The report card has come. This disturbs our breathing again. Year after year, the story remains the same. India houses the largest number of cities affected by growing air pollution. Delhi retains the leading edge in notoriety. The ‘world air quality report 2023’ by IQ Air spreads before us the data that may propel us to conclude that we Indians are living in unhealthy conditions that is wiping away many years of our projected life. The WHO standards and the EPIC India study does indicate that the Delhiites may lose around 12 years of their life while an average of losing almost 6 years affects across India.
The annual average AQI [Air Quality Index] mentioned in the reports gives one way to reflect. It is high. It is bad. It is growing at a threatening pace. How about spikes during the year? If our body temperature is 98.4 degrees, generally throughout the year, we maintain an average temperature. What happens when it reaches 104 degrees? Serious enough to get expert medical attention. Think again when the spikes read like 479 AQI or even much more. The impact of a few weeks of high AQI can endanger us very badly.
Air Pollution is a Big Challenge, and it needs BIG Change. How?
B – Behaviour Change
Your and mine acceptance is vital. Community acceptance is critical. The challenge is mammoth. Acknowledging it is vital. Collective community readiness to face it as a health emergency is a top priority. We need to leave aside our past baggage of apathy and work towards the ‘all hands efforts’ of multiple stakeholders to work along with the government for the common good. We cannot keep waiting for the governments in States and at the Central to show the progress visibility before we think of doing something. Efforts by public are long overdue. Taking affirmative actions at a personal level and inspiring others to join-in makes the difference. Waste segregation, reducing usage of electricity, relying less on fossil fuel, removing the use of single use plastic, enhancing greenery around the place of stay, work or education etc. will collectively make a huge difference. When do we start? Let’s bring forward our positive behaviour to do our part. Let’s think of making a change in the 20 meters to 200 meters of our surroundings. India will change gradually. Let’s be the torch bearer through our actionable behaviour change.
I – Ideas and Initiatives Change
If we do what others do, we will only get what others get. Let’s think differently. India has a huge reservoir of creative thinking people and innovative practices. Design Thinking to plugging solutions through jugaad, we can do it all. Our traditional and conventional approaches have a lot to guide us while we adopt and Indianize the solutions from other countries. We need to bring back and popularize the earthen and leaves based eating utensils in our daily life of roadside eating and community meals. Convert ostentatious Indian weddings to carbon neutral solutions. Our engineering and management institutes need to dig deeper into creating solutions for mitigating the problems of air pollution through start-ups that focus on innovative ways to plug the problems at the source level instead of having air pollution first and treating later. Institutions need to invest in incubation centers, recognize and support ideas to move into the realm of everyday solutions for the population to adopt, implement and enjoy.
G – Governance Change
We need to think about governance in a broader manner beyond the Central or State Governments including the bureaucracy. Every city municipality is governance. Every village panchayat is governance. Even every RWA [Resident Welfare Association] is the governance in the locality. As members, we need to choose the right people to lead the change towards cleaner air. Evolve the thinking in the community to include clean air as the core essential agenda before picking the right people who give their adherence and commitment to work towards it. We need to participate in the governance and support it without exception.
When the challenge before every Indian is big, small infrequent symbolic actions will not work. Air Pollution is a grievous disease. It needs all our efforts to treat the disease before it turns fatal. It is time to work in a big way. Big promise. Big actions. Big impact. Our life is not small.
Dr. Rajiv Khurana, Founder Trustee, Lung Care Foundation [www.lcf.org.in]
