AA Edit | Attitudes To Blame For Miasma Of Indian Air
As Indians, we take comfort in tokenism as various authorities issue guidelines about the effect of festival fireworks on the atmospheric air. The Supreme Court would pass diktats, promote green crackers as a thoughtful solution and state governments would pass orders restricting fireworks to certain hours in the day along the lines suggested by the top court. But would even a small clutch of Indians follow the regulations for the sake of the common good — No
Don’t blame the fireworks and firecrackers. Don’t blame the stubble burning. Just blame us as Indians since we are unable to follow even minor rules and regulations and end up suffering as a nation because each Indian believes the problem is someone else’s. Not one of them would stop letting off a firecracker or fireworks on festival days as this has been a tradition for hundreds of years, or at least since the invention of commercial fireworks.
As toxic air enveloped the major urban centres of the country post-Diwali, all Indians stood up to rave and rant about the poor quality of the air that was barely breathable. Dehradun is said to have seen the steepest rise in AQI at 219 per cent over pre-Diwali days’ average with major metropolises like Chennai, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad not far behind. Paradoxically, Delhi in the NCR saw only a 3.9 per cent rise over the otherwise toxic enough winter air.
As Indians, we take comfort in tokenism as various authorities issue guidelines about the effect of festival fireworks on the atmospheric air. The Supreme Court would pass diktats, promote green crackers as a thoughtful solution and state governments would pass orders restricting fireworks to certain hours in the day along the lines suggested by the top court. But would even a small clutch of Indians follow the regulations for the sake of the common good — No.
As winter sets in over the north of India, the cities of the Gangetic plains have a bad enough time grappling with the deteriorating quality of air as the pollution blanket refuses to lift. As Indians, we are experts at cheating ourselves with statistics. If the government counts the incidence of stubble burning at under 5,000 events in a month, international monitors tell us the actual fires are about 10 times the official numbers as farmers have learnt to cheat the observation satellites that pass over a region at fixed times in the day.
The measuring stations also mysteriously stop functioning when the AQI levels could be rising sky high and the final pollution figures stop at a convenient maximum rather than go the whole hog and find out how much PM2.5 particles are actually in the air that millions of Indians, including the elderly and people with conditions like asthma and COPD, must breathe. The whole system seems to have been built so that we can take refuge in a numb belief that somehow everything will be alright in the end.
If the courts restrict the hours of fireworks, people take delight in defying the diktat. If they say green crackers, people take country crackers as there is a greater bang for the buck. If they say aerial fireworks are dangerous because no one can really control their trajectory and those that stray cause fires as well as burn innocent passersby, people will set off more fancy crackers like rockets and ‘outs’. There is a delight in defiance of orders passed for the common good.
As the noxious fumes rise and the air returns to normal levels in most cities, the resolve not to allow the atmosphere to worsen so much again may last a few days until the next big festival comes along, in celebrating which we must endanger more Indians. If only people see the real statistics of how many people die prematurely because of the foul air we choose to live in, remorse might kick in and the resolve may stay strong enough for a while until it is time to live life the Indian way — with no rules. The simplest explanation for all this — we are like this only.