Delhi Pollution - Simblified

I, V, M. Yeah, my host. My God. Yes, my host.

This is how long I have been away. Like, I can't even do it. It was probably anymore. But yeah, here we are recording again.

Although Chuck is off on some mysterious adjourned that he won't reveal about us. I'm assuming he is in deep search for the next incredible yes we will be able to get you. Or on the city right here at phones. We cannot determine yet.

So, yeah, so here we are. And I am, so in my quest of seeing as much of my country I have missed in the last few years, I'm right now in the National Capital of Delhi. Which is as you may be aware, pretty densely shrouded in some smog. And that is the topic of today.

So, I love how we get into each episode assuming there are no new listeners listening to us. This is simplified for anyone who may have stumbled upon this podcast. We are known for releasing toxic airwaves, which is also related to a different time that Srikit will be discussing today, which is the air quality index in Delhi, which clearly is not a criteria for podcasts because we are still here. So, for whatever it's worth whatever you might classify, whatever EQI or toxicity are particular podcasts we have, you have at least signed on with some level of volition of your own, except for Vinay and Deep, who are producers who have no say in this matter.

But unlike that, the air of Delhi is not waiting for anyone's permission to enter people's lunch here. It's a seasonal thing, right? So, every year around this time, for a few months, the air in Delhi becomes worse than the politics in Delhi, which is, you know, and so instead of complaining about the politics for a few months, everyone complains about the air quality. But this time, it seems to be rather worse than usual and we are very lucky and we are very unlucky that we have our own representative who can do us an eyewitness account of the situation in Delhi.

So, you can tell us more. So, yeah, like you said, Delhi is the toxicity capital in multiple different ways, not just in terms of the politics, but also in terms of those beautiful news channels that all are around Delhi and as such. But yeah, as you mentioned, the reason why this year is particularly bad, I mean, this is the first time, I mean, around the world, we are all very familiar with lockdowns right now. But I think as for the first, since the pandemic, since COVID-19 has come across, there is a lockdown being considered, which has nothing to do with COVID whatsoever.

So, the Delhi government is actually considering a citywide lockdown because they just want to bring the pollution levels down and it's too hazardous for everyone and you want to step out really. So, they're actually considering a lockdown, there is nothing to do with COVID-19 whatsoever. And that's why, because again, just to give you a brief overview of Delhi's work, it is like the rain set happened every time around November to about February, March, I mean, the worst period is around November to December and it's caused by multiple multiplicity of reasons we'll get into those reasons later. But the effect is pretty damning.

The AQI, what is called the air quality index, which measures the particulate matter in the air. Now, let's get into a bit of what particulate matter really is. There's two types of particulate matter. There is PM 2.5 and PM 10.

That is 2.5 millimeters smaller, 2.5 millimeters in width and 10 millimeters in width. I don't know the details of it exactly, but it's supposed to be smaller than the width of a human hair. And these particulate matters are the ones that determine how polluted the air is. And now the normal range of AQIs should be under somewhere, I mean, in cities should be somewhere around 70 or 80.

That's considered to be good quality of air. And during this period, Delhi, consistently across the entire Delhi, you have AQI well about 500, which is considered to be extremely hazardous. And in some cases, especially after Diwali and stuff like that, it's gone over a thousand. In which case, it's like practically a gas chamber.

It's not really breathable anymore, dear. Now, and what happens as an effect about it is that not just in Delhi, but all around India, it's the fifth largest killer in India, killing about 2 million people every year. This makes Delhi the place with the largest death rate because of chronic respiratory diseases and asthma. And Delhi's poor air quality irreversibly damages the lungs of 2.2 million people or 50% of all the children in Delhi.

And the Supreme Court of India has made statements about this saying in very clear terms, Delhi has become an ark. And Supreme Court Justice Arun Mishra legitimately said, it is better to get explosive and kill everyone than subject them to the air of it. Wow, strong words. I was just coming directly from the Supreme Court of India.

And going by how the Diwali recently passed by despite the ban in Delhi, I think people were exactly trying to do that. So that's how stuff has been going on. Last year actually was, so the worst air quality on records has been in 2017. It was so bad that there is also a very famous incident that happened because of a very famous sporting incident that happened because of this ban and I would like to tell us a bit about it.

