World Environment Day

As another World Environment Day arrives, we in India think about when can we live in a pollution-free city. Anil Agarwal, the late Editor of environment magazine Down to Earth, asked the right question, When will India be able to control pollution?

Ten years down the line, there is no convincing answer. Our cities continue to rot and we have stopped to care about the environment. We continue to engage in meaningless marathons, ramp shows, and awareness drives. Because these are the most easiest things to do.

In Bangalore, school students staged a drama on the Bishnois, bellwether IT company Infosys held an awareness drive (the most cliched sleaze act conducted in the name of environment by the government and others), and others decided to plant saplings (nobody knows which species) and so on. In the media, journalists wrote stories that still reflected the "doomsday" scenario cultivated following the Rio Summit in 1992. A few of these articles often contain disparate issues that confound the issue further. Most of these are written with an Utopian fervour and do not lead the reader anywhere.

We Indians need to do more than just this ridiculous awareness drives to save the environment.