Diwali: Hard to enforce rules

The Supreme Court ruling ahead of this year’s Diwali festival allows highly regulated noise and emissions from firecrackers. However, it hardly sheds light on the aim behind restricting firecrackers without banning them outright to save the environment. Considering the order clears only low-emission, low-decibel firecrackers nationally — all to be burst in the two hours between 8 and 10 at night — it is clear that all the existing stock becomes redundant. The orders may make a little more sense that last year’s outright ban in New Delhi that was defiantly overlooked by revelers, who were also egged on by the Hindutva brigade conveying their sense of hurt over restrictions on a Hindu festival. The ruling, restricting Christmas and New Year firecrackers to a 35-minute window beginning five minutes to midnight, tries to make a secular point, but it will likely be drowned out by the noise of the arguments over whether fireworks are necessary at all for celebrating anything.

Local police officials are supposed to oversee the regulation of firecrackers. Given the Indians’ pathological dislike for rules and regulations, it is more than likely the orders will be observed more in the breach. The legal argument about Article 21 applying equally to the manufacturers of firecrackers as to the billion plus people who are affected by air pollution fails when taking into account the cause and effect. A million people are said to be dying prematurely every year from the poor air we breathe in urban India. The dilemma of whether to ban firecrackers or not is a subtle acceptance of a national failure to enforce anything like rules and bans. It also remains to be seen how the ecommerce firecracker ban works beyond the big e-tailers. It will be a noisier Diwali than the top court judges envisage, but all of us must accept the blame for this.