Blame the urban upper middle class, not Odd-Even for pollution crisis

The Odd-Even scheme of the Delhi government seems to have received more brickbats this time around. The reports and surveys of all kinds are being cited, indicating virtually negligible or a very miniscule level of positive change on pollution level of the city. Public policy initiatives must be critically examined by its stakeholders in a democracy. The critics, however, in this case, seem to have had anticipated magic wand like results - that the pollution level of the city will disappear overnight.

What is most bizarre is the impatience shown to an initiative that has at least brought the issue of environmental pollution to lime light, to the public imagination. When did we last time hear of school children and housewives discussing environment? Odd-Even has done that. That is no mean achievement.

Odd-Even seems to have done to environment what Ramdev had done to yoga at one point, before he started selling noodles, by making it part of ordinary people's everyday world, by making it part of the concern-list of the old and the young alike. Politically, Odd-Even scheme symbolises a new imagination, a more creative and humane perspective to urban governance and development.

The world today is precariously set up. The insatiable race for development, for industrialization, urbanization and more growth continues unabated. Alongside, the universal concern for environmental degradation is looming larger by the day, behind the glittering facade of development. Young children in many parts of India are being forced to play a new game of "Paani-paani", walking barefoot up to miles, to fetch a bottle of water on their tiny shoulders, leading to loss of childhood and even death on many occasions.

One of the most telling and poignant images that I recently encountered was of poor children from nearby slums, in the vicinity of a thriving, prosperous middle class locality in Delhi, wandering in groups with empty plastic bottles of Pepsi and Coke, in search of water sources. How did we reach here? And now that we have reached such a stage, what do we do? Sadly, not doing anything is no option available anymore.

A beginning, even if symbolic, has to be made - howsoever tiny and modest that step may be. This is particularly important for the region of South Asia, a region inhabited by the majority of poor, impoverished population of the world, living in an utterly inhuman and unequal socio-cultural habitat.

While the success of development is centripetal in nature, thereby meaning that the prosperity and profit is concentrated in a circle of a few, the brunt of development is tragically centrifugal, as we now sufficiently and empirically know, as the cost and risks are majorly borne by the poor people of the world. A research paper published in 2015 by Oxfam, an international development agency, cautioned against the trend that shows one percent of people owning more wealth than the combined wealth of the remaining 99 percent. This is a scary situation. For the plundering of nature affects the non-plunderer, the poor and the marginal the most.

Delhi's pollution level is alarming. Its roads and localities are increasingly getting congested and contest ridden for scarce resources such as water and other amenities. With the rising influx of hapless migration from the poor rural pockets of India towards urban, the scenario is least likely to reverse in near future. It is in this sense that the idea of Odd-Even has been a great initiative, for it foregrounded, for the first time, the concerns on environment (which is not just about taking measurements of PM presence in the air quality or ozone level) in the larger scheme of governance.

It initiated and took the debates around the idea of environmental pollution and the resultant pressure on resources to the nook and corner of the city. If not for anything, the Odd-Even policy should at least be lauded for its deep moral underpinnings, for its critique of a culture of no-holds-barred filthy consumption behaviour of India's  upper middle class urban dwellers who fret and fume at the very thought of travelling in metro or public buses.

The recent media interrogations of the Odd-Even policy largely reflect the irritation and unwillingness to participate in the idea of common public good by the pampered new upper middle class. There is a class amidst us who steadily rose in its economic stature, and subsequently got political patronage, post 1990 and who wants the world to carry on, unhindered, as it is; for they are pretty settled in their SUVs and do not want any disruptions. Their personal aggrandisement, they argue and demand, should be seen as act of nation building. And the act for building the nation must not be uncomforted or inconvenienced.

The Odd-Even policy irritates and punctures the ego of these self-styled nation builder who finds the scheme far too pedestrian (literally) and more crucially pandering to the world views of the common and the less privileged people. The middle class gets defined by differences. If the Odd-Even scheme has been received grudgingly by the upper echelon of this class, it is precisely because the scheme, in operational terms, undermines the differences or distinctions and flattens the world divided between public transport commuters and the SUV-riders.

It is true Delhi needs all of this - more buses, more trees, more ponds, a robust public transport system and more importantly a reimagining of design of our roads and pedestrian paths- and no single initiative can make Delhi's environment clean and liveable. What we need is a multi-pronged, long term initiative that takes in to account the larger public good, beyond the pettiness of politics. With Odd-Even a beginning has been made; it is time now to think of other ways to bolster the movement for clean and green Delhi.

It is important to experience the pleasure of being part of the larger collective, even if it is for a few days or weeks, by carpooling or going car-free, by travelling in a metro and thus becoming part of a life that celebrates diversity, collectivism and shared living. A life that looks at Delhi from behind the green tinted glass window of its car and finds the city green essentially lives in a denial mode, of the hard realities of the future, if we do not mend our ways.  

I read the story of children in Latur who wander thirsty in search of water, to my children and make a rule that we will be disciplined in our use of water in the house, I carry my jute-bag when I go to buy vegetables in local weekly neighbourhood market, and I refuse plastic bags from the shopkeepers. Will that change the water crisis in Latur or make the city of Delhi plastic free or less polluted?

Remember Gandhi for an answer as he once famously said: Be the change you want to see in the world. Odd-Even is therefore, not quite about numbers, it is about the spirit. Trying to evaluate it by only measuring PM 1 or PM 2.5 or ozone concentration in the city means you got the whole idea of environment protection wrong. We destroyed the nature through the millennium; it will take at least a few decades of sincere efforts before we go about measuring the changes that it brought about.

Let's cycle our way to a better tomorrow, a better future for our children.