Fingers Crossed: Awaiting Diwali night and the air quality aftermath

Fingers crossed, we wait for Diwali night – and its aftermath. In the run-up to the festival of lights – not of noise and smoke – air quality in Delhi, for example, was ‘very poor’, hazardous to the average citizen of the capital city of a country getting increasingly restless to wear the ‘developed’ tag one day. A Diwali firecracker ban, in effect since 2017, has done little to stem pollution levels from spiking. Vehicular pollution adding to particulate matter and secondary volatile organic compound pollution makes things only worse.

Implementation and compliance have been much like the Capital’s air quality: extremely poor. Delhi government has, so far, registered 79 cases related to sale and storage of crackers, and about 19,005 kg have been seized – a drop in the ocean. For it to have a modicum of impact on air quality, enforcing de facto the firecracker ban will require turning NCR into a police state, the only occasion where we would actually support such a form of ‘administration’. Delhi government has deployed 77 enforcement teams from the revenue department and 300 teams from Delhi Police to enforce the ban. Yet, pre-Diwali anecdotal evidence tells its own story.

The Delhi-NCR resident gets vocal about worsening air quality, but sees a ban of bursting firecrackers as a sort of denial of human/cultural rights. It is only social action, decentralised neighbourhood- and community-level responses that can get Delhiites to sit up and pay attention, and put away toxic ‘Diwalinity’. The impact of regulations and bans is a function of the level of compliance. In India, compliance is a function of what a person can get away with. Let’s hope good sense and, more pragmatically, good law enforcement prevails tonight and beyond.