Unite to fight noxious November
air purifiers (for those who can afford them), face masks and inhalers.
Never in its long and storied history has Delhi and the current grand-sounding National Capital Region (NCR) felt quite so wretched and neglected as in the 21st century. Time was when emperors and mystics, conquerors and courtesans, poets and plebeians arrived and thrived in these very plains and Aravalli outcrops. Now it is permanently blighted by unrestrained 'development' activity and seasonally masked in thick pollutants as a consequence, with no recourse in sight.
Most Delhiwallas have grown up hearing that the region is a sort of natural bowl, making it ideal for any sort of particulate matter, whether dust, sand, soot or pollutants, to hover indefinitely overhead unless pushed away by beneficial winds. That is why we GenXers resigned ourselves to spells of dusty skies, particularly during the pre-monsoon period. Winter brought fog but that was mostly water vapour, utterly unlike today's dust-and-chemical fug.
But the 21st century's annual November-December murk is the result of changing crop patterns in the surrounding areas with 'modern' harvesting methods adding to the industrial and construction-related pollution. It is indeed ironic that rising rural and urban prosperity in this region is collaborating to dramatically elevate pollution levels as well. That leaves the city, which boasts of India's most powerful people, gasping for breath but totally helpless to remedy it.
Even feelings of schadenfreude in India over news of Lahore
