Opinion Tokenism will not do
Who benefits if we succeed in cleaning up our filthy rivers and our polluted air? Who benefits if we succeed in preserving the tiger,the elephant and our forests?....
Who benefits if we succeed in cleaning up our filthy rivers and our polluted air? Who benefits if we succeed in preserving the tiger,the elephant and our forests? Who benefits if our cities clean up their act and look less like vast slums? Indians. Right? So why does the Government of India behave as if its doing the world a favour when it agrees to cut carbon emissions by 25 per cent by 2020?
There is something seriously wrong with the Indian governments approach to environmental matters. If you want proof you need to look carefully at the Bhopal gas tragedy and its aftermath. More than 20,000 people were killed and at least another 100,000 suffered because of the poisonous gas they breathed on the night of December 2,1984,and the Government of India continues to treat this awful tragedy with contempt. It behaves as if it has no responsibility to act,as if it is something that only the courts can settle. So not only have the victims of the tragedy not been properly compensated,their environment continues to be poisoned and they continue to suffer the consequences of Union Carbides criminal negligence. It is hard to think of another country in which the interests of a foreign company would take precedence over the interests of its people. All those young MPs who are currently making fashionable noises about climate change need to be asked why they do not talk about Bhopals poisoned groundwater in the Lok Sabha.
Every year at this time we remember the Bhopal gas tragedy and with our usual tokenism lament publicly over Union Carbide having got away with mass murder. Then we forget and this allows Indian officials and political leaders to get away with doing nothing. Not only about Bhopal but about the horrible pollution that we live with daily. In our four metropolises,the average citizen lives without basic necessities like clean water and clean air. Not because we are a poor country but because neither government nor (it has to be sadly said) our environmental NGOs care enough to improve things.
The NGOs are a major disappointment because they have failed to pressure governments into higher standards. If they cared more about real issues and less about personal promotion and the international conference circuit,we would today have succeeded at least in cleaning the Ganga and the Yamuna. Hundreds of thousands of crore rupees of taxpayers money have been spent on cleaning these sacred rivers that have been reduced to sewers and they are no less polluted today than they were when the supposed cleaning process began. Why are no questions asked? Why does nobody even ask where the money went?
If India is today one of the most polluted countries in the world it is because nobody cares. Not the government,not the NGOs and not you and I either. Indias environmental problems are so huge that what we need is real,constant debate. Instead what we have got is jargon and empty rhetoric. So in the weeks before the Copenhagen conference there has been much talk of reducing carbon emissions and this has mostly amounted to abusing developed Western countries for being the biggest polluters in the world.
Officials of the Government of India appeared routinely on television to announce that development will not be sacrificed for the sake of reducing emissions. Fine. But,can we not learn from the mistakes that the developed Western countries made and not make them? Can we not learn from our own mistakes made in socialist times and not repeat them?
As someone who travels far and wide through our proud and ancient land I find myself becoming increasingly certain that we will never be able to solve our environmental problems. Wherever I go,I see once beautiful countryside that is now denuded of its trees,greenery and beauty. Villages that once offered a salubrious,rural standard of living are now places of choked drains and environmental degradation. Urban life is worse still.
When the average,rural Indian travels to a town or city in search of employment he ends up living in an environment that is so noxious that breathing becomes a dangerous exercise. If India is rapidly on its way to becoming the worlds largest,most polluted slum it is because we have not taken environmental degradation seriously. If we had,we would not let our officials get away with spouting jargon in the forums of the world. We would not have let them get away with tokenism. To quote,or misquote,the Mahatma,if we want change we are going to have to become that change. If we do not do our bit to ensure real action on the environment we are quite simply doomed.
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