Vandana Shiva Explains Delhi's Pollution

Brut India

At a @C40Cities event, environmental activist Vandana Shiva told Brut India why blaming Punjab's crop burning for city pollution might not be fair to farmers.

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00:00All the mountains of garbage which I never saw in my country as I was growing up, even

00:14till 20 years ago, huge mountains of garbage of aluminium and plastic are all packaging

00:19from that junk food.

00:20I think it's time to start making the polluters pay, those who pollute our bodies and those

00:26who pollute the environment outside.

00:45The crop burning issue is a diversion.

00:49It's a diversion and it's not explaining why farmers of Punjab burn their crops.

00:55In India we knew straw is a very important link between ourselves, our crops and the

01:01earth and our animals.

01:03Straw is used for recycling as organic matter but the chemical agriculture made short dwarf

01:10varieties to take up more chemicals so we could emit more greenhouse gases as synthetic

01:15fertilizers emissions.

01:17But more than that we've made the straw useless and now the farmers were told then to burn

01:23the crop but it's wrong to say it's crop burning that's the reason because they burn

01:27the crop in Punjab in November.

01:30The peak pollution of Delhi happens in December so it's time to not turn our eye away from

01:36fossil fuels, away from the chemicals from fossil fuels and criminalize the farmers more.

01:42In fact Monsanto is trying to use the crop burning to impose the end of the rice cultivation

01:49which was introduced as the green revolution in India and to introduce hybrid corn.

01:55That's not what India needs, that's not what Punjab needs.

01:58Punjab needs organic farming and biodiversity.

02:02The cities of India are polluted for two reasons.

02:06First we have pushed everything into the cities, everyone's driving long distance.

02:12Our local work has been shut down.

02:15We used to have in the front we worked, in the back we lived.

02:19All of that was shut down by new urban laws that criminalize your place of work and your

02:24place of living to be the same, something that's celebrated as mixed cities.

02:28But the real estate lobby is a toxic lobby, it's a cement lobby.

02:33It is not just mining our rivers for sand.

02:36It is not just mining our tribal areas for iron ore.

02:39It is mining old good buildings for making profits and tearing down of old buildings

02:44has released a huge amount of toxics in the atmosphere of Delhi.

02:49Never seen obesity in India, but India is now the capital of diabetes.

02:54Cancer is spreading.

02:56Junk diet is a diet designed to give you disease.

03:01On the other hand, all the mountains of garbage which I never saw in my country as I was growing

03:06up even till 20 years ago, huge mountains of garbage of aluminum and plastic are all

03:12packaging from that junk food.

03:13I think it's time to start making the polluters pay, those who pollute our bodies and those

03:19who pollute the environment outside.

03:21They are being rewarded by tax free holidays, they are being rewarded by free trade agreements

03:26that give them the rights to destroy our food culture, our food democracy and ecology.

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