By Sidharth Mishra

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal with party colleague and Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann has finally said that heavy pollution in Delhi is due to stubble burning in Punjab. They went onto add that the situation became grim as their government in Punjab was just six months old and that they needed time to overcome the challenge.

\That Mr Kejriwal had ever cared he could have learnt from the columns of this newspaper as far back as July this year about the emerging situation. This year, as had been promised by Kejriwal last year, the stubble decomposition capsules developed at Pusa Institute in Delhi was to wonders.

It works like this that four Pusa capsules have to be dissolved in water to make a 25-litre solution, which is enough to spray on one hectare of land. After the solution is sprayed, it takes about 20 to 25 days for the crop remnants to decompose. The crisis now reveals that while Punjab used the capsules in just a few thousand acres, the neighbouring states of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh have brought down the incidents of stubble burning by using this solution in the lakhs of acres. 

By Sidharth Mishra

In VK Saxena, the new Lieutenant Governor of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal has bumped into the most serious challenge of his remarkable political journey till now. The master manipulator of public discourse, Kejriwal’s politics revolves around projecting himself as the righteous underdog. This well-crafted image honed through deft media management and spending 1000s of crores of rupees in advertising, has taken a severe hit ever since Saxena took over as LG, five months back.

Saxena, a self-proclaimed activist like Kejriwal himself, has given the latter a run for his money on his own pitch. Saxena’s activism, sans rhetoric has started resulting in concrete and visible work on the ground for all to see. That he also chooses to be on the streets and communicates with the people and the Media proactively has put the ever aggressive Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on the back foot, with little to attack Saxena with. This result oriented and time bound approach of Saxena to get things done is in stark contrast to the “all sound no fury” style of the Delhi CM.

By Sidharth Mishra

Diwali is here and so is the worsening Air Quality Index (AQI) in the national Capital region. While the promise of no paddy stubble burning in the fields of Punjab has come a cropper, the saving grace has been Supreme Court’s tough stand on not allowing sale of fire crackers in the national Capital.

The Delhi government, under pressure from the Supreme Court-appointed Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) and the measures initiated by it, has banned the storage, sale and use of firecrackers in Delhi with stringent punishment for those violating the ban. However, this has been sought to be made into a political issue by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) especially with an eye on the upcoming Municipal Corporation polls.

The BJP wants the ban to go and has blamed the AAP government for deliberately banning firecrackers on a ‘Hindu festival’ that is Diwali. They attacked AAP for practicing double standards citing videos of AAP workers burning fire crackers in the party celebrations. The BJP has asked how is it that the AAP workers have the ‘license’ to burn firecrackers without the threat of any stringent punishment.

By Sidharth Mishra

During the heydays of Anna Hazare agitation, two young faces started to appear on the television as the spokesperson for movement leader Arvind Kejriwal. One was doing article ship for chartered accountancy, and the second had left behind her job as a school teacher to be part of the movement.

The former was Raghav Chadda and the other Atishi Marlena. They in a way represented the Indian youth, who supported the movement to seek a change in the political system.

Last heard Chadha is likely to be interrogated in the Delhi liquor scam, which is alleged to have funded Aam Aadmi Party's poll campaign Punjab. Atishi on the other hand was seen justifying Arvind Kejriwal's desire to have Goddess Lakshmi's picture on the currency notes.

By Sidharth Mishra

A fortnight after it was mentioned in these columns, Delhi University has finally accepted the delay in the start of the academic session. With now classes scheduled to begin from November 2, the session would effectively be behind by three-and-half months.

Defending the delay, the Registrar of Delhi University incredulously blamed the pandemic for the delay. Poor pandemic! every second laggard is now putting blame on it for the delay in their work. While blaming the pandemic, this particular official probably did not care to check the academic session status of some of the other universities.

Even a government-run Guru Gobind Singh Indraprasth University has begun its session nearly a month before Delhi University would be starting. That the academic calendar has been issued in haste is evident from the fact that it has not catered to or synched with the admission process for the first semester students. For them the session would effectively get started only November-end.

By Sidharth Mishra

In a few years from now, if a historian was to recall takeaway from the centenary year of the prestigious Delhi University, it would be a very gloomy picture. Despite normalcy having returned post-Covid, Delhi University this year is going to set a records sorts for delaying the start of academic session by almost four months.

Till some years ago, July 15 was day when the session would start at the prestigious university, come what may. Even when there were changes from annual to semester system or from three year to four-year-degree programme and the reverse, the session was not known to have been disrupted the way it has happened this time.

The university authorities would put the blame at the door of the University Grants Commission (UGC) and the National Testing Agency (NTA) for the delay in the conduct of the Common University Entrance Test (CUET). The delay has largely been there because the UGC decided to expand the scope of the erstwhile Central Universities Common Entrance Test (CUCET).

By Sidharth Mishra

GRAP, the Graded Response Action Plan — a set of anti-air pollution measures followed according to the severity of the situation, has come in to force. It’s a long list of directions to prevent pollution but the document has largely remained silent on how to grapple pollution in the national Capital from stubble burning in Punjab.

The withdrawal of Monsoon leads to drop in wind speed. This comes at a time when crop stubble is burnt in the fields of Punjab and wind direction changes to northwest. This leads to build up of pollutants in the air especially in the national Capital. GRAP is being introduced from October 1, a fortnight before the use start of stubble burning in Punjab and complete withdrawal of Monsoon.

By Sidharth Mishra

The skull-drudgery indulged into by the Arvind Kejriwal government is not limited the education sector. Another major area which has been witness to a systemic collapse in the national Capital is the transport sector.

Come winters and the national Capital is agog with the smog from burning fields of Punjab, is it? Though Mr Kejriwal has insisted on this fact in past years, with an AAP government in Punjab now, would he repeat the same allegation this year?

As we wait for the air quality to deteriorate, let’s face the fact that one of major factors for the increase in air pollution in the national Capital over the years is the collapse of public transport system. Due to its shrinking fleet, the public transporter – Delhi Transport Corporation, has been forced to shut down its depots.

In the past seven years the number of operational bus depots has come down from 46 to 39. The bigger shame is that 99.15 percent buses of the operational DTC fleet are over-aged and not fuel-efficient, thus adding their bit to the pollution in the city.