As I write this SWAT analysis, I am betting on a macabre joke: what’s going to hurt more — my running, itchy, irritated eyes, which I need to constantly wash in order to see, or my poor, exhausted lungs inhaling poison with every breath?
As Delhi battles apocalypse now—our annual air health emergency—nobody in any position of authority who can make a difference cares. It’s as simple as the fact that our health (years of which are shaved off by this poison—last count, 15, according to the experts) is not an electoral issue.
If you step out, and unfortunately, if you are not a VIP, you are forced to, you end up smoking the equivalent of five packets of cigarettes. Yes, you read that right—five packets of cigarettes—even if you are a lifetime non-smoker like me.
Your children can’t go to school, older people can’t step out to the doctor or to a park for a simple restorative walk. Simply put, you are a prisoner in your home, tethered to the air filter, which sets off alarmed shrieks every time the door opens. As the Air Quality Index hits 500, it can’t measure the new poison air heights we are taking Delhi to.
Soon, clean air will also become a matter of inequalities, with those who can afford air filters at home, in their cars, and offices while their daily commute adds to the gas chamber for the have-nots of the slums.
Nobody cares
So, does anybody care? After all, Delhi is the national capital, a matter of pride in a nation that can’t seem to stop announcing its arrival as a power on the world stage. That answer is unequivocal: a clear no. Nobody cares at all. Delhi is on its own.
In fact, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which jointly run Delhi, pretend to be enemies in all matters, engaging in protracted, undignified public squabbles like veteran drama queens, but on this, they are one—Delhi is fast being turned into a slum, with the Delhi Ridge, our only green lung, seeing its trees felled at an alarming rate to set up slums. New voters are important with upcoming elections, whose unauthorised construction can be regularised in return for votes.
Plus, the slums even have rate charts of the “hafta” (pay-off) to every civic and other enforcement authority.
Delhi is currently dystopian: awful roads which resemble potholes more than anything motorable, tens of deadly accidents every day as people break laws with impunity, heaps of uncollected rubbish, cows wandering the streets, daily water and electricity crises, and nobody who cares.
This, despite paying around 30 per cent tax and even a road tax every time you buy a vehicle. Sadly, Delhiites don’t care where their taxes go.
A mountain of rubbish, a CM who claimed that he would live like an ordinary man but then went on to make a billionaire’s official home, and a Lieutenant Governor who orders more than 3,000 trees cut and barely attracts a rap on the knuckles from the Supreme Court.
The message from on high is that we simply don’t care. The online warriors will attack me and call me anti-national, but the simple truth is that the British, who ruled India for 200 years and treated us like slaves, cared more for the infrastructure of Delhi.
This is why Lutyens’ Delhi remains an oasis of green trees, well-designed roads, and beautiful low-rise architecture dotted with parks and green lungs like Lodhi Gardens and Nehru Park—which is why our modern-day rulers fight to live there and never leave.
It has not occurred to our modern-day politicians to build enclaves like Lutyens’ Delhi or to even build any parks for Delhiites. They think clean air and decent surroundings are luxuries that their voters don’t deserve. Everyone pays taxes, and everyone gets a slum is the mantra.
Another slum for votes
And, can you really blame them? We, the voters, don’t vote on civic or health issues but on religious and caste divides. All the politicians have to do is sharpen those divides, and they romp home free of any responsibility for bread-and-butter issues.
Amazingly, international newspapers like The Guardian, The New York Times, and Gulf News take note of the air emergency in Delhi and north India, but for the mainstream Indian media, it is business as usual.
In a way, our health emergency is a crisis foretold, as the Punjab and Haryana farmers (sacred cows for politicians) refuse to follow the law laid down by the Supreme Court and burn crop residue.
The authorities, in both cases—BJP, which boasts of its “double-engine governance”, and AAP—don’t act against farmers. Then comes Diwali, and against all health warnings, crackers are burst because you are not a good Hindu if you fall for “sickular” lies.
The next day, the atmosphere and pollution in Delhi resemble carnage. And, a season which I remember as the best in Delhi—winter—which I, a lifelong Delhiite who loves this city, now becomes the season of hell as our AQI turns “severe”.
Collectively, we are killing our city and our environment, and the real victims are our children. Nothing will change. I know people who’ve decided enough is enough and are giving a break to their lungs by moving from Delhi. Do our politicians care? Not at all. They will simply establish another slum for votes.
