top of page

By:

Correspondent

21 August 2024 at 10:20:16 am

Broken Monopoly

For over two centuries, Mumbai’s Asiatic Society, founded in 1804, has stood as one of India's greatest repositories of learning. It has been a sanctuary of rare manuscripts and civilisational memory. Yet, its recent election will be remembered less for a change of office-bearers than for the collapse of an intellectual order that had come to mistake custodianship for ownership. The sweeping victory of Vinay Sahasrabuddhe’s Asiatic Tomorrow panel is not merely an institutional upset but a...

Broken Monopoly

For over two centuries, Mumbai’s Asiatic Society, founded in 1804, has stood as one of India's greatest repositories of learning. It has been a sanctuary of rare manuscripts and civilisational memory. Yet, its recent election will be remembered less for a change of office-bearers than for the collapse of an intellectual order that had come to mistake custodianship for ownership. The sweeping victory of Vinay Sahasrabuddhe’s Asiatic Tomorrow panel is not merely an institutional upset but a decisive sign of the steady unravelling of the Left’s long-standing monopoly over India’s intellectual establishments. The rhetoric preceding the election was revealing. Kumar Ketkar’s camp had warned darkly of a “BJP-RSS takeover” of the 222-year-old institution, portraying the contest as an allegedly existential battle to save scholarship itself. The implication was that if those outside a familiar ideological circle assumed control, then intellectual standards would apparently collapse. Such arguments have become the default refuge of a left establishment that has grown accustomed to treating public institutions as their private preserves. Judging by the emphatic verdict, many members evidently agreed. Winning by more than two to one in an institution is a decisive repudiation of an entrenched elite. The Asiatic Society is hardly unique. From the early decades after Independence, India’s commanding heights of academia, historical research, cultural institutions and social sciences gradually came under the influence of a remarkably homogeneous intellectual class belonging to a particular ideology. Many of these institutions evolved less into arenas of free inquiry than into ideological republics where only one worldview enjoyed overwhelming institutional privilege. Appointments, fellowships, editorial boards, research grants and academic recognition often circulated within the same intellectual networks. Those questioning established orthodoxies on Indian civilisation, nationalism, religion or history were frequently caricatured as reactionaries before their arguments were even heard. This ‘left-liberal’ gatekeeping shaped school textbooks, influenced public discourse and fostered the curious belief that only one ideological tradition possessed the authority to interpret India’s past. Dissent was tolerated only when it came from within the accepted ideological spectrum. Those outside it were routinely labelled ‘communal’ or worse. What has changed over the past decade is not merely electoral politics but the sociology of Indian intellectual life. As the Mumbai Asiatic election proves, these old networks no longer enjoy uncontested authority. Indians have become increasingly unwilling to accept that scholarship requires ideological certification from self-appointed guardians of public reason. The significance of the Asiatic Society election therefore lies beyond Mumbai. It signals that an era where a narrow intellectual establishment could plausibly claim to speak for scholarship itself while treating disagreement as heresy is now ending. The monopoly of a certain ideological persuasion has been definitively broken. For Indian academia, libraries and research institutions, that is not a loss but an overdue liberation.

Choking Mumbai

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.

Comments

bottom of page