Delhi AQI Leaves Arvind Kejriwal Experiment Breathless
Smog covers Delhi. Image credit X.com @MNVGowda
Worsening Delhi AQI Condemns 5-crore People into Gas Chamber
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, November 19: On a day when Delhi almost kissed 1000 air quality index, farmers in Punjab were on the warpath in setting their farmland on fire. Record 1251 farm fire cases were reported from Punjab on Monday.
“The air in Delhi today is the worst I remember it in two years here. You can’t spend more than a few minutes outdoors without gasping and feeling ill. Indoors is not much better, even with air purifiers,” John Reed, the South Asia Bureau chief of the Financial Times, wrote on X yesterday.
Hospitals are minting money with patients struggling to breathe. The Supreme Court will now decide when the anti-pollution curbs are to be lifted.
The people now feel exasperated. They feel hapless. Delhi NCR is now mirroring Lahore and Multan in Pakistan. With AQI over 800, Lahore had almost gone into a lockdown. Over a thousand patients reported to hospitals on daily basis in the largest city of Pakistan.
Chief Minister of Pakistan’s Punjab Maryam Nawaz blamed farm fires in Indian states. Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann mocked Maryam Nawaz.
“The government of Delhi (Centre) also says the same. It seems like our pollution is forming a circle and moving around,” said Mann, mocking at Pakistani leader.
But farmers in Mann’s home district Sangrur showed least interests in humour of the chief minister. Sangrur leads the chart of Punjab districts where farmers are on the rampage to set their farmland on fire.
Most parts of Delhi reported AQI in excess of 400 even on Tuesday. Technically, the air quality in Delhi is most hazardous.
Worrisome is the fact that only 20 per cent of harvesting has so far been completed due to delayed Monsoon. With Delhi NCR slipping into arms of fog, the winter depression has gripped the population.
Scalp gets heavy deposits of dust while nostrils are choked with brief venture outdoors. Lung also struggles to draw a deep breath.
With governance busy in freebies to catch votes, the people are ranting their anguish at anyone in sight. Hopelessness from political class, irrespective of parties, is now gripping the suffering masses in the Delhi NCR.
“Mr Kant, when did you last see such clear skies in New Delhi? As head of the Planning Commission or whatever you call it now, is it not your duty to take cognisance of the hazardous skies in your city,” Colonel (Retd) Pavan Nair trolled former CEO of the Niti Aayog Amitabh Kant.
The policy czar of the Narendra Modi government had shared a captivating short video of blue sky and pristine river waters from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Kant as India’s sherpa is in the Brazilian city where India is lighting up path for the world.
With Kant at helm of the Niti Aayog, the think-tank panel indeed had prepared a policy paper to buy out farmers against setting farmland on fire. But farmers seemed to have been unimpressed.
Delhi’s former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal is the moral guardian of both Delhi and Punjab. His two sherpas – Mann in Punjab and Atishi in Delhi – are in-charges of the alternative politics.
The people in place of seeing gains from alternative politics find life in gas chambers. In 2013, the people on Jantar Mantar Road would openly say they have no faith in the political class. In 11 years, Kejriwal may begin smelling the toxicity of eroding faith of the people in his alternative politics.
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