Do you have some idea? No, no, no, no. Go ahead. So much.

In fact, that happened because of something like air pollution on a sporting incident. So in December 2017, during a test match between Sri Lanka and India, Sri Lankan players started experiencing bleeding problems and several players vomited in both the restrooms and had to use face masks on the field until the match was stopped. Right. Now a lot of Indian sides, a lot of the Indian side as well as the commentators and the support staff and even the fans were answered by the teacher Sri Lanka and Hindi commentators joked on air saying that Sri Lanka players were using masks to hide their face after taking a beating of their lives.

And of course, as Twitter tends to do and add, add zoon toxicity to the solidarity toxic air saying that the team's nationalism should be lauded that they are sacrificing their health to entertain the crowd and keep the Indian flag flying high. And also, Virendra Sevagh, who stepped in at this point and said this all this, all this the nathak, the Sri Lankan side was doing to stop Virakholi from scoring a triple century. But then later, a bit of this conversation stopped and Moamma Chami also threw up because of the equality and so the pollution level, so but Chami also said that while he threw up, the pollution levels are concerned, but Indian players are used to this. So finally, actually at the end of it, the Indian Medical Association actually wrote to the ICC and said that ICC should have a policy on pollution and that the match should have been abandoned for pollution, which would have been extremely 21st century thing to do in the current context.

So stuff like this is what Delhi pollution can do. And it is, and first hand, it is being, while there's a lot of air time consumed by a lot of this and in a way, I feel it's because of the fact that a lot of the news organizations are based in Delhi and so it gets that much footage because everyone's breathing in, that's all everyone can think about. But it is truly terrible. Like my first hand experience, I think one was the moment when I landed in Delhi, I was wearing a full face mask and glasses, but the areas under my eyes started burning 20 minutes into the city, like air.

And like it is, I mean, I mean, I mean, of course for the people who are privileged enough to have that everyone's clustered around, like as it used to happen with Delhi, windows, everyone's clustered around the heater, not even clustered around the air, it's because the air is genuinely better to be. So, so it is, it is a truly overwhelming phenomenon and the air quality has become like as the honorable Supreme Court has mentioned, Delhi has become an aragat sorts and yeah. So, so yeah, so that's, that's right. So why I was smiling was there was this tweet.

I'm not sure how to do it is, but basically the AQI, the maximum middle record is 99, 99 or something, I can't go into four digits or so. Yeah, so that's why you're right. That was the funny thing, like a lot of places the AQI is recorded as a thousand because the meters don't go higher than that. Right.

It kind of reminds me of Chernobyl, the mini-series and like the, when they were getting the diagon counters and they had these small great diagon counters, they measured up to three. Right. So the Soviets reported it as, oh, the radiation is actually because the meters didn't go higher than that. Yeah.

So basically the tweet was from, uh, at underscore logic who said, if there's a 99 because it can't go higher, we basically Nadia Komeni achieved the air quality. Yeah, pretty much. At this point, I, honestly, I mean, the WHO is recommending that the air, a good air quality should be like under 70 and stuff and like AQI is out of consistency measured are like way beyond hazardous, like they are active health hazard level air quality. So, I mean, there's no comfort in saying that our 99 and nobody just like, because you're still there pretty much living in a gas table and you're like, how'd he get it?

This is better. But anyway, the, the causes of the air quality and this is actually itself a matter of debate right now with like a lot of people, uh, talking about what the different causes of the air quality are. And before we get into that, let's take a quick break and we will figure out what it is that causes all this haze in the air and then see you after the break. Are you looking for finance products and services that can enhance your personal finance experience?

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So tune into CyberSayers on YouTube and all our new streaming platforms. So welcome back. We are on a very sort of topic like as precious as our own pre-tooth, which is air quality in Delhi and Shiket, who is currently in Delhi is reporting from there with great deal of personal, whatever, forward. So you're going to tell us about what causes, what the underlying causes are.

