Blowin’ In The Wind-Delhi Air Pollution: Colossal Administrative failure

Blowin’ In The Wind Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head

And pretend that he just doesn’t see?

 

The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind

The answer is blowin’ in the wind

 

Yes, and how many times must a man look up

Before he can see the sky?

And how many ears must one man have

Before he can hear people cry?

Yes, and how many deaths will it take ’til he knows

That too many people have died?

 

The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind

The answer is blowin’ in the wind

 

 

An eight year old child –scared, sitting terrified in mother’s lap, feeling breathless and  feeling a bit dizzy.  News about rising levels of smog and pollution send shivers down her spine every year. Her mother closing all the doors of house and trying to avoid the fumes  entering the room like ghosts from every small crevices, peepholes and slits. The mother prays for the smooth sail through these days as she knows very well that the season has come when the environment will be full of pollutants. The child will writhe with suffocation due to  air pollution in the same proportion. The reasons for  dangerous  levels of air pollution  can be multiple like vehicles, crackers or farm waste burning, but accumulate near the some cities due to geographical distribution and environmental factors.

 

Irony is that it is someone else’s  problem  like farm waste burning  and  ball  of a time with polluting  crackers adds to child’s suffering. Here the sufferer is not the real cause pollution. Unlike if someone smokes or drinks alcohol, it is the doer who is sufferer. But here the root cause of her trouble emanates from poor governance and administrative failure to control the irresponsible behaviour of few.

 

Every year, many factors collectively add to enormous pollution and air becomes thick with smog and suspended particulate matter at a predictable time.  It is a cause of breathlessness in children and adults and vulnerable to asthmatic attacks.

 

Like this one child, there are thousands of them and people from all ages suffer during this season because of mistakes and   thrill of others. These sufferers, who are frustrated due to their plight, with no fault of theirs, have to undergo treatment and  visit emergencies of the hospitals. This irresponsible behaviour of people puts burden on the medical services and the doctors, who are already overstretched due to workload. But it is only the doctors and nurses, who are  visible round the clock, whereas people who have polluted the air and the administrators  remain invisible.  For many, it is very hard to understand the complexity of the situation.  Patients many a times will rather tend to blame the doctors for their sufferings, poor treatment and difficulty in treatment, without realizing that constant pollution is the reason for poor response to treatment.

Why all of us cannot keep in mind the plight of such patients? Why the administrators wake up and come out of their slumber every year when AQI is more than 500 already?

There are no punishments for repeated administrative failures.

 

But inconsequential pleasure and poor governance should not be allowed to inflict health and  life of others.

Delhi Air Pollution:  AQI more than 500. Apart from climate change, air pollution is just another biggest environmental threat to human health at present. And with pollution levels worsening in the national capital and neighbouring regions, residents of Delhi have started complaining of several health problems like difficulty in breathing, tightness of chest, asthmatic symptoms, runny nose, sore throat, itchy and watery eyes. As the city has been waking up to a thick blanket of hazardous smog every morning since Diwali, Delhi hospitals are also witnessing a surge in the number of patients coming to OPDs with health issues. And it’s the elders and children, who have lower immunity levels, complained of breathing issues. The hazardous level of air pollution towards the end of October triggered a series of official measures such as shutting down construction work across Delhi and smoke-emitting factories.

It requires sincere administrative will and not merely tokenism to control such hazardous pollution.

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