Diwali Effects or Diwali – Dark Side of Light
The essence and significance of Diwali being called the ‘festival of lights’ are that it intends to do away with the darkness and miseries in one’s life and enlighten one’s souls with spirituality and eternal peace. However, unfortunately, we might have never wondered how much deterioration we cause to Mother Earth in practicing our much awaited and loved-by-all festival, Diwali.
Let us discuss a few things with a hope of encouraging masses towards avoiding ignorance and celebrating Green Diwali, bursting and exploding in joy rather than crackers.
Please note: Don’t miss an eye-opener Infographic below “Diwali – Dark Side of Light“
Let us get a knack of some key things to take care of this Diwali as a conscious and a responsible individual:
During this Diwali – Let us love ‘Mother India’ and its People
1. Massive air pollution through firecrackers – It’s high time we realized the fact that the thrill doesn’t lie in the fact the brighter or louder the cracker bursts or how much sparkle it creates; we mustn’t fail to understand that intense air pollution replaces our temporary joy of seeing firecrackers burst. The toxicity introduced in the already stressed environment of overpopulated cities is alarming and highly inappropriate. It causes immense suffering to all life forms and especially the ones on the verge of their lives. According to a study by a non-governmental organization in the U.S., about 620,000 premature deaths and 18 million healthy years of life were wasted in the India in the year 2010 alone.
2. Child labour – No one likes the sight of a child working their carcasses off and that too for lowly wages and in an environment that is more than injurious to their health. Still, child labour persists and flourishes despite all the laws that have been passed. As per the 2011 consensus in the country, about 4.35 million children in the age group 5-14 were a part of the malpractice. The firecracker industry is in no sense immune to encouraging child labour. Many lives have been perished with a large part of the consensus contributing to the malpractice via involvement in this reckless industry. It’s high time we put an end to it. Even small things like not buying the useless “pocket-burning” crackers could help control it if not stop it. Therefore, every little effort is welcome.
3. Wham! Bang! and Swoosh! Sadly, the damage caused by Firecrackers doesn’t end here, the hazards posed by excessive noise pollution are way too reckless! You need a reason why all the blasting noises are dangerous, let’s have two (or much more!):
Loss of hearing, high blood pressure, heart attack and sleeping disturbances, if the irritation was not enough already.
Sudden exposure to loud noise causes temporary deafness or permanent relative loss of hearing; take that!
4. Excessive consumerism – The rate of consumption during festive season has been found to have increased exponentially. The large hoardings, advertisements, discounts and sales attract the customers often motivating them to buy products they might not even need. Sometimes the situation goes so haphazard that people buy things on credit and keep paying the interests in the following months for the things that mean no value. Diwali, the festival of abundance and wealth is, therefore, being highly misunderstood by the masses.
5. Bizzare accidents – The large bombs, the fuljhadis, and every other reckless fire-crackers are known to cause more injuries than happiness. It is believed that freak accidents during Diwali have led to several deaths and mostly children. It’s high time we followed some proper guidelines and acted accordingly. It has been found out that the capital of the country, New Delhi alone witnessed severe fire-cracker related accidents with approximately one out of every 100,000 persons of the population sustaining a fire-cracker related injury. And the majority of the people sustained <5% total body surface area burn.
6. The not-so-abundant resources, being depleted – The realization that must dawn upon the Indians is still not there! The things that should affect us the most in a way that should supposedly be not less than a final warning or caution is being ignored high time! So, unknowingly or rather knowingly, we deplete our natural resources while claiming to conserve them.
7. Green and clean (finally) – Enough ruining of several ecosystems causing total chaos in the balance of nature. It is believed that the gases that are emitted on Diwali contribute to nearly 30 per cent in terms of air pollution! The pledge to guard the nature must finally be taken up seriously and not just a casual act of agreeing to what everybody else is claiming!
8. No more generating too much of waste and then a lot more of it! Consumerism also leads to excessive production of waste, which emerges as a major problem of disposal, recycling, and degradation. Again leading to several dreaded environmental issues of soil erosion, water retention problems, air-water ambient quality degradation. We must act before it is too late.
9. High energy consumption – Increased energy consumption is by default, going to occur due to extravagant pomp show that is posed during Diwali Celebrations. Think about your electricity bills or retail bills if not about anything else!
10. Some laws and regulations formulated by the Government of India – The Supreme Court in accordance with the CPCB, passed a law against bursting crackers which caused noise pollution beyond 125 dB. And also bursting crackers from 10pm to 6am is prohibited. Still, people completely ignore it.
EXHIBIT ECO-SENSITIVITY DURING DIWALI
Diwali is meant to commemorate the victory of good over evil and what we are doing at the moment is nothing but its complete opposite (irony abounds!). Therefore, what we could do is to celebrate the auspicious festival in its right spirit by encouraging its positive side while shunning the negative one created by mankind. People shall visit their relatives, exchange gifts, organize parties, buy new clothes, do a moderate amount of lighting (LEDs would just do the trick), eat sweets (or gift them; sugarless, please) and similar such things which will help in making this festival, a truly great one.
Let us take a pledge this Diwali, to invest in a safer and a greener future. We must enlighten our lives with sparkles of goodwill and joy, forgetting past grievances and looking forward to brighter, prosperous and a healthier life ahead. Sharing happiness and opportunities with the lesser privileged and becoming sensitized to rites and rituals. With the growing recognition and acknowledging the eco-friendly initiatives, several groups have started to reinterpret the rituals and traditions to become more responsible and sensitive towards nature. You must too for it’s now or never.
Now, here we go with an Amazing Infographic. By implementing a bit of it, you can surely make a BIG difference in someone’s life.
