Capital Matters: Delhi fights for cracker-free Diwali

The Delhi state environment department has launched a campaign to uphold the spirit of Diwali as a festival of lights and peace.

In its third year of campaigning it has again sought the help of children for a cracker-free Diwali being celebrated today.

State Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit has appealed to children to shun crackers and bombs and celebrate an eco-friendly Diwali and make it a hat-trick. The children had cooperated the last two years. Several schools have already taken up the matter seriously.

Children along with their teachers are doing the rounds of colonies teaching and appealing to people to say 'No' to firecrackers.

There has been a remarkable improvement in air quality, a check on noise pollution, accidents and heart and respiratory ailments in the past two years. To keep a check on pollution levels in the city, the licencing department had banned the use of 20 types of firecrackers and sparklers.

Says Vinod Gupta, a wholesaler in Sadar Bazar whose well-stocked shop is devoid of customers even during the peak evening hours: "Last year we suffered a 50 per cent loss in earnings. But this time the loss is more than 85 per cent. The business has never been so bad. It does not seem festive time as far as crackers are concerned."

Gupta and his son are into selling grocery but a few days before Diwali the family business is transformed into selling crackers in the wholesale market. Several shop owners like them ensured months in advance that they met all prerequisites, as getting a permit was not easy.

"But," says a seller, "it seems all the effort has been a waste."

For ensuring a safer Diwali, the police have made it mandatory that shops selling crackers must have a floor area of at least nine square metres, and located on streets wide enough to accommodate fire tenders. Also, there is a ban on crackers being sold on pavements. It has resulted in fewer accidents caused by firecrackers.

The Environment Protection Act says that 'manufacture, sale and use' of firecrackers, which produce noise beyond the permissible limit of 125 decibels, is illegal. Anybody violating the rules can be slapped with a huge fine and imprisonment of up to five years.

Yet, according to a Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) official, firecrackers that do not flout the rules on noise limits are still not very popular.

The city government has been focusing its no-crackers campaign in northwest Delhi, which registered the highest pollution levels last Diwali. The campaign has been stretched to cinema slides and the state-owned Doordarshan television channel. It has taken the message 'Say no to fire crackers' to 1,200 capital-based eco-friendly schools through various academic programmes.

Over the past few years, the noise levels at eight specified locations have gone down, but are still way above the prescribed limit, says a CPCB official. These monitoring stations include: All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Lajpat Nagar, New Friends Colony, Connaught Place, India Gate, Mayur Vihar (Phase II), East Arjun Nagar, Patel Nagar and Kamla Nagar.

Meanwhile, the firecracker industry based at Sivakasi in Southern India has suffered a severe blow with the Supreme Court decision to ban loud crackers and also restrict time in which other crackers could be burst. The move has come at a time when the firecracker industry had almost managed to convince the authorities that it is free of child labour.

The All India Federation of Fireworks Associations (AIFFA), Sivakasi, has inserted advertisements asking citizens to 'Say yes to fireworks'. It has called upon people not to shun fireworks claiming, "Fireworks are made for children and not by children."

The firecrackers industry, which has been suffering because of high costs and the anti-child campaign for the last two years, fears this time it could be worse.

Even today there are conflicting views on whether or not Diwali should be celebrated with a bang. As a housewife points out: "The anti-cracker campaign is successful due to the awareness created among children. After all, the law can be effective only if there is a will among the people to follow the rules."