Oct 29, 2019
Let’s celebrate ignorance this Diwali! ‘Coz we have just saved environment.
There’s a lot of noise on crackers on Diwali. Some celebrating the accomplishments of their anti-crackers Diwali campaign along with Delhi govt. They should. They have managed to stop a leakage in a sinking ship. However, we don’t see this raised consciousness throughout the year. The educated young revolutionaries seem to be completely ignorant of what’s degrading the environment. And so, these pseudo-animal-lovers are nothing but flag-bearers of hypocrite and illusioned class. The point is, they must be shown the mirror, they must be questioned for their allegiance and above all their pointlessness of being educated.
I see a lot of people championing the idea of concern for environment pre-Diwali weeks and celebrating a reduced pollution level post-Diwali. Well, this is a reason to be happy as at the current rate we will reach zero ‘average 2.5 PM levels’ in 2–3 years, and pheww…Delhi is saved!! The hard work of our ‘environment concerned’ class finally paid off.
For a while, let us be little rational and see the numbers which matter.
Delhi has the largest carbon footprint in India. To give a scale, Delhi’s annual CO2 emission of 69.4 million tonnes is equal to the CO2 emission of Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai put together. Delhi’s intra-city motorised person trips are expected to increase from 33.4 lakh per day in 2007 to 174 lakh in 2021. And here we are counting crackers instead of cars.
Delhi also ate up its water bodies over the years. And we didn’t even see any protest. Out of 611 water bodies in Delhi, 274 dried up and as many as 190 are lost forever. The newly constructed NCR region is no better. There’s a 40% decrease in water bodies in NCR. Just Gurugram alone lost 389 water bodies. New construction sites were made by encroaching land of water bodies. People live happily in them. With full controlled comfortable environment there is little protest about its effects on nature. The average water footprint in Delhi would easily breach 10000L/day/person.
The Delhi govt. which is in the front of celebration is the same govt. who slashed water and electricity prices. It is also the same govt who wants to legalise illegal settlements around Delhi, to further increase the pressure on already stressed resources of Delhi. And to note, further also translate to higher carbon footprint. The odd-even formula can be credited to an extent, for falling in the ‘effective measures category’.
Rationally, I shouldn’t have ridiculed the tip of needle effort by these people who feel accomplished with their campaign of anti-crackers Diwali. The thing is, even this little raised consciousness doesn’t last throughout a year. We don’t get to see such campaigns during Christmas or New-year. We don’t see them counting the number of animals they saved by their ‘animal-friendly’ Bakarid campaign. Rather, they promote it as the religious right of ‘minorities’.
So if we can peep inside the garb of this pseudo-animal-lover, concerned for environment-class, we get to know that they are the flagbearers of hypocrisy and ignorance. The problem is not with their ignorance. The problem is some of them they happen to belong to premier institutes like IITs. Now this ignorance is no more an ignorance, it becomes an offence. Unfortunately such offences against being educated goes unchecked, unquestioned and unpunished.
We can be as happy as our ignorance allows. We can feel as great environment-lover by occasional awakening. The truth has its day, that it contributes nothing for the environment. It has no use except, satisfying the ego of a privileged class.
The environment need activities and not activism. We can just hope that education and society will soon realise to foster activities and discourage activism.
