By Sidharth Mishra
The Supreme Court has raised the red flag on pollution and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal has initiated emergency provisions. This happens almost every year. Why does it always take a whiplash from the court to make Kejriwal government wake up in the matters of life and death?
The biggest strength of the Aam Aadmi Party has been its communication skills, especially those of Mr Kejriwal. He has in his eight years long innings in politics so far has managed to successfully pass the blame for his government’s failures on his political rivals. This time too he blamed the farmers but the Supreme Court decided to call the bluff.
The week after Diwali has been replete with news regarding air pollution, which was followed by river pollution. Reports from credible bodies like the Centre for Science and Environment have refused to squarely blame the neighbouring states for all the ills in Delhi’s air.
The early morning pollution in the national Capital has been blamed on the internal sources. The report says, “it was noticed that the contribution of Delhi’s own sources go up during evening hours and lasts until early morning (7:30 pm-9:30 am). An additional analysis of the trends in traffic speed during October 27-November 6 on 15 key stretches showed that vehicular congestion is back to pre-pandemic times and correlates with the pollution peaks.”
This report is a direct indictment of the Delhi government on creating publicity spectacles like fortnight-long prgrammes ‘Yudh: Pradushan Ke Virudh’. It has ended-up being a freebie distributing fair for the jobless youth of the city. One’s personal experience has been that other than holding the placard with Mr Kejriwal’s picture, the volunteers stationed at traffic lights made no effort to encourage motorists to switch off engines.
The report says, “in the absence of measures like integrated public transport, walking/cycling infrastructure and parking area management, Delhi, where vehicle numbers are explosive at 1.32 crore, is unable to enforce emergency action to control traffic volumes during smog episodes.” Pollution from transport in the national Capital has the lion share of 50 per cent. Automobile pollution has steadily increased thanks to the shrinking public transport network
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The current predicament gives a feeling of deja vu as last year we faced a similar crisis. Then chief minister of Punjab Captain Amrinder Singh had made a very apt remark saying, “How can a country be called developed when its capital city has been reduced to a gas chamber, not by any natural disaster but a series of man-made ones?”
Governance deficit accompanied with brazen publicity blitzkrieg is now thankfully getting noticed. A few months back, everyone in the city went gaga over the installation of smog towers, which claimed to have panacea for city’s polluted air. The national Capital was replete with posters and hoardings of the towers. That the towers have failed goes without saying, and righty the Supreme Court has asked questions on it.
On another front, having engaged in a never-ending slanging match with the rival BJP on Chhath festival celebrations, it dawned on the government at the last minute that they could get the goodwill of the devotees (read voters) only if the river was clean. No wonder desperate moves were made using motorboats and sprinklers to ‘shoo away’ the poisonous foams, which just refused to go away.
The pictures of foamy river in the newspapers, in direct contrast to the image of a serene river used in the advertisement released by Delhi government a day earlier, must have left Mr Kejriwal embarrassed. Did it?
(First Published in The Morning Standard)
