It is not merely Delhi, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) of India data project that cities in Uttar Pradesh such as Lucknow and Kanpur and many cities across India are wobbling under rising levels of air pollution. However, pollution in Delhi has become a major concern and air quality of the city reduced drastically following Diwali (Indian festival of lights). Ignoring the emanating threats from pollution level, residents of the city celebrated with fireworks, lamps, firecrackers, and bottle rockets and the city witnessed an alarming level of pollution notwithstanding measures such as extension of the ban on the entry of trucks, construction and polluting industries. Meanwhile, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) had instructed the Delhi, Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh governments to ensure that its farmers did not contribute to a rise in pollution levels by burning farm waste. This sparked controversy when Haryana Chief Secretary DS Dhesi responded by saying it was unfair to blame the state’s farmers for rise in pollution levels in Delhi while farm waste accounted for just 1 per cent of the total area.
In the recent past, the rising pollution level in Delhi not only forced flight cancellations, it led to traffic accidents and temporary closing of schools as well. Air pollution has sparked protests in the city and caused declaration of a public health emergency. Against the background of staggering pollution levels, Erik Solheim, UN Environment chief has chosen to put across encouraging words for the Indian government by saying while New Delhi could eradicate polio and tackle other health emergencies; it could battle air pollution as well. He preferred to define air pollution as a “crisis” and mitigation of which could only be possible by concerted and joint efforts made by government, policy-makers, scientists and civil society groups.
As majority of India’s population lives in rural areas, air pollution in rural areas cannot be ignored and pollution cannot be ascribed to traffic exhaust, factory emissions, and construction dust alone. It is worthwhile to consider that around 80 per cent of rural households depend on biomass like wood and dung for cooking and other purposes and agricultural practices such as burning crop is also rampant.
Anumita Roy Chowdhury, head of the air pollution and clean transportation program at the Delhi-based advocacy organization Center for Science and Environment, remarked: “Also, a lot of the smaller cities have poor waste management, there is a lot of burning, solid fuel use, they are moving from non-motorised to motorised transport. Chulhas (cookstoves), we know, contribute to 25 percent outdoor pollution in India.” According to World Health Organization’s (WHO) report, use of stoves, wood or dung for cooking results in indoor pollution, which not only causes asthma and infections such as tuberculosis among children and Indian mothers are more likely to deliver underweight babies in rural households. However, pollutions generated in the rural as well as urban areas have been cumulating to precipitate such a climatic crisis in India.
On the one hand, there has been a growing concern among the government institutions and civil society groups in India to stem the crisis, there are abundant instances of socio-economic and political practices impinging on environment on the other. The Indian industrial sector would prefer practice of methods and technology without concerns for the pollution threat in their drive to produce goods with higher profits to maintaining eco-friendly standards. Politicians will not mind to throw a huge rally behind them for political gains and license industries irrespective of concerns for pollution. Indian masses in a globalizing economy not only aspire for more goods, their desire is getting multiplied and appears to be genuine needs. This paves way for more industrialization to produce goods for every human artificial need. It is no gainsaying that this rise of a culture of consumerism is not happening without environmental costs.
Approaches to environmental concerns in India have a silver lining too. The Supreme Court of India not only broadly interpreted the right to life under Article 21 of the Constitution including into it the right to healthy environment, it emphasized on the need to set up specialized environment courts for the effective and expeditious disposal of cases involving environmental issues. Even if the Trump Administration withdrew from the Paris agreement, developing countries such as India turned the table to their side when the agreement recognized the ‘common but differentiated principle’ – developing and developed countries have different levels of obligations and responsibilities to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
While it has been recognized that developing countries cannot bear an obligation to significantly reduce the use of coal considering their rising energy demands and industrialization process, New Delhi made voluntary commitments to increase the use of clean energy and clean technology. The Indian judiciary has also applied the ‘polluters pays’ principle to fix responsibility with the polluter – those who produce pollution should bear the costs of managing it to prevent damage to human health or the environment. It has also accepted the notion and principle of Sustainable Development which was codified in the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development in 1992. The concept of sustainable development allows space for growth and development but in conformity with the environmental needs and maintains a balance of needs between the present and future generations.
While there is a dire need of awareness about the environmental issues among the masses of rural areas, people of urban areas need to practice environment-friendly lifestyle. Governmental institutions and civil society groups can not only make the rural people aware, the Indian government has the primary responsibility to induce and finance practices that will help inculcate eco-friendly habits among rural and urban masses. In the context of the rising culture of consumerism, the dictum of the father of the Indian nation M.K. Gandhi assumes significance and further relevance: “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed”. India, a growing and globalizing economy engenders artificial needs which are more results of greed than actual need.