During elections, pollution is certainly the last thing on a politician’s mind. But the 15th Lok Sabha poll has seen a change. Air and water pollution, environmental concerns and other issues concerning preservation and safeguarding environment have been heard, perhaps for the first time from several political platforms in the runup to the poll. To an extent the credit for this can go to Manish Tewari, Congress candidate from Ludhiana who has put up posters drawing people’s attention and promising to help.
Tewari, who has been talking about various environmental concerns in his public meetings, has at times been taken “to be a lunatic talking of environment in political rallies”. Taking a cue from him, other politicians too have started making promises about cleaning the environment. Tewari in his vision document has promised to introduce CNG-driven vehicles in Ludhiana to check air pollution caused by vehicular emissions.
In fact, Tewari when asked by Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi to list some important issued facing Ludhiana residents, Tewari said, “The Budha Nullah needs to be revivied”. Rahul then made it a point to mention this in his speech and make a promise to people of Ludhiana that the nallahwould be cleaned.
Talking to The Tribune, Tewari said, “The enormity of the problem (of pollution) is such that we may soon reach a situation of no return”. Hence, he would make a beginning with cleaning air pollution caused by vehicles (which can be done through CNG) and then look at industrial and other pollution choking the city.
He argued that about a decade ago people in Delhi used to think that the situation there was “irreversible”, but after CNG was introduced, the situation changed and people had started breathing fresh air.
Tewari’s concern for clean environment is not just limited to Ludhiana or to vehicular pollution. “It is not just the city which is affected by the Budha Nallah, but the water in Sutlej which gets toxic once the nallah joins it. The problem is bigger than what is appears to be”. At the same time, he said, there needed to be alternate methods of disposal of industrial effluents also so that the industry was not hit adversely.
