That people of all persuasions and ages had to gather near the India Gate to protest the toxic air in India’s national capital and demand executive action to curb the annual scourge is bad enough.
That they, including children and the aged, were detained by the Delhi Police, summarily bundled into police vans, and booked is worse.
The Delhi Police may want to justify their action, saying they followed the letter of the law because the protesters were violating the prohibitory orders promulgated in the area, especially Kartavya Path, where they had gathered.
That would be the police missing the larger picture; perhaps the smog hanging consistently over Delhi for the past month has been too thick to see clearly that toxic air is a health emergency. There can be few actions more myopic and blinkered than this. Police personnel, ironically, are among the worst affected by Delhi’s consistently high air pollution.
The criminal action also showed the wide chasm between words and actions, both from the executive and the judiciary. Delhi’s air pollution is now a chronic issue, hanging fire for over 20 years, and has sparked short-term and long-term decisions by governments of different parties, from the Congress to the Aam Aadmi Party to now the Bharatiya Janata Party; yet no government appears to have wrapped its long arm around the problem in a significant way.
Delhi ranks at the top of the charts every year for the world’s most polluted cities. For millions in the city, this has meant health crises and additional expenses. Similarly, the lofty statement by the Supreme Court, specifically former chief justice DY Chandrachud, that people have a right to the environment proves meaningless if people must fight to breathe clean air-and face police action for it.
People who do not usually signal with their bodies gathering on a Sunday morning shows their disgust at the lack of meaningful far-reaching action and distrust in both the executive and the judiciary.
The morning after, Monday, showed why the protest was necessary; the Air Quality Index at 345 ranked ‘very poor’ with the critical Particulate Matter 2.5 (PM2.5) at 340 micrograms/cubic metre, or more than 22 times the WHO guidelines.
At the other end of the globe in Brazil, delegates gathered at the annual climate summit, Conference of Parties (COP30), to discuss the reduction of emissions and fossil fuel use, which, among other impacts, intensifies air pollution.
Noble words from international platforms and national podiums have no resonance if people are forced to protest for clean air and get penalised for it. What, then, is the value of the right to the environment and the right to protest?