India’s capital is once again in the news for all the wrong reasons: deadly levels of air pollution. Just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse, this happened. Air quality reached “severe plus” levels, with pollution readings exceeding the World Health Organization’s safe limits by 50 times. Visibility has dropped dramatically, disrupting flights and train services. On November 18, the air quality index reached 491, which tops the 500 scale.
Clearly, WHO did not imagine that the day would come when any place on the planet would break the upper limit of this scale. The numbers are so horrific that they are beyond comprehension. Humans are facing sustained levels of pollution like never before and science is demonstrating the impact breathing such toxic air is having on our biology.
It bears repeating what experts have been shouting for decades: the air pollution affecting all of North India has a profound impact on the nation. Air pollution is a major risk factor for premature death and is estimated to cause 20 lakh deaths every year in India alone; There is an increased risk of long-term conditions ranging from impaired brain development to lung and heart diseases. Moreover, besides making one-third of India’s population sick and shortening their lives, pollution will ultimately derail our efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. We also know the primary drivers of pollutants, particularly industrial and vehicle emissions, agricultural waste burning, and the use of coal and firewood for cooking and heating. While the cooling of the air as winter begins is a major factor in trapping these pollutants closer to the ground, winter can hardly be held responsible for an essentially man-made disaster.
Importantly, there are known policies in place to reduce and even eliminate these drivers, such as enabling LPG for all households, imposing regulations on the building industry and scaling back fossil-fuel energy. To cut back on. To be fair, there have been significant wins in implementing some strategies, notably, efforts to expand access to clean cooking fuels and converting New Delhi’s public buses from diesel to CNG, but, as this The events taking place in the month show us only graphically, they are extremely inadequate. And so, as we are forced to respond to the crisis only in emergency mode, essentially imposing restrictions on daily life reminiscent of pandemic lockdowns, it seems we are doing pretty well dealing with acute, short-term crises. There are, but which are woefully inadequate for the long-term emergency that has plagued the country for decades.
What’s really scary is not that all-time global records for air pollution are being broken, but that this story is like a stuck record, playing exactly the same tune with a depressingly familiar rhythm year after year. Repeats. After all, the first PIL on air pollution was filed in the Supreme Court by MC Mehta three decades ago. The fact that we are once again engulfed in toxic air is a reminder of the gross impotence of the state and its myriad regulatory authorities in taking pre-emptive action to prevent this entirely predictable disaster. While many in the upper and political classes may afford to minimize the harm of air pollution by locking themselves indoors with air filtration machines running in full gear, the truth is that air, like water, leaks through the tiniest of cracks. And privilege doesn’t completely insulate you. Still, one can avoid the smog altogether by hopping on a flight to Goa, which is what many of New Delhi’s tony classes do. And, as is the case with all environmental crises, the poor and the working class suffer the most. Are there.
In short, while we have all the knowledge, we need to take action and while the solutions look extremely simple, implementing them is surprisingly complex. It seems to me that the elephant in the room is the perception that air pollution, and other environmental challenges like water resource depletion and climate change, are entirely local issues. While most of the attention, unsurprisingly, has focused on India’s capital, the fact is that toxic smoke is engulfing the entire subcontinent, affecting half a billion people from the plains of Punjab to those living in the shadow of the Himalayas. Are happening. Pakistan reached Bangladesh through the entire area of northern states of India. Our politicians should carefully study satellite images of the subcontinent to remind them that the air we breathe and the water we drink do not require visas and that they do not have electrified fences and gunmen at our borders. The soldiers cross secretly. And, in this sense, the fragmented politics of the region, and indeed the country, is a major obstacle to addressing this recurring nightmare.
Air pollution, then, is a shared challenge for the entire subcontinent and tackling it offers a unique opportunity to build bridges across the troubled waters between South Asian neighbours. Governments must put aside, even if just for a moment, the historical conflicts that plague our relationships, and work together to rapidly address the most threatening challenge to the health and development of the entire region . One thing is certain: without such cross-border and, within India, cross-state, solidarity, any effort to deal with this disaster will always swim upstream.
History is replete with accounts of arch enemies and warring factions turning on each other when faced with a more formidable foe: could there be a more apt metaphor for the environmental devastation taking place in South Asia? And, one might hope, by focusing on a shared concern without any historical baggage, it could become an opportunity to build trust, which would set the stage for dealing with complex issues in a mutually respectful manner. After all, when we sit together to solve a problem that threatens our collective well-being, we must embrace the fundamental truth that we are all one people who must breathe the same air.
The author is Paul Farmer Professor of Global Health at Harvard Medical School