INDIAN ENVIRONMENTAL OPPRESSION:

A lot of times, we only focus on the issues that effect our own country. Or when it comes to race, we only think about the Black population in the US. But there are so many other minorities facing hardships as well; for example, the Indian pollution crisis!

Why has there not been any sort of regulation done about this?

“…Today for key Indian government ministries to ignore pollution-induced illness and death under the assumption that bad air is a natural, background condition of tropical life,” wrote D Asher Ghertner for Review of Urban Affairs.

If other neighboring countries are ignoring general human rights — in this case, to breathe — then this has become a foreign policy issue that current developed territories must get involved in!

“Indian lung ‘deficiency,’ it turns out, is an accepted scientific truth, widely cited in judicial, media, and medical discourse as the health baseline upon which air pollution strikes…”cited Ghertner.

When a whole segment of the global population is experiencing unnecessary health problems, this should be a prominent topic discussed at political debates because this is something that could be changed!

Especially somewhere like the United States. Our government officials and President need to hold Indian parliaments accountable.

“…[T]he theory of ‘racial inheritance’—evident in the implicit claim that Indian lungs have a unique pulmonary apparatus suited to dirty air—is a colonial inheritance of assumptions about tropical otherness… no scientific evidence that differences in lung capacity (anatomy) lead to functional differences in lung design (physiology) (Stocks et al 2014),” quoted Ghertner.

Listening to excuses that only express cultural stereotypes is part of the reason I am writing this today. This is what is wrong with politics. We tend to follow the echoes; for example, ‘all Black people are athletes.’ Obviously this is not true — it’s a microaggression.  I mean look at me: I am biracial (African American and Caucasian), and you will not catch me at the Olympics.

“The study, published Tuesday in the journal Environmental Research, found that regions with the highest concentrations of fossil fuel-related air pollution — including Eastern North America, Europe, and South-East Asia — have the highest rates of mortality,” said Mohana Basu a writer from The Print.

We have to be loud if we want underdeveloped countries to succeed! And we must also acknowledge that racial injustice is everywhere, not just down the street.