On the loose: Right to Breathe

For a breath of fresh air.

air pollution, delhi air pollution, odd-even car scheme, Supreme Court of India, delhi car, NCR car, NGT

The courts and governments will not succeed in killing the tax paying public’s aspirations; they will continue to want cars and houses.

The Supreme Court has stressed that the latest drive to clean Delhi’s air should begin with the “rich and affluent” who own luxury cars and can afford to contribute more than the common man. Delhiites are still reeling from a series of shocks with the SC’s radical decision to ban registry of all diesel vehicles over 2000 cc anywhere in the NCR. Combine this with the chaos of the odd-even formula in January and a cold wave; it’s going to be a long, arduous winter.

The irony is not lost on me that I sometimes drive 30 minutes to my gym to run there. Where I park, some graffiti artist has reinterpreted the famous Urdu phrase Roti, Kapda aur Makaan, also a blockbuster movie and the campaigning mantra of Pakistan’s Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1970. The modern analogy in graffiti is pizza, mini skirt aur pent house, a reasonably apt description of a Delhi urbanite. Every young person’s first big indulgence after getting a job post college is to buy a car — and opt out of the sheer hell of Delhi’s public transport system. Is that so wrong, to want to travel in peace in 45 degrees, after spending your youth suffering two-wheelers or auto rickshaws or buses; even the Metro?

The courts and governments will not succeed in killing the tax paying public’s aspirations; they will continue to want cars and houses. It’s the slow and very worthy march towards becoming what the SC so scathingly refers to as ‘the rich and affluent’, which is actually more like people working incredibly hard to improve their lives and along the way, spending a little something on personal comfort. However, as we’re learning, we cannot insulate and separate ourselves entirely from the cost of progress. No matter how successful or rarefied our private circles become, they provide no immunity from smoky air that knows no
privilege, incarcerating all our lungs equally.

For now, it’s the right thing to do — make it tougher and more expensive for people to drive cars that pollute more. The 2000 cc diesel vehicle ban is a beginning and it’ll be interesting to see how it works out. Will car dealerships open up right outside the NCR? Panipat and Agra are connected by super highways now and wily Delhiites won’t mind travelling 50 extra kilometres to register a car they want. These are stopgap, knee-jerk methods, acceptable in a dire situation. Rationing happened during the World War, and in a sense, we are at war. But for any real, sustainable change, eco-friendly practices will have to become a way of life, drilled into every citizen on a war footing with serious consequences for negligence.

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air pollution