Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr | Air gets too toxic to breathe: Whose problem is it really?
Delhi’s Central Pollution Board, the Committee for Air Quality Management (CAQM) for the National Capital Region and Adjoining Areas and the Central government’s Air Quality Early Warning System in Delhi have got into action as the national capital’s Air Quality Index (AQI) moved into the “severe” category when it crossed the 400 mark -- it was 433 on Tuesday -- and invoked Stage 4 of the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP), shuffling from GRAP-3 to GRAP-4, which placed greater restrictions on construction and traffic movement of vehicles, especially those running on old petrol and diesel cars. Schools have been closed except for students in Class 10 and Class 12, and the hybrid mode -- attending classes from home through the Internet -- has been adopted. Doctors from Delhi’s various hospitals have issued advisories to people about taking morning walks -- they have been prohibited -- and what kind of medicines those with hypertension should be taking. The other medical experts have warned about the long-term effects, how even healthy people could become sick, and the rising cases of cancer because of pollution. It just is not about old people, people with co-morbidities, the very young, it is about healthy people of all age groups who are impacted by the air pollution levels. The days of severe AQI going into dangerous territory is supposed to be lasting from a few days to a fortnight, and the emergency conditions are supposed to recede. That it recurs every winter is recalled only at the time of the next winter.
The Delhi-NCR area’s 33 million-plus people are supposed to be going through the thickening fog of pollution like zombies even as various government organisations take the necessary emergency measures till the summer arrives, and winter is left far behind. But it may be time to take special measures to find out how people are being affected and what can be done. The argument that people are helpless and that they are struggling to earn their livelihoods and can barely survive in this stressful atmosphere is true enough and cannot be dismissed. But there are sections of people, the more informed ones, the relatively better-off ones, to sit up and think of the issue, and what lies behind air pollution, cold waves, heat waves, and floods --climate change -- and make it the matter of public concern it is, and how collective action through wider public consultations and people’s involvement is, to use the cliché, the need of the hour. Can there be people’s initiatives, starting from mohallas or neighbourhoods, where simple things like improving the tree cover could be done, parks are tended and protected, and vehicular traffic through the neighbourhood is regulated? These may seem inadequate and token measures but if groups of people in every neighbourhood were to undertake some of these things, the cumulative impact would be much larger.
Organisations like the United Nations agencies and national governments spent huge amounts of money to spread AIDS awareness through the 1990s and the first decade of this century, and rightly so. Is there not a need for a climate change awareness campaign at various levels? Do we not need a Greta Thunberg, the precocious Swedish schoolgirl with support from her parents, who became a vociferous spokesperson on the dangers of climate change. Climate-change denier and now US President-elect Donald Trump had dismissed her presence with his characteristic rude remarks. But what the world perhaps needs is a Greta Thunberg in every country and in every city. The climate crisis is not just the concern of environmental scientists and NGOs dealing with climate change. It is something that should concern everyone, irrespective of class and age and region. There is of course the need that the concern for climate, and what can be done about it, should go beyond marches and placards. It should lead to conversations and debates as to how it is to be tackled. It should be on the top of the political agenda.
Many other cities in India may consider Delhi one of the most polluted cities in the world, and they may think that they are in a better place in Chandigarh, Dehradun, Lucknow, Bengaluru, Kolkata or Hyderabad. But every one of India’s cities will grow larger and face the same problems as Delhi does today. There are lessons to be learnt from the Delhi ordeal. Young professionals want to move away from Delhi to places like Bengaluru, but they are moving from a worse place in terms of pollution to a bad place.
The question has to be how to make cities healthy and not just better ones than the worse. And it is not enough for Delhiites to breathe a sigh of relief when the AQI comes down from 400 and more and hovers in the 300-plus or 200-plus range, and on ideal days goes below 200. It is moderate if it is in the range of 101 to 199, and not a healthy state. Similarly, the 200s and 300s range are ranked poor and very poor. The effort must be to make the air much cleaner. Amelioration is not sufficient. It is an unsatisfactory compromise.
Solutions have to be found based on information, and experts in various fields have to gather the information. But this information has to be shared with people so that they can support the decisions which the authorities take based on the inputs. And if the politicians and bureaucrats are taking time to accept the information and take action, then the people need to push for it. The air pollution problem can be better handled if the public and the experts join hands. This may not be quite as simple as it looks. The experts differ in their assessment of the problems and in the solutions they offer. And all the people are unlikely to agree with all that the experts put before them. But this is a necessary process. Openness is a democratic imperative. People should be aware of the decisions, the basis of the decisions, and how they are executed. Issues like air pollution, which also form part of the larger climate change question, have to be part of the people’s mind-space. These are too important to be deliberated and decided upon in committee rooms. This is not to fault the decisions that are being taken to deal with the air quality problem. But greater awareness and involvement of the people is most needed.