The Capital is breathless, because the ruling AAP in Punjab focused on freebies, not the real solutions
Delhi is home to over two crore people, and a population in an equal number resides in the nearby satellite cities. This population of over four crore is now breathless. They cannot breathe. They cannot walk outside their homes. The children cannot go to the schools. The elders cannot sit in the parks. The youngsters cannot go to the playgrounds. The working people have to go to their workplaces by aggravating their health. People in the national capital had never been so depressed.
The national highways from Punjab show pictures of abundant farm fires. Farmers have lit their agricultural fields on fire. They have to prepare for the Rabi crops. Clearing stubble in an environmentally friendly manner will take time and effort. Easy way out is to walk with a kerosene-soaked end of cloth stuck at the end of sticks and set the whole farm fields on fire.
In November last year, there had been 20 times more incidents of farm fires. This year the incidents of farm fires in Punjab seem determined to break all records. Indeed, the farmers have traditionally been burning ‘parali (stubble)’. But the national highways were also lined up with thick vegetation. The green covers in Punjab were thick enough to absorb the smoke, and the national capital never lamented the quick work of the farmers to clear their fields. Now, the people, since the onset of October, begin dreading the prospects of life full of gloom in November that also extends till December until the wind gains pace to bring reprieve to the citizens.
Access to clean air is part of the Right to Life enshrined in Article 21 of the Constitution. This was gained after the Supreme Court banned diesel buses, shut down polluting industries, and made the mass transport system to adopt the CNG mode. All gains made after several years of campaign have just disappeared.
The people in the national capital had made all those gains because there were collective efforts to improve the quality of life. The Centre, the city government and the municipal corporation joined hands despite different political parties being in power at one or the other place. The Atal Bihari Vajpayee led government of the National Democratic Alliance at the Centre gave the people the gift of a clean transportation system through Delhi Metro, while Madan Lal Khurana of the BJP and Sheila Dikshit of Congress were Chief Ministers of the national capital. Similar efforts in the rehabilitation of the polluting industries were taken in collaborative ways and political differences did not prove to be obstacles.
Even now the BJP-led government at the Centre had been working with a committee to curb pollution in Delhi for months. The committee had members from the Ministry of Environment of the Central government, Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Punjab. Union Minister Bhupender Yadav worked round the clock with the stakeholders for several months to ensure that the farmers in the member states don’t resort to setting their agricultural fields. The Cabinet Secretary under the direction of the Prime Minister’s Office also intervened and took regular meetings. Prime Minister Narendra Modi also held marathon meetings last year to deal with the air pollution emergency in the national capital.
Haryana cut down on the incidents of farmers setting fire to their agricultural fields by 30 per cent. Similar results were seen in the districts of Uttar Pradesh which are part of the national capital region. But Punjab defied all efforts. This suggests that the governments in Delhi and Punjab were not interested in solving the challenges for the people in the national capital. This smacks of non-seriousness. It is also a case of being too casual. There is no scientific approach in governance. Chief Minister of Delhi Arvind Kejriwal trivialized Delhi pollution by saying last year that a chemical spray would turn all stubble into compost and the whole issue of smog in the national capital would disappear. Last year he could give the excuse that the Congress government might not have allowed him to spray that chemical in the farm fields of Punjab. But the Aam Aadmi Party came to power in Punjab in March this year with a thumping majority.
The Bhagwant Singh Mann government should have gone the extra mile in Punjab to implement the Arvind Kejriwal model of clearing stubble from the farm field. Kejriwal had claimed that the farmers would have become rich with ‘compost as gold’. But the circumstances on the ground suggest that Kejriwal and Mann both had least concerns of the issue that would make life of the people nightmarish.
Now, both Kejriwal and Mann have unabashedly claimed that pollution in Delhi is a national problem. In a way, they have thrown in the towel. They have rather sought to suggest that they will not do anything to solve the problems, and resort to the easy task of shutting down primary schools, sending the government employees to work from home and so on. There can be no parallel to such recklessness in abandoning responsibilities. The people in the national capital region sadly pay heavy prices for such reckless misgovernance.
In fact, it would be rather apt to say that the people of the national capital are paying the price for an anarchist government in the city. The head of this government promotes disregard to institutions. The Kejriwal government pushed ahead with the Yoga in park scheme for elders when Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena had not yet given the permission. Now, the city government with a complete disregard to due process and in a way institutionalizing anarchy is getting the senior citizens to come to the parks to do Yoga when they can actually not breathe.
The people in the national capital are complaining of lung impairment in a large number. The asthmatic patients are much harassed. Younger people in the national capital are complaining of arthritis. The skin doctors are reporting an abnormally large number of patients. The people have sore eyes and throats. The migrant workers who cannot afford to sit out at homes since they have to earn their livelihoods are coughing their hearts out. The college students are facing disruptions in their studies. The sports persons are losing days and months in their practice sessions.
Anarchist mindsets never bring solutions. The farmers in Punjab need support from the government and the civic society that they must adopt the good practices as done by their counterparts in Haryana and UP for their own welfare. The farmers in Punjab have to be convinced that it has to be a win-win situation for them to adopt machinery-based solutions for the stubble. The Punjab government needs to spend funds on farmers in the state in place of buying freebies for votes. Anarchists, who believe that freebies are the passports to governance, have taken the people in the national capital to such a state of affairs. The people must hold them accountable.
(The author is Director, Public Policy Research Centre)
