This Diwali, Indians are opting for greener firecrackers

OFFICIALS WANT TO CURB ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE FROM ANNUAL FESTIVAL

India hopes to temper the environmental damage from its biggest annual holiday today with lowemission firecrackers and light shows, but the plan’s uneven roll-out has hurt some businesses and proven difficult to enforce.

Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, is typically celebrated by setting off firecrackers late into the night with friends and family, compounding already-hazardous air quality levels.

Landmark ruling

In response to a petition filed on behalf of three infants, India’s Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling in October 2018 that banned conventional firecrackers and enforced a two-hour limit for setting them off — an order that many people flouted last year, contributing to toxic smog blanketing New Delhi the following day.

This year, firecracker sellers say business has dropped significantly.

“My business has been hit a lot, it’s down by about 70 per cent,” said Dhanraj Jain, who has been selling firecrackers in Old Delhi for eight years. He said the “green” crackers cost as much as double the price of conventional ones.

“Green” firecrackers, indicated by a green logo and a special QR code, emit 30 per cent fewer emissions than traditional ones and don’t contain arsenic or lead, according to the government-funded Council

for Scientific and Industrial Research.

The council oversaw eight different laboratories in developing them after last year’s Supreme Court ruling, said Rakesh Kumar, director of the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute in Nagpur, India. “We thought, let’s be conservative and achieve a 30 per cent reduction this year, and next year we can try for more,” he said.

AFP Customers buy firecrackers on the eve of the Hindu Diwali festival at a market in Amritsar, India, yesterday. For the second day in succession, thousands of patients in government hospitals in Tamil Nadu continue to suffer as around 17,000 doctors are on a strike since Friday, demanding pay parity. Besides pay parity with their counterparts in the Central government, the doctors are also demanding the implementation of the time-bound promotion, and the non-reduction in the numbers of the doctors in hospitals. The striking doctors have said that in patients will not be examined unless an emergency happens and life saving/ medical/surgical emergencies will be attended to. Meanwhile, on Friday DMK President M.K. Stalin urged the Tamil Nadu government and the striking doctors to hold talks and find a solution as patients were suffering.