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India air pollution at 'unbearable levels'

bbc.com

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Re: India air pollution at 'unbearable levels'

#71

Post by kamaal »

inapis wrote: post #50
muktabh wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Farmers are financially not that well off and a big share of population in India is farmers. There is already provision of prosecuting farmers in law, but no administration wants to punish the relatively poor + electorally important farmers by enforcing the laws.

Punjab and Haryana farmers are by no means poor farmers.

In India it's important to make a distinction between farm laborers and farmers. Traditionally what people referred to as farmers in India are basically feudals, and they are by no means poor people, they are easily some of the richest people in India.

Farm laborers are a totally different set of working class people. Who only until recent decades were into as bad as a thing like bonded labor. They work on starving wages and are generally poor and from lower castes.

India for very long has given feudals unlimited loan bailouts, and freebies. They also pay no taxes. Most of my friends who come from farmer families has gone to do expensive education in countries like US. And they are often confused with farm laborers and they milk this perception to the very extreme.

Imagine being so rich you hold large banks of land, make windfall profits, pay zero taxes on them and get freebies(seeds, fertilizers, water, electricity) and then being confused as the poorest people in India.

Its the farm laborers that need help. And they are unfortunately treated very badly. Heck many people don't even recognize their existence.

Re: India air pollution at 'unbearable levels'

#72

Post by Fakira »

paulsutter wrote: post #20
fareesh wrote: post #9

Some specific points that may be lost in the headline / cursory reading of the article: 1) India as a whole is overpopulated and has a pollution problem. This particular issue is limited to Delhi, however. 2) From the perspective of the magnitude and extreme levels of pollution, this is a seasonal issue whose primary contributor, by a large margin, is farmers burning off their crop stubble after their harvest ends. T…

South Korea and Taiwan have higher population density than India, and Japan is not far off (517/km, 652/km, 412/km, and 334/km, respectively) > 1) India as a whole is overpopulated...

The population density of Delhi is 29K people per sq mile which is one of the highest in the world. Tokyo, for example, has a population density of 16k.

India's population density is not really a problem though, the problem is lack of urbanization and absolutely horrible California like land regulations that prevent building new cities and infrastructure.

Delhi's pollution is not caused by Delhi, it is caused by neighboring farming zones that burn the stubble.

Re: India air pollution at 'unbearable levels'

#74

Post by tonyedgecombe »

umvi wrote: post #43
throwaway8941 wrote: post #2

I have a ready solution to all their problems. They should simply do what we did in Kazakhstan a couple of years ago: raise the maximum permissible exposure levels by an order of magnitude and declare all of the previously extremely polluted areas as safe. I am not sure it made the air look any different, or had any effect on my chronic bronchitis, but at least the air pollution indicators look nice: they are now per…

That's what I do with my code coverage reports. I just exclude any file that isn't covered from the report and the report turns green and all the managers are happy because it proves the code is of high quality.

In the same vein this is a project to make your tests pass: https://github.com/auchenberg/volkswagen

Re: India air pollution at 'unbearable levels'

#75

Post by palmanis »

paulsutter wrote: post #20
fareesh wrote: post #9

Some specific points that may be lost in the headline / cursory reading of the article: 1) India as a whole is overpopulated and has a pollution problem. This particular issue is limited to Delhi, however. 2) From the perspective of the magnitude and extreme levels of pollution, this is a seasonal issue whose primary contributor, by a large margin, is farmers burning off their crop stubble after their harvest ends. T…

South Korea and Taiwan have higher population density than India, and Japan is not far off (517/km, 652/km, 412/km, and 334/km, respectively) > 1) India as a whole is overpopulated...

South Korea, Taiwan, Japan all are coastal, whereas North India is landlocked and surrounded by mountains, which does not let that fog to escape. This makes the problem worse.

For that matter, if Mumbai wasn't a coastal city, it would have been way more polluted than Delhi.

Having said that, yeah, the politicians do not show any kind of intent to solve the problem, it is just another matter for them to blame their rivals.

Re: India air pollution at 'unbearable levels'

#77

Post by BurningFrog »

icegreentea2 wrote: post #34
BurningFrog wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I've come to believe that the word "overpopulation" just doesn't mean anything. I would rather say Indian society is badly organized.

Overpopulation is always relative. It means that the population at hand exceeds the amount that existing systems can cope with. You can argue that Indian society is badly organized and that their current population levels and densities could be sustained with better societal systems, but that doesn't quite capture how difficult it is to fix societal systems.

> It means that the population at hand exceeds the amount that existing systems can cope with

I think this is just a different phrasing of "Indian society is badly organized".

Which is a different way of saying I think we mostly agree.

Re: India air pollution at 'unbearable levels'

#78

Post by stallmanite »

primitivesuave wrote: post #18
gus_massa wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried "no-till farming"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-till_farming It's very popular here in Argentina, and it reuse the stover. [Disclaimer: I live in a city (Buenos Aires), but at least I have a few flowerpots.]

I travel to India every other month for my job. Most agriculture happens on small farms by poor and uneducated people. Introducing new technology and agricultural practices is difficult but is certainly underway in parts of the country. There is also a lack of political will to solve the problem in the particular case of Delhi and its neighboring state of Punjab, and as the parent comment suggested, there is very muc…

Could you elaborate about the types of misinformation being sown by the higher-ups? Seems like a familiar anti-pattern.

Re: India air pollution at 'unbearable levels'

#79

Post by pen2l »

rayiner wrote: post #63
BurningFrog wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I think of it, India's pollution and poverty are both caused by their society not organized well. I believe South Korea was poorer than India in living memory!

When my dad was born in what was then Pakistan in 1951, South Korea was about as poor as India and Pakistan. Today, it’s as rich as France.

Just curious: Have you visited China in recent time? The past few years it's made incredible gains, and it continues moving at a blazing speed.

I think one force that can encourage Pakistan to move forward is China. I don't know if Pakistan can have its own Samsung, but it can maybe 'modernize' with China's help. Would you agree?

Re: India air pollution at 'unbearable levels'

#80

Post by luckydata »

mycall wrote: post #62
briandear wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American farmers are anti-intellectual and rarely listen to science? Citation is really needed, because that’s not what reality shows. It’s very true that farmers are risk adverse, but that’s for good reason: it takes years for “discoveries” to be vetted and people aren’t going to literally bet the farm on trendy tech until it’s proven. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/06/business/farming-technolo...

American farmers are extremely innovative, today and throughout history. Hell, they invented TV.

American farmers are grease monkeys, they like big machines but know approx. jack squat about agronomy. If I could have a dollar for all the nitrogen farmers waste because they don't know how to manage soil properly I would be a goddamn trillionaire.
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