Toxic air, smoke and heavy breathing… whose fault is it?

Just think, in our own city, every person is walking around hiding his face for a month now. Food is poisonous, water is poisonous, now even if a person breathes, polluted air is going into the lungs. The question is, in such a situation, what are we storing for the coming generations. Will they not get clean water, clean air?

If this situation continues, then in the coming years our children will walk with oxygen cylinders on their backs for clean air. We will gift lung disease to the coming generations. Every year there is a debate in the newsroom, someone blames the farmer’s stubble, someone blames the firecrackers, someone ends the matter by blaming the smoke emitting vehicles. Every year in this season, the air of the National Capital Region becomes stifling, orders are issued and the matter ends again. Schools have been closed. Children are forced to remain confined in their homes, they cannot go to school or even play.

According to India’s State of Global Air (2024) report, 464 children under the age of five are dying every day in India due to air pollution. According to the report, the number of child deaths is more than the number of deaths due to tobacco and sugar. According to India’s State of Global Air, in the year 2021, 169,400 children under the age of five died in India due to air pollution.

Reading this report, I am forced to think who is responsible for all this? By the way, the Central Pollution Control Board releases its figures every year. The 2015 figures also told that

90 lakh people died due to air pollution worldwide in the year 2015,

• Of which 25 lakh deaths occurred in India alone,

• Most of the deaths were in Delhi alone.

• But were all the deaths caused by stubble burning by farmers of Haryana-Punjab? This question is also raising its head.

Hardly The Central Pollution Control Board should be able to answer this question with complete honesty, because it is very easy to target farmers for pollution while sitting in a smoke emitting vehicle.

But the real truth is that the governments taught farmers to burn stubble without thinking in the 90s, similarly, to what extent is it right to order now that farmers who burn stubble will be fined? Secondly, a large number of people in the country suddenly remembered after 2014 that they are Hindus and bursting crackers on Diwali is their birthright. Because without this the festival cannot be celebrated. If crackers are not burst then even Goddess Lakshmi will not come, but think, will Goddess Lakshmi come in such pollution and suffocation? Secondly, after bursting crackers the whole night, these people post in the morning that the farmer’s stubble causes pollution in the city.

Thirdly, when governments do politics of religion, they encourage their voters to burn crackers by shouting. But on the other hand, a new study by Delhi-based environmental think tank ‘Centre for Science and Environment’ on air pollution says that stubble burning has an eight percent role in Delhi’s air pollution. And the estimated share of carbon emissions from vehicles in creating gas chambers here is about 13 percent to 15 percent. Diesel vehicles older than 10 years and petrol vehicles older than 15 years are banned in Delhi, but there is a lack of regular inspection and strict monitoring of vehicles. Pollution level is increasing every year due to toxic emissions from vehicles and industries and incidents of burning. Whereas, the thick dust that comes out due to demolition in construction work also increases pollution.

In fact, today no one cares about the environment, from the government of the country to the common citizen has become a partner in this. Rivers are polluted, crops are polluted, water is polluted, air is polluted and the irony is that instead of making people aware of these things, leaders and news channels are making people fight in the name of religion and caste. But the question is that if we leave behind sick and weak citizens along with bad air and water to the next generation, then think, can such citizens ever be the future of any country? If we cannot save anything, at least we can save today’s childhood, but perhaps we have sacrificed our children’s childhood to politics, right?

by-Meenakshi Sangwan