So this is also the time when weddings in Delhi peak, right? So my assumption was that when families get together and gossip automatically, they are toxic, which is not a real reason. I'm hearing Delhi forwarding and I have experienced this. I can touch on that absolutely.

There is a lot of toxicity in the words as well. But Tony, you brought out an interesting point, which is also one of the reasons that it's actually like this unholy mix of a lot of different circumstances coming together, the exact right place and Delhi and the larger NCR region is that pre-triedish for these circumstances. So the number one cause and this is like the hotly debated point. The number one cause for the Delhi pollution is vehicular pollution, vehicular emissions.

Even before that, I think the number one causes, the air doesn't blow away. There is some sort of a cause, but that's what actually accumulates all of this. So if you were to say, what is it here, it is vehicular emissions and a lot of other stuff. But as you said, let me start with that then.

The cause why the Delhi pollution is so concentrated over here and why there's a massive snog in the air is because of the fact that firstly, Delhi is sort of like a valley. So as far as the air is concerned, it kind of settles over here and the air from neighboring states all blows over and kind of settles over Delhi. The second cause as you said, that's actually the biggest cause why the air pollution is not dissipating as easily is because the winter conditions actually cause for very, very still air over here. Like there is very little wind that's blowing right now and there's only cold air.

The winter also allows for the air to remain steady over here rather than waterway by evaporating a constant cycle of air happening. So the air just settles over Delhi as such. And as I said, so there's motor vehicle pollution, that's a lot of like, that's one of the major contributors. The other contributor is also agricultural land exhaust.

Now that comprises of many other things. So stubble burning is one of the very popular ones which everyone knows about. Stubble is the straw that's left over after agricultural harvest. That straw is because disposing that is a major issue for a lot of farmers, especially in Haryana.

Age old method has been to just set fire to it. And we're setting fire to that actually mass setting fire of so much stubble actually causes major pollution, but it's not just stubble burning from agricultural land. It's also like agricultural land uses a lot of diesel generators because to power a lot of other stuff like pumps and stuff like that over there. So diesel generators themselves generate a lot of pollution and this is actually coming from the neighboring states of Punjab and Haryana where agriculture is like massive over there.

So that's happening over there. Finally, then up till recently, which is now shut down, there was the bad food for deforestation nearby, which even though it only produces less than 8% of the city's electric power, it used to actually create like a contribute of about 80% to 90% of the particulate matter pollution in Delhi. But going to that stat only 2018 they shut it down. The other factor is firecrackers.

Firecrackers that were burst during the valley despite a cracker band being imposed on Delhi that is entirely ignored. And as you mentioned, Tony with the wedding season coming right after the valley season, firecrackers seemed to have no this thing of a beating anymore. And so that's another major problem. And finally, also you're talking about there is a landfill nearby called the Balswah landfill in near Delhi and that's constantly on fire where the trash is constantly being burnt.

Now, all of these things are... There's an interesting reason for most of these landfill scar tissue fires. So what happens is there are two kinds of bacteria, aerobic and anaerobic. So aerobic bacteria mostly chew up the garbage and release carbon dioxide.

And the anaerobic guys, they release methane. So normally the methane is not in concentration enough to really, you know, harm or be a fire and such. It's just very difficult. But you have sometimes a big pocket of organic matter covered with a lot of inorganic matter.

And this organic matter is getting putrefied inside collecting a lot of methane and getting trapped by all the inorganic stuff or the garbage on the outside. And after a certain amount of pressure builds up, this sort of comes out in a sort of a bush. And if it catches fire, it'll keep smoldering the whole bunch of it. And once and most landfills are plastics are a big part of landfills and many plastics molders.

So that's one of the big problems. As you mentioned also, Nari, there is that it's also... If I'm not mistaken, Pete is also responsible for this. So like a lot of Pete, which is grown underground, it burns underground.

So it burns, actually it's burning underground. So it's like the soil is smoking. Do we have Pete here? Do we have Pete in India?

I don't think there are websites. I speak on my eyes here, I have no idea. But what I've seen is there's a lot of... Whether it's speed or whether it's some other material.

One other aspect is it's being cow dung. So a lot of cow dung also when it's burnt here in India. And what happens is there's a particular plant, whether it may be Pete or something, as my research does not extend to there. It goes underground and once it catches fire because of all the stubble burning.

