Delhi Is Choking, and It Reveals the Cost of the BJP’s Ideology

 

Delhi Is Choking, and It Reveals the Cost of the BJP’s Ideology

Hindi Version: https://rakeshinsightfulgaze.blogspot.com/2025/12/blog-post_22.html

Delhi’s air pollution has reached levels many residents describe as unprecedented, even during periods when crop-residue burning in Punjab is minimal or absent. The city is suffocating through a crisis that affects health, productivity, and daily life, yet meaningful structural intervention remains missing. For many, this deterioration aligns directly with the political shift of 2025, when power moved from the elected Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Since that transition, governance in Delhi has increasingly reflected financial extraction rather than public protection.

The warning signs were visible even earlier. During AAP’s tenure, more than 1,100 trees were cut in the capital under the authority of the Lieutenant Governor, an appointee of the central government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This occurred amid worsening air quality and despite ecological objections. Cutting trees in a city already gasping for air was not merely an administrative failure; it reflected a worldview where environmental protection is secondary to centralized power and expediency.

That worldview becomes even clearer when examining healthcare and energy policy. Under AAP, Delhi received 24-hour electricity, 200 units of free power, and an additional 200 units at half price, with the government absorbing costs to shield households. Electricity was treated as a public service, not a profit center. Primary healthcare followed the same logic. Mohalla Clinics provided free, preventive care at the neighborhood level, reducing hospital burden and healthcare costs.

Since the BJP assumed control, this model has been steadily dismantled. Power cuts have returned, electricity bills have risen, and the promised 300 units of free power have not materialized. Previous subsidies have been altered, while a growing share of electricity is routed through private suppliers, including companies associated with the Adani Group. In a city with relatively high purchasing power, electricity has been transformed from a managed necessity into a revenue stream.

This shift raises a deeper ideological question. Electricity is generated using national natural resources land, coal, water, sunlight, wind all of which belong collectively to the people of the country. In responsible democracies, this creates an obligation: power distribution should operate on a non-profit or limited-profit basis, because electricity is no longer a luxury but a basic necessity in a modern economy. When access to power determines education, healthcare, employment, and even survival during heat waves, treating it as a vehicle for profit extraction violates the principle of public ownership of natural resources.

Healthcare has followed the same trajectory. Mohalla Clinics have been shut down or defunded, pushing patients into larger hospitals and private facilities. Insurance schemes promising coverage of up to ₹5 lakh for the poor are presented as welfare, but in practice they reimburse private hospitals for treatment of illnesses that could have been prevented through clean air and accessible primary care. What was once free at the point of use is now paid for indirectly, with public money flowing to private providers.

The political context surrounding the 2025 election deepens public unease. Prior to polling day, AAP formally raised concerns about large-scale voter removals across Delhi, affecting tens of thousands of voters citywide. These objections were documented before the results were known. While this article does not adjudicate the election, the persistence of unresolved questions matters, particularly when a change in power is followed by policies that consistently weaken public welfare.

Taken together, these developments reveal a coherent ideological pattern. Environmental degradation is tolerated. Public services are hollowed out. Crises are managed rather than prevented. Each decision may appear administratively legal in isolation, but collectively, they shift costs from the state to citizens and benefits toward concentrated private interests.

An alternative model exists and has been tested. It prioritizes prevention over profit, public services over privatized extraction, and local welfare over centralized control. It treats clean air, affordable electricity, and accessible healthcare as rights rooted in public ownership of natural resources, not revenue opportunities. Delhi’s experience shows that ideology is not abstract. It determines who breathes clean air, who can afford power, and who bears the cost when governance fails. A nation that chooses profit-driven governance over public welfare ultimately pays far more than it ever collects.

Added Note:

Reports that more than 54,000 people in Delhi have died due to air pollution should shock the nation. They do not. They confirm what millions already know and live with every day. I have a close family member who lived in Delhi and now suffers from chronic breathing problems. Each time he returns to the city, his condition worsens. This is not anecdotal; it is the lived reality of an entire population.

Given how toxic Delhi’s air has become, even this number feels sanitized. When a city’s air routinely damages lungs, hearts, and brains, deaths caused by pollution do not always appear on death certificates. They appear as asthma, heart failure, strokes, and weakened immunity. The real toll is almost certainly far higher than what is officially acknowledged.

What makes this crisis unforgivable is not ignorance but indifference. When political power is secured and maintained while pollution is allowed to worsen, human lives become expendable. When governance treats illness, hospitalization, and death as costs to be managed or profits to be extracted, morality collapses. In such a system, suffering is normalized, and death itself becomes part of a business model.

This is not a natural disaster. It is a political one.