Stop protesting against Delhi-NCR’s air quality. Stop posting screenshots of your city’s Air Quality Index (AQI) on the social media platform where you get the most likes. Stop writing essays. Stop raising your voice. Stop tagging the government handles at least.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t represent the ruling dispensation. I have been a resident of the National Capital Region for over 10+ years now. A closer examination of my lungs and my driving seat vocabulary will prove this beyond doubt. In these 10 years, I have seen various permutations and combinations of governments in Delhi and its adjoining states — the smog supply chain. I have also been an unwilling guinea-pig to various experiments by each of these governments. The rulers have changed, the ways to curb pollution have changed, but one thing that has stayed constant is poor AQI.
Each winter, Delhi residents protest — on social media and on-ground — and force the government to “do something”. In a bid to appear vigilant, the government then inflicts short-term experiments such as sudden vehicle emission controls that allow the traffic police to remit to extort thousands — a double whammy of pollution and punishing control measures. Vehicles are impounded. Construction work is hit. The AQI remains the same, a breeze blows and improves things. The rulers keep administering the bitter pill to us NCR residents — a mere placebo, though — in an attempt to assure us that things are going to improve.
Imagine you are unable to breathe, you call a doctor, he comes home, and to cure your breathlessness, he whips you repeatedly with his stethoscope. You cry in agony, tell him it isn’t working; the doctor apologizes, assures to change the treatment, and takes out a club wrapped with barbed wire, which he says he imported for ₹14 crores. So, my humble request is: I will learn to breathe, as I don’t wish to be beaten up every season.
China solved Beijing’s pollution problem in less than 10 years. In 2013, the AQI in the Chinese capital used to touch 700, people were choking and children were at risk. Then, China did an ingenious thing: It erected a giant smog tower in the city, and asked its citizens to follow the odd-even rule. No, not really. Instead of going for such hacks, it did the boring thing of shutting down/relocating the industries around the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.
It didn’t treat it as a city issue, it fixed the entire region. It was able to do it because it doesn’t enjoy the perks of democracy and associated federalism. Now, its AQI stays in double digits.
In India, the other bit of “innocence” is relying on pollution-source data that are averaged out over a year instead of looking for pollution sources that peak in winter. Hence, the maximum focus is on controlling vehicular emissions. A Pollution-Under-Control (PUC) certificate is our answer to a meter-defying AQI reading of 999.
Moving industries or effectively stopping stubble burning require political will, which is usually spent on issues yielding better results at the ballot box.
The unfortunate bit is that although the pollution issue has been raised prior to quite a few elections now, our politicians have realized it isn’t a deal breaker for the voting populace.
If the amount of money transferred to the Jan Dhan account of a female member of a family is more than the AQI of the city, it nullifies the issue.
Delhi goes through this cycle every year. It begins with monsoons, when the roads made by the L1 vendor peels off, drains get clogged with corruption, and the logged water is eagerly waiting to enter your car’s exhaust pipe. People curse the infrastructure and regret not moving abroad.
Then, the festivals kick in. We get busy in the revelry, and everything is forgotten. The trance is broken when the government and Bollywood celebrities remind you to not burst firecrackers. And then another round of pollution-whining begins and protests happen, which ends in time for Holi. The seasoned politicians know this cycle, this amnesia, and the Jan-Dhan trick.
The upper-middle class will keep waking up every December to try and wake the government up. The latter will give some more bitter pills and we will find some comfort in the bitterness. It will give us a sense of “doing something”. Another two months will pass, and we will forget. And like many other people who often fantasize about moving out of the city, but can’t in reality, I will spend another ten years here, enhancing my driving-seat vocabulary.
Abhishek Asthana is a tech and media entrepreneur, and tweets as @gabbbarsingh. The views expressed are personal
