International shame

Lankan cricketers’ complaint no plot, clean air is now a national health issue for children

Delhi’s abysmal air quality had made international headlines, but never like an international sporting event being impacted as the latest India-Sri Lanka Test. When Sri Lanka’s fielders at Feroze Shah Kotla were forced to wear air masks yesterday, there were few surprises. The air quality index in Delhi, as it does every winter, has been on a tailslide and politicians from the Centre as well as Delhi and neighbouring states have been playing hooky and pointing fingers at one another looking for people to blame. Their incompetence has now been shown up on a global stage. Across the agrarian states, Chief Ministers, with the exception of Haryana’s Manohar Lal Khattar, have shown a reticence to accept that crop burning is a problem that can be effectively tackled. The Delhi government, too, has been ridiculously slow to invest in improved public transportation and its odd-even scheme was more to show that it was doing something, but with numerous exemptions was pointless as the National Green Tribunal correctly pointed out, forcing the state government to put it on hold. But the Central government, too, has to shoulder a part of the blame, from its ministers denying that air pollution is a killer to a reticence to take action at a national level to tackle air pollution, although the ‘Ujjwala’ scheme by providing cleaner-burning LPG cylinders to poorer households is playing a role in reducing the burning of carbon-intensive wood and dung patties, the latter being a shame even 70 years after independence. Worse, the Finance Ministry’s lopsided Goods and Services Tax rates oddly encourage the usage of highly-polluting Petroleum Coke, which is taxed at a far lower rate than natural gas or even even diesel, leading to foreign, mainly American refineries, sending us boatloads of the stuff.

Conducting any sort of physical activity in the outdoors in the national capital is now fraught with risk. Many schools have rightly cancelled their outdoor sports events. Some days this winter might look beautiful, as they usually do in the north of the country this time of year, but looks can be deceptive with particulate matter concentrations continuing to make air quality levels poor. While many considered that the Sri Lankan players were making an excuse for their poor performance on the field, the fact is that this poor air quality would have an extremely debilitating impact on outdoor athletes. However, the masks that many of the players were wearing were not the high-quality masks that they should have worn. But, the fact that they wore even the most basic of masks meant that the players felt that they could not perform without them. This was no plot to show India in a bad light; that India has done well enough by playing politics over a national health issue. This cannot be allowed to continue, not just because international sportsmen can’t play but because Indian children can’t breathe.