The Company's Response

But the Mediterranean Shipping Company, whose ship this was, wants to wash its hands of it by paying only ₹132 crores. That's barely 1.4% of the actual damage. They're hiding behind something called "limited liability," a legal provision that caps the compensation shipping companies have to pay regardless of the actual damage caused. It's a loophole that was designed to protect shipping companies from going bankrupt after accidents, but it's now being used to avoid accountability for disasters they caused through negligence.

And this isn't their first case. Mediterranean Shipping Company has a record of operating old ships that should probably be retired. MSC Elsa 3 itself had been in technical trouble many times before it finally sank. There were documented maintenance issues, previous incidents, and warning signs that this ship was a disaster waiting to happen. Yet it was still operating, carrying hazardous materials along India's coast.

Why This Keeps Happening

The real question is why such ships are allowed to operate at all. The answer is uncomfortable but simple: regulations are weak and monitoring is low in South Asia. These companies operate old, poorly maintained vessels in our waters because they know they can get away with it. The same ships would face much stricter inspections and regulations in European or American waters. But here, oversight is lax, enforcement is weak, and penalties are minimal.

When a disaster happens, these companies use loopholes in legal and international treaties to escape responsibility. They point to conventions like the International Convention on Civil Liability for Bunker Oil Pollution Damage and say that according to limited liability provisions, they're only responsible for ₹132 crores. The ship is theirs, the profit is theirs, but somehow the loss becomes ours. They privatize the profits and socialize the losses.