"Winter is coming” is one of the most iconic lines in George RR Martin’s Game of Thrones series. The same line can evoke the same kind of dread for Indians. Winter is a season for turning our country into a post-apocalyptic landscape.
It is a festive season across India, and any festive season for Indians is a license to pollute the environment like there is no tomorrow. First comes the Ganesh festival in Mumbai, followed by the Vijayadashami celebrations across the country. We compete to immerse Plaster of Paris idols in our water bodies; streets are blocked off, and pandals go up. Loud music plays through scratchy speakers… and the bigger the cacophony, the greater the religious merit.
Then comes the crop burning, a ritualistic art form perfected by the farmers in the Punjab and Haryana plains. Soon, the cities in North India will have an AQI above 400 on a good day. It doesn’t matter that most cities are already crowded, filled with filth and garbage, and have a patchy garbage-disposal plan. India has the most polluted rivers and air in the world, and our crops are grown with pesticides. But once the crop burning starts, it becomes a scene straight out of hell.
If you travel through the plains of Punjab in the haze and smoke, you can see thousands of bonfires lit as far as the eye can see… and people emerge from this morgue like characters from a post-apocalyptic film. It is ironic that many of the war-torn areas in the world have a better AQI.
Hinduism and Indian culture have always been highly environmentally conscious. We have revered every river, mountain, hill, tree, and body of water, and considered the earth itself a goddess. It is unbelievable that such a civilisation would descend into this kind of chaos and decay. Forget the reverence towards nature; do we even respect our fellow human beings or ourselves? Our civic behaviour goes against common sense. No creature in the world would behave with such callousness and disregard for one’s own safety and well-being. Last Diwali broke all records for air, water, sound, and light pollution across most cities in India. Bengaluru, Chennai, Pune, and many others matched Delhi’s AQI of over 1,000, at least for a day. For Delhi and the Gangetic belt, where an AQI of 400 is considered a good day of clean air, mindless Diwali celebrations had a devastating effect. Unofficial reports and private AQI monitors registered AQI above 3,000 in many places across Delhi. Official AQI monitors had miraculously stopped functioning at places where they couldn’t be fudged with localised water sprays. It is as if the government has given up on its citizens, bent upon self-destruction. Imagine the plight of heart patients, invalids, animals, birds and people in hospitals. We can congratulate ourselves on the dubious distinction of having almost 44 of the world’s most polluted cities spread across the north of Vindhyas. The other six are across the border, in Pakistan and Bangladesh. This area of great plains, fed by mighty rivers, the most fertile land in the world, the cradle of civilisation, now hosts almost 130 crore people across three countries, one sixth of humanity and yet is the most unliveable place in the world. To add insult to injury, our Diwali celebrations in Europe, the American continent, and Australia have ensured that cities with substantial Indian populations have achieved Indian standards of air quality in otherwise pristine places.
Any criticism of this self-destructive madness invites whataboutery? It doesn’t matter if one is getting cooked in toxic air, but the questions to counter sanity go like, ‘Why are you not banning the religious festivals of other religions like EID or Christmas? Don’t they burst firecrackers for New Year’ and so on. Every country in the world has its celebrations, and fireworks are used in many parts of the world as part of festivities. But no one does this so recklessly and manages to make the entire country a gas chamber. No major cities outside India have multiple fire accidents during the festive season, as residents choose to hurl fire bombs at each other from their high-rises. It is estimated that Delhi’s life expectancy is cut by seven years because of its toxic air. Deepavali is a festival of lights, not toxic fumes and loud crackers. If fireworks are required, they should be done in a controlled environment, as they are for traditional temple festivals. It is free for all now, and our streets after Diwali look as if a century-long civil war has been going on. If some citizens lack common sense, the authorities have a duty to step in and prevent this madness.