‘Sadly, clean air today is only for a small elite’
Supreme Court advocate, green crusader; battling for our right to breathe clean air by getting power plants to comply with current emission norms; Ritwick Datta, 42, is a petitioner to protect India’s wetlands and is trying to get the Biodiversity Act, 20
Air is a basic need, something we don’t even think about, and is critical for our well-being. Yet, it is being systematically polluted and, sadly, this is a reflection of the manner in which we have cared for our environment; it highlights the overall environmental quality of the nation. The importance of clean air cannot be emphasised enough and Article 21 in the Constitution, the Right to Life, has been reinterpreted to mean the right to clean air, freedom to live and breathe easy, irrespective of whether one lives in rural or urban India. Everyone needs to have access to clean air without discrimination but, unfortunately, this right is compromised and only certain categories of people in society have the privilege of breathing clean air. This has sadly become a freedom enjoyed by only a small, elite percentage of India’s population.
There are other areas of the green legacy that are being severely compromised. Things were so much better in the ’90s when there was an emphasis on public hearings for projects and people’s opinions were taken onboard at every stage of the environmental decision-making process. Today, public participation in green decision-making is negligible so that the freedom to participate, to dissent, is gone. For most new projects, public input is not sought and there is decreasing space for public views. That freedom has been taken away from us. India is slowly beginning to replicate the Chinese system where the common man is seldom taken into account. Freedom of choice is today being restricted, as people have no veto power.