Dinner in darkness
Well-meaning children with their small, yet noble efforts stand humiliated on Earth Day

By Meha Mathur
On earth Day yesterday, I read two news items in two leading English dailies, which once again confirmed my belief that the Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron script is being played in every arena of Indian life, environment included. To the young generation which is perhaps not aware of that phenomenal movie, a brief introduction: This movie, released 25 years ago, had Naseeruddin Shah and Ravi Waswani trying to be the good guys trying to help identify a murderer. Only, in a hilarious turn of events, they find themselves on the wrong side of the power divide and end up in jail. The movie was a comic spoof on the Indian social and political reality, and yesterday, reading the newspapers, I thought we are all a cast of a Jaane bhi do Yaaron inreal life. The first item read that taking inspiration from the successful power saving during the earth hour on March 28, school children in Delhi had decided to do a repeat performance on April 22, the Earth Day. There were to be paper-bag making competitions in schools, to discourage the use of plastic bag. Back home in the evening, kids were all excited about switching off lights between 8.30 and 9.30 pm. Homework was completed before that hour, TV programmes were voluntarily missed and dinner was eaten in darkness, amid some fear, at least by the younger of the two children.

Yet why was I, who as writer of this column should be excited about such drives, not too enthused? Well, in the morning, on the same day, appears the news of an obnoxious, Rs 300-crore memorial project in NOIDA, on a land that was till two years ago a pristine stretch with a dense wood. Now, that I used to take the road along that stretch on my way to office till last year. Around end 2006, I started noticing felling of trees and sensed it right that the government in power had set its eye on that piece of land. Next, trees along the road were felled and an ugly wall cropped up in its place. Which meant that the forest, which was a delight to passerby, was out of reach to common man now. But what was the purpose of the wall, and what was going on behind that wall, was still not clear. The media let the cat out of the bag yesterday, when it reported that the land will be used for a 300-crore Dalit Memorial, a dream project of Ms Mayawati.

It makes me sick. Sick at the jaundiced view of development which does not take into account the aesthetic needs of a society; sick at the single-point agenda of devoting national resources to mindless appeasement of vote bank and self-promotion; and sick at the complete apathy of the ruling class to the silent constituency, that’s environment. Who has given leaders like Mayawati the mandate to cause a permanent scar on the face of this earth, I wonder? Is it a school, a college, an industrial training institute, or a hospital which will, by benefiting the society in some productive way, justify the cutting of thousands of trees and endangering the Okhla Bird sanctuary next door?

A PIL has been filed, but given India’s recent track record in settling environment-vs-development disputes, there’s not much to be hoped out of legal course.

There definitely will be an out-of-court ruling. In the end, nature will have the last laugh. But will I be happy with that judgment? Certainly not. Because it will not be fair on those small, well-meaning kids in ordinary homes, who do their bid for environment protection by eating their dinner in darkness.