Delhi Chief Minister, Arvind Kejriwal has mooted a plan of action where vehicles with odd and even registration numbers would ply on alternate days. This decision comes at a time when the judiciary has virtually pushed the Delhi Government to come up with an action plan to curb vehicular pollution. Kejriwal’s proposal has been received with much criticism and cynicism. Some think it is a quixotic proposal that will lead to much heartburn since most families with one vehicle would have to commute on public transport or pool cars with their colleagues and neighbours every alternate day. But car pooling will not work if two people have to go to two very different directions. Others say that every car owner with an even registration number would not strive to buy another vehicle and register it with an odd number. Should this happen Delhi’s woes would only mount. Yet pollution levels in Delhi have reached alarming levels and desperate measures are needed to tackle this. The more affluent citizens of Delhi have left the city to migrate elsewhere to more healthy climes. But the majority Delhiites will have to grin and bear and suffer the consequences of their own actions.
Indeed anthropogenic sources of pollution are highest across the globe. The current Global Climate Change Conference in Paris is deliberating on these very issues, but the discourse is somehow deadlocked between how much the developed countries can commit to reducing carbon footprints and what the developing countries should be doing to balance development with pollution control and also who is going to fund the climate change reversals. In fact this latter issue has been the most intransigent.
In the light of these pressing environmental problems that stare us in the face, many of which have reached dangerous and often irreversible proportions, it would be educative to know what actions the Government of Meghalaya is proposing to take to reverse the impact of anthropogenic activities on our water bodies and pristine hills? Can we still salvage the poisoned rivers of Jaintia Hills?