The last three years have seen a remarkable drop in the quantity of fireworks burnt in and around Delhi during Diwali. This marks a watershed in the celebration of northern India's most important and noisiest festival. As people had got richer in recent years, they had been celebrating the start of the traditional accounting year by sending up an astronomical amount of money in smoke. This had long been decried, for two reasons. It is a health hazard -- burns and respiratory problems multiply as fireworks go off -- and it perpetuates child labour as most of the material is manufactured by children in the Shivakasi area of Tamil Nadu. Add to this air and noise pollution and you have the raw material for an environmentalist response.
The initial push came from a lawyer who, after an accident in the family from fireworks, moved the courts in a public interest litigation. But what made it possible for the anti-fireworks movement to take off like a Sivakasi rocket was its adoption by school children, till lately the most insistent consumers of the big bang. Over the last few years, in the run-up to Diwali, schools have been witness to intensive campaigns, with children pledging to give up fireworks.
Petitions with signatures have gone out to important persons right upto the President, to stop the fireworks menace and pledging all cooperation towards that end. The government and the courts have helped by placing restrictions on the sale and burning of fireworks, but success has really come through what is a grassroots revolution. This is remarkable in a society where people instinctively turn to the government to get things done.
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This is not an isolated instance. Children have also been at the vanguard of other movements for a more sensible way of life. Two examples are the movement against smoking and the use of plastic carry-bags. Somehow the message has gone home to a large number of children that not only is smoking harmful but passive smokers are equal sufferers, and they have taken up the cudgels for banishing smoking from homes. Again the government has played a facilitating role by banning smoking from public places and the business world has chipped in by making workplaces free of smoking.
But it is doubtful if the movement would have taken off in such a manner if teachers and others had not succeeded in roping in the armies of committed school children to fight for the cause. Just as parents are increasingly being forced to give up smoking at the behest of their children, elders are being ticked off for accepting and using plastic bags during shopping. All this has a simple and straightforward lesson. Pernicious social practices can be changed through social action and an effective way is to first convince children.