POV: A MISSION FOR SWACHH AIR
Very few Indians today breathe air that would meet WHO standards. In other words, we are being slowly poisoned to death. Yes, death. I asked my colleagues Rajat and Pitambara to research some numbers in time for Diwali. Of all the scary data they pulled out, this topped the list of shockers: according to The Lancet, in 2015, about 1.8 million Indians died of air pollution. The Chittaranjan National Cancer Institute found that 4.4 million children of Delhi suffer from irreversible lung damage.
Air pollution is not new to India. But it is getting much worse and we are impacted worse than we ever imagined. Dr Randeep Guleria of AIIMS asks that people not walk or run when it is polluted. We’ve lost our right to the outdoors.
It isn’t confined to Delhi, though Delhi is the leader in this parade of horrors. The Central Pollution Control Board, in 2016, measured the air in 28 cities and handed the badge of misery to Gurugram, as the worst polluted. Other baddies included Agra, Thane, Kanpur, Delhi, Muzzarfarpur, Lucknow and Faridabad. But we have thousands of towns and countless rural areas in India where pollution is not measured at all. In 2014, the WHO found that 13 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities were in India. Dr Arvind Kumar, associated with Sir Ganga Ram Hospital in Delhi, points out that there are no nonsmokers in India anymore.
There hasn’t been an emergency response to this. In recent times, instead of addressing crop burning or waste burning, improving public transportation, eliminating diesel in private vehicles, imposing sin-taxes on diesel or regulating the effects of construction, we’ve only had Band-Aid solutions. The fact remains that air pollution kills more Indians than terrorism does and it should be attacked with the same zeal and resources directed at that threat. It is the number one enemy.
India’s recent history has shown that when our top leaders embrace an issue, our civil servants focus on it with results. When Narendra Modi talked about that taboo theme—open defecation and waste—even the topmost government officials began looking for solutions, implementing them (apart from ritually sweeping our roads annually). When Indira Gandhi took interest in wildlife, we got cutting-edge laws and a whole new conservation ecosystem.
Forget PMs. Leadership from other politicians can be transformative too. Maneka Gandhi, as environment minister, drew eyeballs to a host of green issues. As did the organic farming policy in Sikkim, under Chief Minister Chamling. Look at their opposites—despite the rampant crop burning in his state, Amarinder Singh has not held one national level press conference. Nor has the otherwise verbose Arvind Kejriwal shared an emergency plan— surprising for the chief minister of one of the world’s most polluted cities.
Fortunately, citizens are finding ways of collective leadership and of pushing for this leadership at the top. Lawsuits filed by aggrieved citizens in various courts ask for relief. While old and respected organisations like the Centre for Science and Environment have been critical for Delhi’s shift to CNG and many subsequent steps, newer initiatives such as My Right to Breathe, an informal grouping of doctors, health specialists, environmentalists, lawyers and regular folk, are advancing policy and short-/ long-term action for our sheer survival in the NCR. Questioning the wisdom of a marathon—and asking for a shift in 2018—was also an MRTB action. There are several other examples, spawned by angry, desperate, choking citizens. Their very existence throws light on the leadership lacunae today, as we find ourselves in one of our worst health crises. Without talking about this publicly, without struggling openly to confront it, you cannot ‘Make in India’ because you cannot ‘Breathe in India’ and indeed, you cannot Survive for too long in India. What India needs from PM Modi is a Swachh Bharat Mission to clean up our toxic air.
Air pollution kills more Indians than terrorism does and should be attacked with the same zeal and resources directed at that threat. It’s the number one enemy