Even after the stubble goes out, the main part of the stubble that the farmers are trying to burn goes out, the fires underground keep burning. And they require very... Because their storage, their oxygen keeps going in there and they're constantly burning all the time. So you can't...

There's no way to really put out those fires. And they sometimes burn for like months together. So that's a major problem. One of the key effects of this small that happens.

So there are actually... All biological effects. Some of them are actually tangible effects as well, but you can see in the world. Of course the biological effects are especially with children.

So children here are being born and getting raised with irreversible lung damage. They lower that immune system. There's a risk of increased risk of cancer, epilepsy, diabetes, multiple sclerosis. In fact, some doctors have mentioned that we can't really tell...

I mean, we might be heading to an entire generation of children being raised in Delhi right now who might have massive problems as they grow up. Because this problem is only about a decade or two old. So now there's a whole generation of kids who are going to grow up with a lot of these lung problems and as well as maybe the answers. So I'd like to chip in with my two cents.

So the human respiratory tract is pretty efficient at reading out undesirable effects. So you have dust, you have parasites, mics, and you have microbes, bacteria and things like that. And we have... So let me breathe.

It goes to our noses. There are hair there which sort of trap a lot of the bigger particles. And the entire passage is lined with mucus and that traps a lot of it. And the air that finally makes it into the lungs is pretty clean.

And the problem is when you're completely bombarded with PM 2.5 or less, so part of it matter which is less than 2.5 microns, which are not big enough to be trapped in the entry part of the respiratory tract. They start clogging up the little air sacs in the lung, the alveoli. And they die. And so your lung capacity starts getting diminished.

This is like a very kachah sort of explanation that somebody gave me. I don't know how far this is true. But the thing is that it affects some people much worse than it affects others. And it definitely seems to affect the children the worst.

Because, and incalculably, because it leads to your physical... The child's physical development is retarded little bit. And because of that, the child is not able to perform it. He's a her peak.

So even when you're thinking, studying or doing whatever, you do need to be at a pretty decent level. Absolutely. And I'm the point about children also. The very simple fact is also that they are far more vulnerable.

Because as they're growing, they breathe at a higher rate. And since their rates are smaller, they're breathing at a higher rate of air per kilogram of their body. Yeah. So they're actually ingesting a lot more of it.

Yeah, they ingest a lot more of it. And also if you look at it on an average, children spend far more time outside. And they're not supposed to bad air quality. So that causes a lot of problem with it.

And also if you were to see it in current context, the smog has become like... I mean, the Delhi smog has been a factor for almost over a decade. But recently, especially last year, one of the hypotheses was that because of this particulate matter in the air being very high, there are a large part of the particulate matter are aerosols. And these aerosols actually acted as carriers and virus carriers for COVID-19, which enabled that...

But aerosols are suspension of liquid droplets in the air, which is small. And so that actually, that's one of the hypotheses for why the pandemic was... I mean, the epicenter of it, by one point, was Delhi because of exacerbated by the Delhi smog and the stuff that allowed the COVID-19 virus to spread so crazy over here. The other effects also, I mean, if you just...

There is very low sunlight and that low sunlight is actually causing a lot of plants around the NCR to actually not develop as well because this is a time when they can actually get quite a bit of sunlight, but even though the sun is present, the UV rays are blocked quite significantly by a lot of this stuff. So the sunlight actually prevents a bit of photosynthesis from happening. And finally also accidents, like Delhi is like, especially around the... In and around the NCR, there's massive accidents that happen, especially during the night, when the visibility is terrible.

And so in fact, in 2017, it caused like a 24 car... 24 car pileup on the Gemini expressway. So obviously, I mean, there are biological... There are definitely biological reasons, but also just human life and normal working of life completely gets messed up over here.

This is where now we can talk about what is the cause and what are the people doing about... So what is the daily government doing about these particular things? So let's discuss these factors and get back after this break. You know that feeling when you finish a movie and you just need to talk about it?

