Implementation and compliance have been much like the Capital’s air quality: extremely poor. Delhi government has, so far, registered 79 cases related to sale and storage of crackers, and about 19,005 kg have been seized – a drop in the ocean. For it to have a modicum of impact on air quality, enforcing de facto the firecracker ban will require turning NCR into a police state, the only occasion where we would actually support such a form of ‘administration’. Delhi government has deployed 77 enforcement teams from the revenue department and 300 teams from Delhi Police to enforce the ban. Yet, pre-Diwali anecdotal evidence tells its own story.
The Delhi-NCR resident gets vocal about worsening air quality, but sees a ban of bursting firecrackers as a sort of denial of human/cultural rights. It is only social action, decentralised neighbourhood- and community-level responses that can get Delhiites to sit up and pay attention, and put away toxic ‘Diwalinity’. The impact of regulations and bans is a function of the level of compliance. In India, compliance is a function of what a person can get away with. Let’s hope good sense and, more pragmatically, good law enforcement prevails tonight and beyond.
