Short read: The air we breathe cannot be a luxury

Whilst much of the northern hemisphere is enjoying the onset of spring, Indian cities seem to have promptly skipped it to enter what is looking like a scorching summer ahead of us. But the good news is that we have some respite from the winter pollution. Naturally, outcries to do something about it have died down as with everything else in India. Even when it was front page news, many argued that it was an elitist problem given the more pressing problems that a country at our stage of evolution faces, as Sandip Roy notes in this piece for the Mint Lounge.

“For a long time I would think of people who complained about air pollution in cities like New Delhi as privileged people whining about first world comforts. I remember how indignant many Indians were when Gardiner Harris, the South Asia correspondent for The New York Times wrote about how he considered leaving India because his eight-year-old son had to be rushed to hospital, struggling to breathe.

He remembered bracing for all the challenges of reporting from India: “insistent beggars, endemic dengue and summertime temperatures that reach 120 degrees.” But he had no inkling that “Delhi’s true menace came from its air, water, food and flies.” Even after his son’s breathing stabilised, tests showed he had lost half his lung function and he had to be placed on steroid therapy. The article set off an online furore. Many backed Harris. Some said it reeked of the expatriate privilege of those who could complain and leave while millions of Indians had no option but to live and breathe that air.”

However, he argues being able to breathe can’t be a luxury:

“Delhi makes the headlines because it’s the capital city but Kolkata is not far behind with triple-digit AQI as well in the winter. Winter was once Kolkata’s high season, an excuse to bring out those sweaters and Kashmiri shawls and go to Christmas parties with visiting migratory NRI birds from London and New York. But this year it felt grey and dismal, the smog hanging over the city like a perpetual cloud of discontent. Many people had itchy throats, coughs and burning eyes. Friends who visited from abroad complained about a cough that lingered for a week or more even after they returned.

But there is still a sense of helplessness and hopelessness because despite the brief furores thanks to a Harris or Kushwaha, the government seems determinedly apathetic. We heard of sprinklers in Delhi spraying water near the AQI measuring stations. Government officials sounded bureaucratically evasive when they said the World Health Organization (WHO) air quality guidelines served only as guidance and countries needed to prepare their own data quality standards based on geography, environmental factors, socioeconomic status and national circumstances.

.. Last year after I lost my mother in her 90s, a friend dourly observed our generation who lived and breathed Kolkata’s toxic air would surely not live that long. There was a kind of resignation in her statement and I noticed neither of us were wearing masks. We had become the proverbial frogs in the pot of boiling water slowly getting cooked before we even realised our fate.

…the air we breathe cannot be a luxury, dismissed as an elitist concern. To do so is also callous, as if those who complain about air quality are somehow whiners. The real tragedy in many cities in India is not that the air quality is bad but that the powers that be seem to not deem it an emergency. Even odd-even licence plate schemes to reduce vehicles are sporadic and met with public resistance. But beyond those measures one hears little of high-powered committees trying to find systemic solutions. Instead, in Kolkata, the government blithely announces it wants to get rid of trams, a green mode of transport it has had for over 100 years because it wants more room for cars on its streets. And it’s sadder still that the air we breathe is not an election issue. It is as if cities like Kolkata and Delhi have far more pressing things to worry about than its air.” 

If you want to read our other published material, please visit https://marcellus.in/blog/

Note: The above material is neither investment research, nor financial advice. Marcellus does not seek payment for or business from this publication in any shape or form. The information provided is intended for educational purposes only. Marcellus Investment Managers is regulated by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and is also an FME (Non-Retail) with the International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA) as a provider of Portfolio Management Services. Additionally, Marcellus is also registered with US Securities and Exchange Commission (“US SEC”) as an Investment Advisor.