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Each episode starts with the game of pickleball and once the rallies are done, the real job begins. Serving it up with Sanya, watch and listen on YouTube and wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Welcome back to Sennify. Hopefully you're breathing cleaner air than Shikit is in Delhi, which is also what we're talking about.

And before the break, Shikit told us about all of the physical health conditions and hazards, like accidents. But Shikit, one question that I had was around mental health and how it affects people in terms of air pollution and stuff like that. And I think there have been studies which have shown very strong correlation between air quality and bipolar disorder, Shikit's opinion and personality disorders. I'm guessing that's because in India, there are too many other pressing matters that these have not been studied.

But this is going to be one of the other major outcomes from poor air quality over the time to come. For sure, for sure, Tony, so actually your absolutely right, I mean, there has been a causal link between seizures and multiple sclerosis and stuff like that. And as I said, a whole bunch of other diseases that are not been diagnosed. And like you said, mental health goes down the pecking order if it comes to kind of evaluating whether anything is important.

I mean, everyone's like, I'm not able to breathe, I'm getting asthma, I'm coughing over here. Like my child there is like, but not eating this food, I don't give a shit right now. So that does make a major point over there. And beyond the actual biological effects of the particulate matter in the air affecting your body, there is also a factor of dipping into some of the control measures.

Like the Delhi government has already imposed like all schools are going on a lockdown for a while now. We already saw like the mental health effects of an extended lockdown on people. Now, while once COVID-19 comes under control globally, they're hoping that there are no more lockdowns per se. But it looks like until the Delhi pollution problem comes under control, November, December will pretty much be a lockdown kind of scenario for a lot of the Delhi residents based on the kind of conversations that the government's having, because they're finding legitimately, legitimately no ways of controlling this better than like just banning or putting a curfew and telling people to not go out in some days.

And no more odd even though. No more odd even, it's just now. Now, that's the great thing about governance, right? Once they find that there is a way to control population in a certain manner, then that becomes a good way to be right anyway.

So this is with the internet bans and now we are seeing this with lockdowns. I mean, lockdown is going to be a standard measure of control in a lot of for a lot of different problems, solving a lot of different problems. But yeah, so the this particular case, do you think that the panacea was worse than the sort of ailment? Because we have been amplitude that lockdowns hurt economic activity and tend to hurt the poorest people the most.

And this time, if they do this, this will be lockdown number three. So the first lockdown when the pandemic came, and there was one, but the second way of came. And we saw that the second wave, the population suffered a hell of a lot more in the second wave than the first economically and in the third one, why does the government feel that people won't suffer? So they probably haven't applied their minds.

But because you know, most governments, they just they basically just need your reaction. And but it will hurt that is for sure. It's going to hurt people. And it's may have been not solved the problem because if if the problem, you really don't know the cause, so if the cause, the main cause, let us say, just for argument's sake, is stubble burning and adjoining haryana, then causing a complete lockdown is not really going to matter at all.

Absolutely. So and I have been reading with interest the debates that have been happening in the Supreme Court, they're very enlightening debates. One thing that they enlighten me most is none one of them has a shred of evidence for any of their claims. So they're all like blind people groping in the dark.

Somebody says, this is this is this is this is what works out. There is no study, there's no scientific people, there's absolutely nothing. And people think wisdom is what is going to get the mechanism doesn't actually you really need hard scientific evaluation. And I don't think you have you seen any, you know, any evidence that that anyone's really done any study or anything.

It's one I'll tell you one, I'll tell you one, I'll tell you just a bad example. So about so private studies or even government studies, I think showed that some 35 to 40% of the pollution is because of stubble burning. But if you say that, you preserve the farmers, that's true. And they've already pushed off the farmers because of the law.

So now you can't say, so they said it is 4%. But it is 4%. If you take that, you know, that chunk which happened in November and divided by 12 months. But the problem is not that the problem is now.

And this is the kind of debate that is happening. I mean, all of them are well meaning folk. No one, you know, everyone loves their country. I don't think there's a single person there who doesn't want the country to benefit.

But how is anything going to be done in this way? You're far too kind with the last statement to end. I'd say that one thing that I have noticed, at least I have been following some of the conversation and reading a bit about it as well. It's like the state wants to emphasize that it's the stubble burning.

