New
York Times Exposé of Delhi Pollution Spoils Modi’s Anniversary
Saeed Naqvi
Just 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 here”.
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 sclerosis”.
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 flight”.
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. Lord Mountbatten, the last
Viceroy was invited to stay on as the first Governor General of Independent
India. So careful was Jawaharlal Nehru in keeping “Dickie” (Mountbatten) in
good humour that he toned down the centenary in 1957 of India’s first war of
independence. The observance would have had an “unnecessary” anti British edge.
London retained an advantage even in the
field of journalism. Kingsley Martin, Dorothy Woodman and James Cameron had
considerable access. Indian editors and political correspondents of mainstream
English newspapers came into their own in the 70s and the 80s. But the world
changed after the fall of the Berlin wall.
The 90s saw the West interpreting Soviet
collapse as a victory of the market. Began the Murdochization of the global media,
its Indian segment largely controlled by Indian Corporates. Newspapers shelved
their staff columnists. Some Op-ed page space was kept for pro market,
handpicked pundits. In the infectious spirit of globalization, the regular
column space was handed over to Thomas Friedman, Paul Krugman, Lord Meghnad
Desai and a host of others. The main editorial of The Economist adorned half
the Op-ed page of the Indian Express. Never had Indian newspapers become such a
supine vehicle for opinion dispensed from Washington and London, serving the
western world view.
This subservient stance by our
contemporaries is matched by the noise and din of the electronic media, as
powerful as it is hollow.
That is why 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 five
hundred thousand 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. That is when even The
Times of India doffs its hat and places Gardiner Harris piece above the fold on
its page one.
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.
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