Talking Shop: Looming breathlessness

"Water and air, the two

essential fluids on which all

life depends, have become

(large) global garbage cans"

– Jacques-Yves Coustea

Taunt the titans, and they shall surely and eventually strike back, amid-a-force. That is now happening, with a vehemence that is scary and advancing rapidly. Smog of a vicious variety surrounds us and is quite overwhelmingly visible, but we recuse ourselves nonetheless. On a recent drive back to Delhi from Amritsar, I witnessed the mayhem of pollution in its real propensity. At 10 and 11 am, the missus and I rejoiced for a mite over the onset of fog, till we realized that it was just environmental smut (smog) in its most devilish avataar. And all along the highway, farmlands were ablaze, spewing untold ashes and particulates into the skies, fanned by north-westerly winds, on to Haryana and Delhi-NCR.

If we go back just a few weeks, despite the hammering verdict of the Supreme Court, Delhi had firecrackers screeching and booming our very innards (I am yet to see a report on how many were arrested or brought to book for their vagrancies). Clearly, we are a true and pliable democracy, one that absolves even law-breakers when they demerit set practices and norms, more so in the name of religious, mental fervour and obstinate discrepancy. We shan't learn, it seems, even though our skies and lungs bespeak a whimsical tale, a pathetic and less-than-altruistic illustration of the aberration that we have begotten upon ourselves.

How do I manifest this? Well, give me a paragraph or more and I shall show you what we were supposed to be, and what we have turned out to be instead. The numbers shall talk and I find myself and my words a-numbed and a-humbled, much at the feet of symbolic and inundating victories through ache-able and destitute histrionics.

What a drive...

The numbers shall talk, again, and no one can negate them. In all, around 80 per cent of people living in Delhi now allegedly suffer from respiratory ailments due to pollution. Come a bit hither to Uttar Pradesh, where 11 cities have recorded less-than-apt air quality. Here, the ruling party's Varun Gandhi has quoted rather eloquently, recently, that 110,000 infants were killed in 2019 alone due to air pollution, born after the parents' long-term exposure to outdoor and household pollution. More so, 1.67 million annual deaths are being (ex)tolled amongst the adult population in this region alone.

Let's move on then to air purifiers, whose demand has boomed. In Delhi, where pollution-related curbs were lifted and schools opened, the air quality remains "very poor". It is thus a tough phase for a majority of Indians who can't afford air purifiers—I am one of them. For us, life continues amid phlegm, dust and breathlessness. Children grow up with stunted lungs, most amid abject poverty. Mothers clutch dying children and wail their eyes out, but there is no reckoning of whatsoever thereof. At the other end of this (in)glorious spectrum, a new India thrives in SUVs and merry holiday shenanigans.

I saw a gist of this problem with my own eyes—or perhaps I didn't—for it was all a blurred miasma. The more I drove, the less I could see. I witnessed hundreds of kilometers of a mess that farmers will not admit to, but are creating each year, just before-winter. Governments, apparently, are less than efficacious or capable. They are so impotent or inept that they can't stop the burning of stubble. Whoa and behold, some entrenched agents even instigate this. End of day, there's fire, fire, everywhere, and not a g(l)oat to see.

A complex problem

The situation is complex and involves many-a-score intricacies, in this instance the burning of stubble, some resultant dust and a hell of a lot of industrial pollution. Your world and mine is not ideal, nor is this your predicament alone. In a clean and unencumbered world, we may have manifested and corrected our response and responded to this hiatus. Today, we see neither. We are now witnessing a climactic mayhem. How so? Here is how.

Of the 30 most polluted cities in the world, 21 are in India. And at least 14 crore people in India breathe air that is at least 10 times or more polluted than the WHO safe limit. And 13 of the world's 20 cities with the highest annual levels of air pollution are in India. Wow and woah! Sadly, a further 51 per cent of pollution in India is caused by industries, 27 per cent by vehicles, 17 per cent by crop-burning and 5 per cent by other sources. Yet, we rejoice. Let's guess which city leads the list in India in terms of abject pollution—Amritsar it is. And that is exactly where I drove from last week.

You want more? India is the world's largest consumer of fuel-wood, agricultural waste and biomass for energy. We annually use 14.87 crore tonnes of coal replacement worth of fuel-wood and biomass for energy. The overall contribution of fuel-wood, including sawdust and wood waste, is 46 per cent, all told, the rest being agricultural waste and biomass dung. In urban areas, traditional fuel constitutes 24 per cent and we tend to burn ten-fold more than the United States itself.

What is moral?

Not much. Except that we are running out of resources, give or take a pinch. We are also running out of spleen, guts and nuts. These depletions alone exemplify our running out of breath. I thus tend to look helter and skelter, hither and thither, but I find little solace. For there is little left in that beatified and forgotten whirlwind—the dream is all but gone, as are our wonder-years.

Thus then, I go for a drive down bully-lane, driven by my own redoubtable past. Instead of the bulwark and the edifice that I grew up with and saw till some years back, I now hear un-answerable questions—'Kal kya hoga' (What shall happen tomorrow)? 'Aap meri dekhbhal karenge?' (Will you take care of me}.

I can answer only with a saying from James Holzhauer, "(I know that...) Life goes on if you make a big bet and lose. But if you don't give yourself the best chance of winning, you're going to kick yourself tomorrow." Through the mist of the fog and the smog that I have witnessed personally, mostly self-created and all ill-contained, we have already kicked ourselves in some rare parts. Let's see how we sustain.

The writer is a veteran journalist and communications specialist. He can be reached on narayanrajeev2006@gmail.com. Views expressed are personal