Time to prioritise health on a war footing

Experts at the top, including the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Prime Minister, agree that a third wave of Covid-19 is inevitable in India, with uncertainty only on whether it will hit in three or more months. This wave could be bigger, given that the base infection rate is so high, with again, the general agreement that the present estimates are far lower than the grim reality.

Now consider another certainty. Later this year, India will face its annual ABC issue. That’s the highly toxic Asian Brown Cloud, which can poison your lungs and reduce their efficiency. Amid Covid, the ABC would be downright dangerous. Forget oxygen in cylinders. You’ll be lucky if you get it in the air. This year, the government has to be forced to take action to stop this, using all methods and tools in its hands. It is that simple. The ABC simply cannot be allowed to happen. If it does, specific officials have to be held accountable.

The ABC was initially noticed in 1999, leading to scientific studies and monitoring stations being set up in Nepal. In other words, governments have known about it for a long time. No surprises there.

Second, understand that the ABC is not just about pollution. It has a severe impact on the melting of glaciers, a drop in sunlight penetration, a weakened monsoon, and poor agricultural yields due to all of these.

Third, the ABC is almost entirely consisting of man-made sulphate aerosols (produced by burning fossil fuels), nitrate aerosols (from vehicular emissions), and black carbon (from the incomplete combustion of diesel fuel, burning biomass, and cooking with solid fuels). In simple terms, you did it.

But the good news is that a man-made disaster can be alleviated somewhat by man himself. There’s proof that it can be done. Scientific studies show that the lockdown last year for just 53 days caused a decline of pollution in the Indo-Gangetic plains to the extent that they were the lowest in over two decades.

Now, the measures to take.

Firstly, the obvious one is that of stubble burning. It is ironical, indeed, that the first thing that the agitating farmers on the Delhi border managed to make the government promise was the removal of fines on stubble burning. This is the most immediate cause of pollution across Haryana, Rajasthan and Delhi, and as research shows, contributes to lowering crop yields and further reducing water availability — already at the lowest point in the history of Punjab. There is nothing to indicate, therefore, that the farmers will stop stubble burning on their own.

State governments are offering alternatives, but these will never be as cheap as the cost of a couple of matches. The government has to, therefore, get ready to use either commercial crop-spraying aircraft or the Air Force to douse fires as soon as they appear. Play those first ones on television. The rest will fall in line. No one wants a wet field that they can’t possibly cut any time in months. Will it cause a further agitation? It might. But the farmers’ agitation is already old news and public sympathy will wane further within a Covid-hit population. Make sure the message is loud and clear, and it could be a vote-winner in the 56-inch chest category.

Secondly, set aside the high-end talk that one hears at climate change conventions. The most common pollutant for us is surface dust. It’s everywhere, and since governments like spending money, many bought expensive road-cleaning machines. The Municipal Corporation of Gurugram, for instance, bought six of these at Rs one crore each, and rented some at about Rs 30 lakh a month. That’s heaping insult to injury. Apart from tons of construction waste distributed all over Gurugram, dust rises from acres of government land, bare as a bone, where even the mud has been dug out for use elsewhere.

The simple solution is grass. Once the monsoons come, stubborn grass will begin to grow where the top soil is not entirely eroded. If not, it can be planted in an operation that will cost a tiny fraction of those road cleaners. Meanwhile, municipal corporations that pride themselves on sending out teams to cut jungli areas have to stop. Grass not just keeps down dust, it also cools the atmosphere. Big builders have to be directed to not devastate hedges and trees that they do every year in the name of ‘pruning’. Next year, someone has to get around to teaching them what pruning really means. But, for now — not a leaf to be cut, razed or chopped. District collectors need to pass that down to resident welfare organisations and local governments.

A largely ignored and entirely unregulated area is the recycling and waste collection agencies which are essentially a mafia-run operation with Chinese investors involved. The government needs to bring them under it purview as a recognised sector with stringent guidelines. In the immediate term, large companies need to stop their so-called ‘recycling’ until an audit is done by environmentalists.

Even worse is the indiscriminate construction by fly-by-night builders which has led to choking dust across cities and villages. It’s not just the building process. It’s the construction waste that is dumped in green areas, in residential areas, and almost anywhere. Each of these fly-by-night firms need to pay a cess to clean up. The urban development authorities, including the departments of town and country planning that have freed up construction or more floors and increased floor-to-area ratios for dubious reasons, are at the bottom of how the best colonies have turned into chawls. Accountability means cleaning up every single bit of waste on a war footing.

In the winter, there should also be no getting away from a complete lockdown on construction, with, however, cash transfer evidence to employees.

In the final analysis, who will bell these various cats? It should be a group of relevant departments coordinated by the National Security Council Secretariat. Health has become a top security issue, and the sooner you realise that, the better it is for everybody. Especially, the reigning political party. Clean up your act. And then start looking at the basics again.