Mujhe kuchch karna hai
The air in Delhi is at gas-chamber levels despite all good intentions. We only fool ourselves by trivialising a grave crisis
The headline for this week’s National Interest is inspired by Raj Kapoor’s Bobby (1973). Dimple Kapadia pleads with Rishi Kapoor in Lata Mangeshkar’s voice: “Mujhe
kuchch kehna hai” (I must tell you something). And Rishi Kapoor responds, “Mujhe bhi kuchch kehna
hai” (even I must tell you something). It tugs at your heart-strings as teenagers bare their love in Anand Bakshi’s subtle lyrics.
There is, however, nothing subtle about the phenomenon we are analysing — by twisting these famous lines, replacing “kehna” with “karna”. So when faced with a serious crisis, even a grave national emergency like North India’s murderous air quality, our response usually is, echoing Dimple, “mujhe
kuchch karna hai” (I must do something about this). The rest of us in the larger governance elite— the judiciary, activists, the media, and, the smartest of all, politicians — then become Rishi Kapoor’s “mujhe bhi kuchch karna hai”.
Everybody then does her “something” and salves her conscience; the media conjures up glorious headlines; and talking heads declare victory. Google and check how many times, especially in the Diwali winter months, drastic, one-shot solutions have been announced and hailed as a brave death-blow to smog. There is no effort to research and address the larger problem. It takes too long, real solutions aren’t sexy. They require too much time and onerous hard work. Yet, you can’t be seen to be doing nothing about this emergency. So let’s at least do “something” — no harm if it gives me an opportunity to ridemy hobby-horse, or slaymy own favourite demon, because when I have done my something, my responsibility is over. You can, meanwhile, buy that air-purifier (that costs more than an air-conditioner) and keep that steroid inhaler handy. And if you can’t afford these, gasp, and pray.
This is a quick recounting of some headline-grabbing things our champion smog-slayers have done in the lastmany years. Somebody has banned all vehicles beyond a certain age in the capital; another has cracked down on diesel; a pollution tax has been levied on heavy trucks entering the city; work stoppage has been ordered at construction sites on a whim; water spraying has been ordered; households have been summarily fined (~50,000, no less) for leaving debris on the kerbside; an odd-even scheme has been implemented with endless fanfare on TV channels, sponsored by airpurifier brands; and now crackers have been banned. To know how much better our air quality is as a result, check the readings on your air filter.
There is no doubt that the activist-judiciary complex that rose in the mid-90s — the years of the Supreme Court’s Mr Justice “Environment” Kuldip Singh and public interest litigation (PIL) warrior MC Mehta — has made a real contribution. Its high point was the successful shifting of Delhi’s public and commercial transport to CNG. It brought about a phenomenal improvement in air quality. But this benefit peaked a decade ago.
Much that has followed since then is gimmicky, thoughtless, arrogant, and dictatorial and something on the lines of this: We, the activists, judges, friends in the media, know what is best for you. So we order, and you follow — on fear of contempt of court. Ask no questions, seek no accountability. Meanwhile, also learn to nebulise your children.
Delhi’s air is a desperate problem, but some of the solutions have been too desperate and unthinking — the overnight shifting of all of Delhi’s cottage industry to outlying areas like Bawana, with no time, patience, or commitment to build infrastructure, physical or human. Industry and jobs were moved out before public transport and housing could fetch up, so the results were job losses, the spawning of new slums, the illegal housing sprawls built by land-grab mafias, and simply shifting pollution from Delhi’s relatively core areas to the outskirts. There was insufficient thought to the kind of industry Delhi should have and on a policy to move in that direction. Funny, there was the belief that one privileged community can load its pollution on a lesser one. That poison-laden air does not respect municipal or even national boundaries was a lesson we were taught by the father of modern environmental activism Lester Brown in his bible on the issue, World Without Borders, published in 1972.
In 2015 the Aam Aadmi Party, a party of former activists, took power in Delhi. It was quick to see the opportunity to shift from its old anti-corruption agenda to anti-pollution and took gimmickry to another plane altogether. I have compiled the following facts with the help of my colleague Rajgopal Singh.
First, it announced the so-called odd-even scheme, which made no difference to air quality. Then followed the promise of installing five giant air-purifiers, a mist fountain, and a virtual chimney in the most polluted areas. It was even done on a “trial basis” in October last year. There were other promises: Mechanised, vacuum-sweeping of Delhi’s roads to reduce dust, our nastiest lung-destroyer. Spotted one of those lately?
The Environment Pollution Control Authority (EPCA), Supreme Court, and National Green Tribunal, meanwhile, kept doing their own things, passing so many orders on vehicles and fuels that you’d need to call McKinsey to make sense of these. A reading of the comprehensive EPCA report submitted to the Supreme Court on February 1 this year (http://www.epca.org.in/EPCA-Reports19991917/Report-no.65.pdf) is revealing, especially the section on the status report on implementing Supreme Court orders (pages 14-20). E ven more instructive is the report the EPCA has submitted on April 4 this year (http://www.epca.org.in/EPCA-Reports19991917/Final-EPCA-Report-71-CAP-for-Delhi-NCR.pdf), detailing the Supreme Court’s action plan on Delhi’s smog (pages 10-29). It is well-meaning and comprehensive, and would usher in a perfect world. But it is impossible to implement, short of a revolution, or, let me push the envelope, even after a full revolution. It has steps that will be binding on at least two dozen agencies of the Centre and several states besides, indeed, Delhi. It will have implications for budgets (buy thousands of buses and create special corridors for them), fuels, taxes, agriculture in adjoining and distant states, Haryana and Punjab, and municipal and civic operations.
If you read each point of this plan, you will see that the least it will take to implement is a full-time Supreme Court bench, or maybe the entire Supreme Court, sitting on a daily basis with a dozen empowered committees to oversee everything. With the greatest respect, we have to say that while this makes brilliantly reassuring reading, it’s not going to happen. Here is a cruel fact-check: No new buses have been bought by Delhi after the surge during the Commonwealth Games in 2010, ongoingMetro phase3 is the first to be delayed by more than a year, and even the plan for Phase-4 is delayed by a full two and a half years. The whole mess is what we might call a dog’s breakfast that even the gods can’t unscramble.
It’s harsh, but not speaking the truth would be cowardly and dishonest to our children’s lungs. These committees, created as a result of an MC Mehta PIL petition beginning in 1985, have done a stellar job, but have now outlived their utility. Now they are bored, tired and repetitive like any other government bureaucracy with its sense of entitlement. In its 20th year now, the EPCA could be among our longest-lasting Court-mandated authorities. Its chief, Bhure Lal (whose name recently surfaced as a Bofors investigator), took over the EPCA in 1998 and has carried on through the tenure of 17 chief justices of India. All that would have been fine if, meanwhile, our air quality had improved. It’s time for the Centre to set up a new, empowered political authority under the prime minister, if necessary, and include in it all chief ministers concerned; set targets for it; and make it accountable. It’s time also, I say with the greatest humility, for the courts to get off the kerb. They have done a lot, but why let the executive pass the buck to them, sit back, and mock the ineffectuality of their actions.