Climate vulnerable Indian subcontinent
that is home to millions of extremely poor and exploited people is facing the
heat wave. It’s acute in big cities where millions live in congested concrete dwellings
that faces the brunt of heat island effect and pollution. These are spaces that
have been stripped clear of trees and vegetations while water bodies converted
to disease spreading sewage for development. Very soon climate change will have
to be declared as health emergency. Migration, exposed to extreme weather, malnutrition…will
have devastating effect. There is a need for climate emergency cell to coordinate
relief measures. Any concerned society would be investing on climate adaptive
measures to save lives and salvage nature.
Earlier this month I was in
Nagpur. Temperature crossed 42 degrees centigrade. Nagpur faces extreme heat
but it rarely happens so early in the summer, elderly shopkeeper I was
interacting with concurred and was sensing changes that he couldn’t comprehend.
Even on morning walk I felt the sun as if it was scorching midnoon. You don’t
see too many people on streets, mostly airconditioned cars whizzing past. Its like
you are in some desert. I saw this man (pic herein) much earlier in the morning
vigorously trying to wind up his chores before the heat picks up. He swept the
dust off the concrete fragments of what was supposed to be a footpath. A meaningless
task that he carried with Sisyphean enthusiasm. Why would you clean dust while
contributing to particulate matter in the process making matter worse? I have
seen these kinds of “cleanliness” in cities that defeats any logical reasoning.
It’s an extension of value system of a society that obsessively delves in stupidities
of purity lacking even basic understanding of hygiene. It’s the confluence of racist
victorian tidiness and caste cannibals limited intellect that is exhibited into
public space as revered ritual. Meanwhile mostly corrupt and mediocre decision makers
are busy showcasing their blessing and lessons on fate for common people to
emulate into painful absurdities denying life. The only cleanliness that matters
is picking up and collecting plastics for recycle. Let the fallen dry leaves be.
Let the dust be. Please do not give lessons on existentialism as fate. Ridiculous
ironies will excite fattened fluffs in West to settle cozily into the narration
of exotic Indian's otherworldly mystical mirth hence value their patronizing
potential. Plastic pollution is a serious matter.