So they can blame it on the other neighboring states that are the delivery issue one. Yeah, they want to blame it on stubble. Yeah. And the center wants to blame it on the vehicle pollution.

So they can make it a state problem and they're blaming the state for not like implementing the measures strongly enough and stuff. And the point is what they are the measures that they're taking right now also are actually more like treating the symptoms rather than attacking the cause per se. The cause would be to kind of when the smoke comes over that period, if you impose a lockdown, there'll be more people at home, the economic activity will suffer over that period. They will kind of create vehicle bans and all that stuff.

But the problem is that on a larger scale, they need to create sustainable solutions for farmers to prevent them from sustainable, you need to create like systems in which the vehicle pollution can be done in different ways. They also need to use science in a more interesting way. There are certain methods that they're using like what are called smogtars, which actually is something that they've put in certain parts of the city. It's still only a pilot.

But these smogtars are actually, they capture particulate matter and they kind of compress it so that they're literally taking the smoke out of the air and popping out the inner so that basically gigantic air for the city. But again, there is with the volume of particulate matter and the volume of that that's there in the Delhi air, there's no one, I mean, you'll have to start setting up smogtars on every building of the particulate matter in the air. So the only solution has to be long term preventive solution rather than treating the symptoms over the period of time. Because the thing is, the political urgency also comes during these periods when you actually see the smoke in the air.

But once the means come, the smoke clears, the AQI in Delhi and that's what they're like about, oh, Delhi air quality after rains has gone too good almost like the AQI reduces to up to 70. And so everyone's forgotten about the issue and everyone's selling more cars and everyone's buying all that kind of crap. And the moment the air quality gets worse, then is when everyone starts taking treating the symptoms. So that's why the problem really lies.

And you need like a long time, again, taking a broader view on a larger Indian scale. The COP26 summit that's happening right now, India was one of those countries along with China who said instead of radical, I mean, kind of phasing out cold, they're going to face down cold, whatever that means, meaning that they're going to reduce their amount of cold usage, but they're not going to sustainably replace cold in any which way. And the targets of going carbon neutral for India are 2070, by which time I think I don't think there will be people left in Delhi without cancer. But have other countries tackled this problem?

I mean, like China, for instance, had quite a few polluted cities. I'm sure there was some. So here's where the dody little secret is and it's 13 out of the 25 most polluted cities around the world are in India. And nobody rivals India in terms of how bad it the AQI gets.

No where else in the world, I mean, and definitely nowhere in the developed world has the air quality gone so bad other than China. And China has dealt with it with smoktas and stuff like that. But even there, we have not really attacked the problem with any kind of like sustainable mass solution, which is dominant led or like major organization led. So there, since the problem only exists in India and Indians, the rich Indians are started buying air purifiers, the poor Indians are just living with it.

So at the moment, there has been very little actual movement to reduce this particular problem. And it's such a large systemic problem with so many different contributing factors that everyone ends up just leading the other factor. And that causes that political stalemate where no real solution can be arrived at. So that's where the problem really comes to.

I mean, the solution that again, I'd speak from position of privilege and knowing only people who have known some level of privilege, the solutions are either to buy air purifiers for every room of the house or to leave Delhi. So, so there is an old, you know, so in factory environments, so this is there's something known as the International Labor Organization, ILO. So ILO has guidelines about how work should be done in book lists. So if there is a hazard and there is a person who's working in hazardous environment, the first priority is to get rid of the hazard.

So if you cannot eliminate the hazard, you remove the person from the vicinity of the hazard. If you cannot do remove the person from the vicinity of the hazard, you try to isolate the hazard, right? So that the person can go in and out and freely without being in danger. And only if that is even that is not possible is when you isolate the person, that is why, you know, if you are walking around in a nuclear thing, you would wear one of those hazardous.

So what we are saying is that we would like to isolate the person. So we try to remove the hazard, hazard will go. We try, we cannot remove the people, we can, we can lock it down and tell everyone to go to hell wherever they want to go. But that's not even viable because everybody's livelihood is tied up.

