Burning fire cracker is shameful

Diwali is at the doorsteps. It is celebrated throughout the nooks and corner of our country, India. A celebration based on the writings on mythological holy textbook Ramayana and so many other tales upon the return of Lord Rama from the 14 years of exile, out of Ayodhya. It is said that the people were so happy upon the Rama’s return that they lighted “Diyas”. Lightening of Diyas signifies the defeat of evil or the dark by the light, the benevolence, the path teller. Lord Rama, when exiled, was supposedly so happy that he finally got the chance to live in the forests, among the general public, with the kind and varied animal kingdom. Somehow it envisages a message on the importance of environment and natural bio-diversity on the sustenance of life on Earth. The message is that humans cannot ignore integrating with nature. Time and again, through various other means throughout the world, the importance of nature has been emphasized.

However, with the advent of industrialization in the 18^th century and the mad race of becoming the global power that we are observing the uneven exploitation of natural resources. Deforestation is rampant and many species are on the verge of washing out of the earth and becoming extinct. Let us not forget that humans are as well one of a kind of species in earth whose population has exploded to more than 7 billion and it is increasing like anything. This means we have ever-increasing pressure on the natural resources to fulfill the demand of the burgeoning population. India’s population has increased fourfold since independence. In a period of 70 years, we journeyed from 30 Cr. to 125 Cr. No reason to applaud on this achievement because the size of the earth is remaining the same. We are only contracting our spaces for pure air & pure water. In fact, now we have commercialized one of the natural resources, water. Several companies have come up selling mineral water in “plastic bottles”, which is again a great irony. The air of our national capital Delhi has been proclaimed the most polluted on Earth! Last year, a number of people have seen walking the streets wearing a mask to filter the air!

Use of firecrackers may have started in the 8^th century according to historians but there is no reason that we continue to use this in present times. It has been seen in the past festivals that the quality of air takes a serious toll after the Diwali night. It contains serious chemicals that not only occupy the living space but has a tendency to contaminate the soil as well. Groundwater is also contaminated. All this means that in the long term, we are allowing these serious chemicals to enter into our food chain and hence the epidemic of diseases is awaiting us, hence the economic impact.

Use of firecracker is no more any symbol of proud. Let us have a clean Diwali this year. Let us abolish Firecrackers! Let us do some justice to the environment! Those who are burning it are seriously impacting the already hit natural environment. This is shameful and should be condemned by the whole community. It might be the time that we evolve our cultural values with the changed time and integrate it with the environment. Will you make it happen? Happy Diwali!