The Erickson Report, Page 9: India

The Erickson Report, Page 9: India

I'll end with this, because I swear if I were doing a Clown Award this week I would have a runaway winner.

New Delhi, the capital city of India, has been experiencing record levels of air pollution.

How bad? Consider that on the Air Quality Index, an international metric used by public health officials, any reading above 100 is considered unhealthy. In some areas of Delhi, that being the province in which the city of New Delhi is located, during the first week of November that index was well over 900.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said the city had been "turned into a gas chamber."

Not just there, either: In the industrial hub of Kanpur, home to 3 million people, air quality readings have been consistently above 500 for several days.

a street in New Delhi

There have been steps taken to deal with this: Construction activities that could add to the dust in the air were halted temporarily. Schools were shut, government advisories were issued, asking people to stay indoors. Factories that hadn't shifted to piped natural gas were temporarily shut down. Odd-even driving days were instituted.

But even in the middle of this  mess, some people just had to prove what clowns they are. India's Minister for Health and Family Welfare tweeted that eating carrots would help and the Minister of Environment, Forest & Climate Change tweeted an encouragement for affected citizens to "start your day with music."

Not to be outdone by mere bureaucrats, Vineet Agarwal Sharda, a leader of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, said that the pollution should not be blamed on stubble burning or industrial emissions, the most commonly cited caused, but on Pakistan and China, either of which, he said could have released poisonous gases into India because, he said, "they are afraid of us."

Yeah, well, you are pretty scary.