One morning, during the second week of November, impeachment hearings were underway on Capitol Hill in Washington, but the story did not make the front page of the The Times of India. What did make the front page from the United States that morning was an Instagram post from actor Leonardo DiCaprio calling attention to the need to do something about air pollution in Delhi.
He is not alone. The week of Thanksgiving, the Indian Supreme Court ordered governments at all levels to work together to immediately address the situation in Delhi calling conditions in the nation's capital equivalent to "a gas chamber."
(Opening Photo: Government buildings next to Parliament House in Delhi).
Indeed, it is the first thing you notice when your plane lands at Indira Gandhi International Airport. A smog so thick pilots must have to use instruments to navigate.
The problem of air pollution in this part of the world is not limited to Delhi or even India, but no where is it visually more evident. For the first time during my current extended trip I used a face mask while in Delhi for a few hours only to determine it was useless.
Delhi residents are used to daily warnings of "extremely unhealthy" air. Some stores now sell supplemental oxygen bottles. People complain about the air all the time, but no one seems prepared to do anything about it. One man told me, "This is India. We don't demand change. We know no better. We are stuck here. This is our life."
Delhi gets most of the attention, because of the photos and probably because of the number of foreigners traveling through the city, but the problem is bad all over. Even near the Nepali border in Darjeeling the air quality was forecast as "unhealthy" each day I was there. Old women wear traditional fashions accented with face masks as they go about their daily chores.
The ramifications of poor air quality are many. The impact on health is obvious. You hear coughing everywhere. It is slightly more shallow than a smoker's cough, but there is no doubt about the cause. Along with the coughing is the clearing of throats and spitting in the streets by both men and women. The long-term implications on lung health is hard to measure, but it is believed people are dying as a result of the bad air on a daily basis.
Along with the health impacts are the other economic effects. Tourism is a major part of the Indian economy. The heavy levels of pollution discourage some people from coming at all and others from ever coming again after one visit. There is also the heavy damage pollution does to historic sites which devalues the experience of visiting.
India sees itself as an emerging world leader, but what leading nation with a government truly concerned about the health, well-being and opportunities presented its people would allow these conditions to persist? It is hard to take a government seriously on the world stage when it cannot deliver on fundamental public health policies at home.
The government - and more importantly the people of India - know the causes of the pollution and therefore have the capacity to fix it. What seems lacking is the will on the part of government. The causes are identified as industry, agricultural and other burning, un-protected construction zones, cars and other motor vehicles.
As is often the case, politicians no matter where they are, respond rapidly when they are embarrassed by the right people. So far the people of India have not moved their government. The press has not created action through coverage of the problem. The Supreme Court has taken a strong position, but seems to have no power to force change on the issue.
Perhaps only pressure from the world community and celebrities like DiCaprio can get through. The coughing and clearing of throats doesn't seem to be working.
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© Dean Pagani