ON Nov 7, I left Delhi for Uttar Pradesh to do a couple of pre-election stories. On that day, the main headline of the Hindustan Times was: ‘Worst smog yet wakes up govt’.

But by the time I got back to polluted Delhi from polluted Lucknow, the winds had changed: the trending topic was — and still is — Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to scrap INR500 and 1,000 currency notes. So these days, the talk of the town is not ‘AQI’ (air quality index, a hip term even two weeks ago) any more but demonetisation. In pubs, airports and coffee shops, the only question doing the rounds are variants of “Mila kya/kitna mila [did you get it/how much did you get]?”

My environmentalist friends have gone green with envy. “What a bad luck. The usually reticent public was finally waking up to the scourge of dirty air in the city. But now no one’s talking about it since they are busy standing at ATMs or in bank queues,” said Reena. “We have lost the momentum thanks to demonetisation.”

She is correct: the city — and the country — is so taken up by demonetisation (demonisation of cash, if you ask the Congress) that it seems to have forgotten all about the other critical issue that not only impacts our health but also the economy: air pollution.

“Several industry bodies have talked about the economic effect,” Reena said, adding: “While it may be difficult to hazard a figure of economic loss since the exact period of dangerous levels of pollutants would depend on the weather conditions along with administrative measures, there is no doubt that several billions of dollars of fresh investment and GDP loss would occur, besides causing a loss of confidence among the citizens.”

According to news reports, there are already requests from global tour operators to their Indian counterparts to re-align the itinerary of the international tourists to the ‘Golden Triangle’. Instead of the tourists dividing their period of stay between Delhi, Agra and Rajasthan, there have been inquiries about whether visitors can avoid Delhi, excepting the touchdown options at the international airport.

The impact on health could be severe too. Last week, Greenpeace — not exactly the National Democratic Alliance government’s favourite NGO — said that more people died from air pollution in India than in China last year. Outdoor air pollution killed 3,283 people in India in 2015, compared to 3,233 in China. Using data from the Global Burden of Diseases study, the report said the spike happened because of the lack of adequate measures by the government.

If AQI (air quality index) has become a trendy term these days, the new fashion statement is a pollution mask and air purifiers. If I remember correctly, the first time Delhi really took notice of air purifiers was when President Barack Obama visited New Delhi in 2015 and the US embassy purchased 1,800 indoor air purifiers to protect its employees at the embassy and other locations.

When the news broke, Delhi’s citizens, politicians and bureaucrats — always conscious about their and the city’s pre-eminent position in the country — were horrified: not by the poor air quality, but by the Western media/governments’ audacity in targeting their ‘beloved green’ city.

Post-Diwali, masks sold like hot cakes. There were long queues — though not long as the ones we now see outside every bank/ATM — for masks. A store in tony Khan Market in New Delhi made quite a killing by selling masks designed by Manish Arora, which debuted in the Paris Fashion Week last year. “The Arora masks go out of stock before the ordinary ones,” store manager Meena Thakur told the Telegraph.

Protection of the trendy kind comes at a price. The basic Vogmask mask costs INR1,800 apiece for children and goes up to INR2,200 for adults. Arora’s five varieties — vivid butterfly, paisley and star prints, among others — cost INR2,500 each, the Telegraph reported.

My colleague Avnish Dutta was at Khan Market store to buy a mask. “I stood there for about an hour before I could get one. What I found interesting is that no one was talking about the fact that as citizens we also have certain responsibilities in cutting down pollution. They were more bothered about the quality and look of the masks. But these are short-term measures,” Dutta, a proud owner of an Arora mask, told me recently.

He hit the nail on the head. While the centre and the state have to take drastic measures (congestion tax, banning crop burning, fixing the roads, curbing construction activities, etc), the people too have to scale down Diwali festivities (crackers, that is) and ration the use of personal vehicles. But try and say that on Twitter and the right-wing brigade will behead you.

Meanwhile, we are back standing in another queue, mask or no mask. Air pollution is all but forgotten though the toxic particles are all up in the air, floating merrily.

The next Diwali is still a year away, you see.

Published in Dawn November 20th, 2016