Ranjona Banerji: Are you ready to breathe your last?

As per the latest health advisory all construction and demolition activities at Delhi Metro sites and areas under the jurisdiction of municipal corporations have been suspended for this week with immediate effect to improve the air quality PicAFPThe weather app on my phone has been persistent with its forecast of lsquolight fogrsquo or lsquohazersquo every morning since the monsoon ended It would an understatement to say this is a bad time for North India Every dirt and dust particle in the Universe apparently comes and settles in this part of the world and everything you do only adds to the thick layers of suspended particulate matter and all other particles and mattersYes the time of the year makes it worse mdash no winds nothing to disperse the particles Diwali celebrations and farmers burning leftover crops in their fields to prepare for the next planting seasonHowever there is much more to it than that Every single report on air pollution factors has three problems which overshadow the rest but they are factors which we would prefer to ignore The first is vehicular pollution the second is construction dust and the third is industrial pollutionMany assumed that when I moved from Mumbai to Dehradun over two years ago my biggest enjoyment in life would be fresh air For a couple of innocent months it did seem like that to a city dweller Damn the air was so clear and so full of pollen and lack of pollution that I had to take antihistamines to process it allNow therersquos construction pollution mdash both air and sound everywhere mdash so I almost feel like Irsquom in Mumbai again Yes I see hills from the windows Potentially I could also see snow but for two years the winter rains have been missing in action leading to acute water shortages and well no snowcovered hills I can also see trees and vegetation being replaced by apartment blocksUltimately whichever way you look at it as you destroy the environment you will lose everything you once thought precious and that includes clean breathable air Ironically New Delhi has plenty of trees and it has The Ridge But those are no longer enough Delhi also has more cars than other Indian cities and if the city government tries to do anything about that it feels the wrath of a populace which thrives on the power in its wheels Gurugram which is almost part of Delhi has no Ridge no trees and no Aravallis any more so hands down it is worse off than the national capitalHere in the villages above Dehshyradunrsquos congested clogged city centre mdash known so evocatively as Ghantaghar though I have never heard the clock chiming let alone telling the time mdash cement dust makes the air seem like any other big city A few years ago there were some rules about constructionwork on the hills but perhaps those are customs more honoured in the breach Interestingly many of the flats in these viruslike apartment blocks are unsold and yet they keep building them year after yearYou can see the disaster that will come sooner or later mdash anyone can This is a heavy seismic zone and the area is renowned for its greenery and scenery But so what Name your building lsquoWhispering Willowsrsquo and some city sucker might imagine that makes up for an actual willow treeI know the arguments Progress Human development But I also know the other arguments Sustainability Catastrophe And I would happily err towards the second ones Because even with farmers burning crops and people overdoing it on Diwali if we had paid attention to the environmental damage wreaked by unchecked construction posing as lsquodevelopmentrdquo there might yet have been some clean air to breatheI feel like Irsquove said all this before I know many people have said all this and a lot more more and in a better way before me But what difference has it made Every lsquodebatersquo on television news on this subject has been about Diwali and farmers and political oneupmanship Every point made has been about the immediate issue and not about the future We have heard that a staggering 20000 people may die this year in Delhi alone from pollutionrelated causesGhastly as that is mdash and it is mdash consider this by 2020 we are going to lose 67 per cent of all wild animals if we donrsquot do something now according to a new study Poaching human activity and pollution will be to blame Now take a deep breath Or actually donrsquotRanjona Banerji is a senior journalist You can follow her on Twitter ranjona Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycom