New Delhi: Congress MP Shashi Tharoor expressed his dissapointment and growing concern over the “very limited” discussion on air quality in Parliament and said there should be enough people in the political space who care about the issue.
Air quality issue has not affected elections in India as it did in other democracies and Tharoor hints that this maybe part of the reason why there is an apparent lack of interest in tackling the matter, one of urban India's major worry.
"Just having broad acquiescence of nodding heads of parliamentarians is not going to be enough. There's got to be enough people in the political space who care about this issue and are willing to bat for solutions at all levels."
"In the 10 years that I have been in Parliament, I have raised it once, Rajiv Pratap Rudy has raised it once and that's been about it,” Tharoor said.
Air pollution is only addressed during the winter months when it gets people's attention just after Diwali. But it does not get into Parliament space very much. By the time the Winter Session starts, there are other urgent issues that MPs want to raise, the Congress leader said.
Tharoor said his concern is that air quality dialogues are restricted to conferences and have still not moved beyond technocratic forums into anything remotely approaching a mass movement, the way anti-tobacco and polio vaccination did.
These campaigns became successful because these were backed by political will and people got involved, he said.
On the National Clean Air Programme, Tharoor said it has, in many ways, come a bit late and slow.
Tharoor said there is a concern that despite India's wealth of civil society stakeholders and technical experts on this subject, there has been limited public consultation on the plan and its target.
"I don't see that the plan has any legal measures incorporated within it to ensure accountability and to penalize non-implementation," he rued.
