America
New York Times exposé of Delhi pollution spoils Modi anniversary
By
By Saeed NaqviJust when the Narendra Modi government was celebrating its first year
in office on a note of simulated well being, Gardiner Harris, bureau
chief of New York Times in New Delhi, spoilt the party by making a
gloomy announcement: New Delhi, the capital of Modi’s dream nation, was
unlivable and that Harris was leaving, with his wife and children to the
cleaner air of Washington.
We poor natives have been
screaming the same alarm from rooftops without any apparent effect. But
now that the New York Times has squealed, the Times of India reproduced
the piece on page one. This was admission by India’s most powerful
newspaper that its excellent campaign on pollution was not as effective
and that it gained geometrically by leaning on the New York Times story.
During
the three years that Harris was posted to South Asia, he was
occasionally afflicted by pangs of conscience that “it was unethical for
those who have a choice to willingly raise children hereâ€.
Harris
clearly was not blessed with another choice because he gives every
indication of staying on against his will. His wife appears to have been
torn between her wifely desire to be with her husband in troubled
harness and to run away to Washington with her son. Harris quotes
“nascent areas of research suggesting that pollution can lower
children’s IQ, hurt their test scores and increase the risks of autism,
epilepsy, diabetes and even adult-on-set diseases like multiple
sclerosisâ€.
There is frightening description of his son, Bram,
being injected steroids to fight acute breathlessness because of Delhi’s
pollution.
In a state of panic, his wife left for Washington two
years ago. Doctors reassured her that some medicines might help. So she
returned to New Delhi “but she sobbed for hours on the return flightâ€.
Even
though the Harris story is a simple one which should elicit all our
sympathy, Indian responses are not so straight forward. There are
attitudes and attitudes towards critical observation by a white
foreigner.
In recent weeks, I have been accompanying my younger
brother to various hill stations in search for reasonable property to
enable him to escape Delhi’s unspeakable pollution. He is a big man and,
on the face of it, healthy. But over the years, his tolerance level for
Delhi’s increasing pollution has declined. In recent months, alarmingly
so.
I have also seen relatives and friends carrying inhalers on
their persons, sometimes furtively. It is not uncommon to have
discussions veer around to Delhi’s record levels of air pollution. If a
government official happens to be present, the point is made even more
pungently: Delhi’s pollution levels are twice as high as Beijing’s.
Adverse comparison with Pakistan would work like magic.
Apparently,
levels of five particles in the air called PM 2.5, which cause maximum
lung damage, are twice as high in Delhi as they are in Beijing. In
Beijing PM 2.5 levels which exceed 500 make global news. But levels
twice as high, say 1,000 or more in Delhi, are not noticed by the media.
Interesting,
that Harris should make an observation which exposes two things: the
global media’s double standards. It keeps an unsparing critical eye on
China. This, because China is in winnable competition with the West.
Therefore, the western media is part of the armoury to keep China under
pressure.
India, by comparison, is indulged, strung along, not
perceived as a threat as far as the eye can see. The high comfort level
of the Indian elite in being intellectually colonized can be traced to
the nature of the national movement.
A section of the Indian
elite which places some premium on self esteem is riled when well
researched Indian journalism on the filth, squalor, the pollution
augmented by 500,000 automobiles willfully disgorged on Delhi’s roads
each year falls on deaf years. Only when an expat reporter focuses on
Delhi’s impending catastrophe does the establishment wake up.
The
AAP government is struggling to find its feet in Delhi. Instead of
helping it attend to Delhi’s problems, every vested interest, each
political party is out to waylay it. Modi needs to give the Delhi
government a helping hand to save India’s capital city.
(A senior
commentator on political and diplomatic affairs, Saeed Naqvi can be
reached on [email protected]. The views expressed are personal.)