We cannot isolate the hazard because this is like, it spreads, it's really, you know, very, very diffused. So I can't do anything about that. So the air purifier thing seems to be the most practical solution. And that brings me to, you know, to a point, you know, so, so one of the problems that, so, you know, growth happened somewhere in the 1800 population goes really started taking off.

And that was because of full productivity. And the full productivity really went up. So around the 1800s, somewhere in the middle of the 1800s or 1700s, I'm not sure, they discovered bad droppings, okay, go on. And they found that if you add go on to funds, the food productivity goes up.

And of course, they weren't enough bad droppings. Then the productivity went up a little bit. Then somebody realized that there were entire island in the, you know, in the Americas, especially in, you know, in the Central and Southern American Pacific Ocean, which are just small islands made entirely out of bird droppings. They're like mountains of Guano.

So they're very happy. So ships would go, they would mine the Guano and then fertilize the fields. And productivity was radically increased, like 2X, 3X, 4X. And then even that started on the other island, then they started having wars about, you know, Guano and, you know, they would capture island and America wanted to capture island and Europe in power, all that.

Then in 1900 and something, 1915, 14, a German scientist named Haber-Frits Haber, he invented a process known as the, now it's called a Haber-Boch process. So he figured out how to fix nitrogen, all Guano-Frits, nitrogen is the main fertilizer. And so he made absolutely bonkers amounts of natural fertilizer. So now from that point onwards, the world has not experienced food shortage, actually.

And then the population just took off. So even in India, you remember your grand father generation, my grand father generation, 10 siblings in a family are very common. And the reason was, like how about the moon diodes starvation anyway? So not when you were nine, then people start dying of starvation, people health impurorant.

And because of that very, very rapid growth in population, all economic systems, all ecological systems just collapsed. And we are seeing some of the effects of that. And so there are two options. So one group of people thinks that we should roll back growth.

So one way, for example, just take the plastic tube by and means in India, it is possible to get five rupee packet of these five rupees. And at five rupees has some 10 grand of layers or something like that. It comes with a very large wrapping like a packet, which is completely bi or non-degradable. Like the universe would end and you still have one or two layers packet left.

Nothing would happen. So it's that bad. So obviously that is something which is egregiously unnecessary. Just completely unnecessary.

Why do you need to buy 10 rupees worth of layers in a company? That is because there is no cost dimension. There's no tax on it. So one group of people says all this plastic packaging and everything needs to be taxed harshly so that it's cost was reduced.

And different things. So basically they're talking about de-growth. It's just grow less, do fewer bad picks. And another group says they're called eco-modulus.

They say that whatever has happened has happened. The climate has already gone to the top. And there's nothing you can do over the next 50 years to roll back and such. It's gone.

Like you can try and pin blame it and do everything. And I instantly that de-growth thing is basically what the government is doing. They're telling India and China that once you guys stop growing. And that is political suicide.

Forget India. India is complete political suicide because if government is not able to show prosperity to the population at large, a little bit of prosperity, it'll lose the election. It's out of government. It cannot do that.

Even if you take the other argument which is simply saying that the developed countries that are looking at the developing countries saying you guys stopped developing because the world is going to shite and then the government is going to say boss, you guys are going to do it at all. So much not yet. So the argument is all this, it just leads to constant bickering. And there is no resolution at end of all that bickering.

So it never is. So you have more and more bickering. And the thing is this. Whenever bad things happen such as a very bad flood or a very bad cyclone or a very bad hurricane it's very difficult to pin it on something.

So you have a hurricane in Florida. You can't pin it on India or China or you have a flood even in India. You can't pin it on something happening in India or in China or wherever. So the consequences are refused.

So what they say, what the ecomodness says, that you have to look for technological solutions to this. It's going to happen. It's going to happen all the time. Except why I have to study what's going to happen and try to fix what is going to happen.

Yeah. So just comparing this to COVID, there was a very specific cause which was a virus that would be isolated. And what it led to was also an acute condition that you knew like your life was immediately at risk. Here what's happening is the process are distributed and diffused.

So you can't pin point one. And also the effects are largely chronic. It's bad air quality but basically your life will be shortened by X number of years at the end. So I guess both of these makes it like a when it gets really bad you take notice of it but then it's like okay it'll pass in a few weeks.

