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Correspondent

23 August 2024 at 9:59:04 pm

Contemptible Farce

In a political climate increasingly dominated by the imperatives of algorithmic engagement, the boundary between substantive democratic dissent and performative exhibitionism has grown perilously thin. The latest instance of this was evinced at the capital’s Indira Gandhi International Airport, where Abhijeet Dipke, founder of the pressure group (CJP), transformed a routine administrative inconvenience into a grand narrative of authoritarian overreach on part of the Modi government. Dipke and...

Contemptible Farce

In a political climate increasingly dominated by the imperatives of algorithmic engagement, the boundary between substantive democratic dissent and performative exhibitionism has grown perilously thin. The latest instance of this was evinced at the capital’s Indira Gandhi International Airport, where Abhijeet Dipke, founder of the pressure group (CJP), transformed a routine administrative inconvenience into a grand narrative of authoritarian overreach on part of the Modi government. Dipke and fellow organizers were placed under preventative detention by Delhi Police upon landing from Mumbai. Simultaneously, the group’s high-profile tag-along, the political influencer and YouTuber Dhruv Rathee, was detained at his residence in Gurugram. The authorities moved swiftly to prevent an unpermitted mass demonstration planned at Jantar Mantar, which aimed to demand the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar over alleged irregularities in the Election Commission's Special Intensive Revision (SIR) electoral roll updates. From the confines of an aircraft aisle, Dipke broadcasted a video appeal claiming that the state’s action in picking up thirty-year-olds off a plane was a measure something even Indira Gandhi didn’t do during the Emergency. The CJP’s top leadership were later released under the simple condition that they maintain public peace for one year. Dipke’s grotesque anachronism belies an alarming historical amnesia of one of modern India’s darkest chapters, which saw the systematic dismantling of Indian constitutional democracy between 1975 and 1977. When Indira Gandhi imposed the National Emergency in June 1975, the state suspended fundamental rights indefinitely. The political opposition of that era, including stalwarts such as Jayaprakash Narayan, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and Lal Krishna Advani, were arrested in midnight sweeps and held in prolonged isolation under the unchecked statutory authority of the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA). More egregiously, the comparison minimises the horrific violence visited upon the youth and student activists of the 1970s. During the Emergency, dissenters faced severe custodial torture, and in cases like that of Calicut engineering student P. Rajan, total erasure by the state machinery. For activists like Dipke to conflate the real horrors of an autocracy with a brief detention reveals the strategic shallowness of today’s boutique activism. The CJP, which emerged earlier this year following rhetorical provocations from the judiciary regarding exam leaks and youth unemployment, operates as a high-concept digital campaign. Its tactics belong firmly to the modern attention economy, where structural grievances are repackaged into emotive content designed for viral distribution. Democratic systems require vigorous accountability, and the administrative processes of the Election Commission are entirely legitimate subjects of civic scrutiny. However, when activists weaponize historical trauma to inflate minor procedural constraints into an existential struggle against an imaginary dictatorship, they demonstrate a cynical calculation. The Dipke-Rathee cohort are not the vanguard of a new freedom struggle for the youth but merely the mercenary content creators of an imaginary oppression designed to satisfy both their digital metrics and their political benefactors.

Choking Mumbai

Correspondent
Apr 22, 2025
2 min read

For decades, Mumbai was perceived as a rare urban oasis, where the saline sweep of the Arabian Sea blunted the worst ravages of India's air pollution. That illusion has now been dispelled. A meticulous four-year study by Respirer Living Sciences (RLS), using data from its AtlasAQ platform, reveals the bleak truth that the city’s air is thick with pollutants all year round, with no ‘clean season’ left.


Mumbai’s annual average levels of PM10 (particulate matter ten microns or less in diameter) have consistently breached the national safety threshold of 60 micrograms per cubic metre (μg/m³). This is not merely a seasonal malaise tied to cooler winter months, as once assumed. Alarmingly, the city’s pollution levels persist even through the hot season, a time when improved atmospheric dispersion should offer natural reprieve.


Across the city - from Chakala in Andheri East to Deonar, Kurla, Vile Parle West and Mazgaon - pollution has become an unrelenting, ubiquitous presence.


The culprits are well known: traffic emissions from a burgeoning number of vehicles; unregulated dust from frenzied construction; industrial activity in and around the ports; and a conspicuous lack of dust control measures. Mumbai’s ceaseless growth now risks becoming a chronic liability.


Worryingly, the regulatory response remains sluggish. Mumbai’s urban planning continues to treat clean air as a peripheral concern, not a foundational necessity. Development plans rarely integrate environmental impact assessments in a meaningful way.


A sharper, citywide strategy is urgently needed. Dust suppression rules at construction sites must be enforced strictly, with financial penalties for violators and incentives for best practices. Traffic management systems should be overhauled to ease congestion and encourage the use of public transport. Expansion of clean, reliable mass transit network needs to be urgently prioritised. In addition, comprehensive real-time air monitoring at the ward level should be deployed, enabling authorities to respond to localised pollution spikes swiftly rather than relying on citywide averages that conceal dangerous hotspots.


Longer-term, clean air targets must be hardwired into the city’s master planning and transport policies. Green buffers along major traffic corridors, stricter emission norms for commercial vehicles and incentives for rooftop gardens and urban afforestation could all play a part. Industrial zones near port areas should be subjected to rigorous air quality compliance measures, not token self-certifications. Private developers and large infrastructure firms, often among the worst offenders, must be made stakeholders in the clean air mission through binding regulations.


Mumbai’s commercial dynamism - as a magnet for migrants, entrepreneurs and investors - depends not just on glittering skyscrapers but on something far more basic: the ability to breathe. Unless clean air becomes an unshakeable priority, the city risks suffocating its own future. For a metropolis that prides itself on its resilience against terror attacks, monsoon floods and economic shocks, the real test will be whether it can muster the will to fight an invisible, pervasive enemy slowly corroding the lives of its 20 million citizens.

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