Mess Up,Clean Up

Chennai people are trying hard to infuse new life in a dying river of the city.

- Dr. Elsa Lycias Joel

Reactions to pollution usually, essentially fall into three categories: ambivalence,consternation and enthusiasm. The first of these is the broad public response. There is little question of deterring polluters once they have made their mind up to do their business and given that their agenda highlights a determination to further the national interest of production and consumption forgetting the fact that ‘linear systems cannot run on a finite planet indefinitely’.

So far, so very dreary because any production leaves behind a gigantic pile of garbage. The toxins released in the environment travel up the food chain probably leading to a lot of mutations that pollution looks like an imaginary problem while we painfully suffer from it.

The consternation comes mainly from a lot of people who are enthusiastic about making quick money in million ways. Right from the NOC to the approval of building or lay out plan by CMDA, the builder knows what is being done; it’s about all black turning white but rarely black and white. Governments have to be bigger and better than corporations for environment to be saved from pollution.

Officials should be of such worth that any prospect of a repetition of any violation should be giving builders sleepless nights not the stomach to flit through faux-judicial burbling. Do you understand what I mean! Here are leading, influential, rich polluters proposing ideas to concerned departments to approve of anything in a jiffy ignoring the certainty that a day after tomorrow exists and today indeed is yesterday’s tomorrow.