Ordinarily an unscheduled holiday, is welcomed by a school going child or for that matter even a college going. So, when the announcement came from the Delhi government last week of shutting down schools and colleges to escape the tyranny of polluted air, it typically should have been welcomed. However, it was not this time.
Forced indoors for the past 20 months on the account of the coronavirus, the morning chirp of the children on the colony bus stops had just about started. After a long while, the young men and women checked out on their respective wardrobes to be at their sartorial best while visiting the college. And then came the shutdown, the easiest thing for any government to do to cover up its follies.
When the markets remained open, when the workshops and factories remained functional, when the cinema halls continued with their regular show, tipplers continued to tumble, then why shut the doors on the ‘future’ of the country. Does keeping away the children from the school and colleges help ameliorate the air quality?
In media and other social platforms, we keep discussing how keeping students at home was proving to be counter-productive and acting as the root cause of mental and physical ailment among the young souls. Why should these discussions be only for the sake of it and not take into account the irresponsible government actions, which further these ailments?
In this context one may refer to a note submitted by an intervener in the ongoing Supreme Court hearing in the pollution case. The note gives insight into the roadmap followed by two cities viz Mexico City and Singapore to curb pollution and restore ambient air quality to safe levels for breathing.
None of these two models suggest the annual dramatics we get into in the name of pollution curb that is traffic police and the transport department officials going on the pollution under control certificate checking blitzkrieg, the pollution control functionaries raiding such factories for polluting air, which otherwise function under their nose through the year without any curb. To add to these are the car rationing schemes, which the studies have proved to be a complete failure.
Pollution can be fought if the government of the day has the desire to implement a long-term plan. There has to be a government plan to create air quality models, which in turn could be used to forecast potential air pollution episodes.
There should be a continuous process for evaluating the current episodes with previous ones to successfully achieve clean air goals and evaluate efficiency of the control measures.
These clean air models certainly cannot be achieved by theatrics like 'Yudh, PradushanKe Virudh'. One wonders if the government ever tried to study whether these schemes in the past years were able to achieve any goals which could have been set for them.
Same applies for the much-publicized but untested smog towers. The only goal of such exercises is publicity of the government.
While its criminal to make people breath poisonous air, it's a bigger crime to shut down schools and colleges, which had just started reopening after the COVID-forced two year lockdown. COVID created a situation where many children missed knowing what a nursery class was, many did not know what was it like to sit in the board examination
Let the governments be kind to this generation, and not hit their mental make-up any further by shutting down to cover-up their failures.
(The writer is an author and president, Centre for Reforms, Development & Justice)