And then the cycle to be every year because it makes the headlines every year in exactly the same way and nothing changes. So sometimes I feel that you have to acknowledge that I think I'm going to go bad. Try to find out what you can do. So if it means equipping each and every household with an air filter so be it you just empower households to have their own air filter or reduce if you can't or you know something like that.

And of course you try to reduce the you know addition. So there are technological ways in which you can eliminate stubble burning but it involves some capital expenditure which farmers can't do. They cannot they can't afford it. So one of the root causes possibility of this is that farm incomes have gone down maybe that's the case.

Productivity is plateauing prices are dropping and there is no alternative employment possible. The farmer can't stop farming and you know do something else because there is nothing else for him to do. So it is impossible. You are desperate at Miami is not going to stop burning the stubble.

So if he has to do so you have to incentivize him and do that. So unfortunately at this particular time that whole thing has taken a very big political sort of dimension. And so one person if you know if a solution does come and it means it will benefit one party the other party even though it knows there is a good solution will actively try to novel it. So yeah.

And again unlike the covid or the weather the causes of these are humans whether it's farmers or people who drive vehicles or run factories. One particular set of people are going to have to change their way. Unless like you said you empower like massive air purifier for the entire city or like it's a big deal. And that's why I look at it as well.

What is needed to solve this problem is is unified and decisive political will right. You need that political will across I mean I'm talking about a mythical land right now but there is like unified political will across party lines across different types of people who are just like looking at okay what is that like I mean when you look at covid and the one thing that you know is there is some president when you look at covid like for example there was a pandemic it was unthinkable that countries and cities would shut down and international travel would ever shut down but that that happened because there was a problem so massive and so immediate that people needed to do it right. If only only at some point where I mean the problem and the issue that I see right now is it's almost like people are trying to learn to live with this problem here but this is not going to be sustainable. No it's physically damaging you can't learn to live with that.

It's not damaging physically. At which point there needs to be some thing that says that you know what as as strong political will as there will be no new cars that will be sold in in Delhi and see it. Yeah it will be very unpopular. I mean I'm not a politician so I can make this statement but like imagine trying to tell people not to buy cars.

It's political suicide you'll never make it it to the next election. You need someone extremely revolutionary to come and change everything in Delhi politics. Like I'll go. Well I mean in some ways right like I was just going somewhere in the city and my wife was commenting that do the roads here are genuinely really good.

Like the roads of Delhi are like they just came from a banger or like it is like a music of baritad. I was like this is probably one of the reasons why the pollution is so bad. It even looks out at their road window and sees such great roads and everyone wants to buy cars to spend a part to take to drive on the roads and that's where a lot of the pollution is coming. I mean there are families that are having three, four, five, six cars and like you're driving them regularly and like whatever.

I mean one of the solutions that people when the audio tool was instituted. The solution that people had was to buy a car with a car they bought a car they bought a car they bought a car they would drive either the both of the days. So I mean there is always a I mean Indians are always find a way around it. So it requires something really harsh and really major which I mean at the moment we don't see the political will or the determination to do in any which way.

So that's that is where the problem really likes. So yeah I mean although I hate to end on this note but I really don't know I'm in this. This is one of the small topics right. This is like one of the topics you can you can't even joke about it's clearly just just just bad.

The only thing is that you can save a hell of a lot of money on cigarette expenses because you don't need to just go around and you can get your lungs damaged natural causes and just come home and so economically that way it's beneficial. Oh the lung damage none of the nicotine good. Yeah no the nicotine goodness and in fact you know that's that could be a good ad campaign for any like just yeah but it's sad it's sad it's I'm just sort of one half of my mind just trying to make some funny clever joke and I'm not really not finding anything at all. So this is like the poets said DD Jaleil Jigas.

So on that fairly depressing note to all our listeners from Delhi who you have decent air purifiers or or long term plans to settle in other cities but so yeah on that note there are any one articles out. Yeah so I don't know what to say just stay safe and stay un-proluted and stay simplified yeah stay breathing and stay simplified yeah bye bye.