I miss it or I don't miss it - it
doesn't matter. What matters is - that it is for larger good - and so should be
appreciated and accepted wholeheartedly.
It is the first initiative taken
by the almost one year old Aam Aadmi Party government in Delhi - a government
that has been a sheer letdown since its inaugural in February 2014 - a step
that can be said genuine and with vision - even if with glitches.
What applies to the logic of
India's stand at COP21 and other world environment summits applies to this step
as well - that irrespective of 'who, what and where', we all are going to be
the victims - be it the ruling class or the voting class in this largest
democracy of the world - that, though falters regularly, is robustly functional
- and is the on the way to become a mature democracy experiments like AAP tell.
A mature democracy - and we can
say we have behaved in a matured manner by accepting what the city state
government had proposed - leaving our vehicles on alternate days and using
public transportation or practices like car-pooling or bike-riding.
Now, whenever (if) global warming
happens, it would affect all countries, especially geographically big countries
like India irrespective of the fact that it is basically the developed
countries including the US who are the chief culprits in bringing us to this
crisis situation.
And the same logic applies here
as well. If pollution is affecting lives of people here, it will never
discriminate in choosing its victims. Pollution will be ruthlessly objective,
secular, impartial, unbiased, and whatever not when it comes to reducing life
spans.
The odd-even traffic rotation
scheme introduced in Delhi is a much needed (and delayed) effort to make Delhi's
(and NCR's) air liveable again.
Yes, NCR's - and it cannot
succeed unless any plan to curb pollution in Delhi is extended effectively to
its NCR areas - Noida, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon, Faridabad and so on. Delhi cannot
prevent the foul air with vehicular pollution and construction dust of NCR
mixing with breeze flowing in Delhi colonies.
And Delhi cannot achieve this
onerous task if its government (the AAP government) continues behaving
erratically - with a good initiative - like exempting multitudes of vehicles with
this or that excuse - an extension of the VIP culture that has percolated deep in
our lives.
If pollution is ruthlessly
objective in choosing its victims, we need to be ruthlessly objective in opting
for the ways to deny it those fangs.
©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/
