Project Pollution:   

Hurray! This year's winter is a celebration. It has now been 10 years of consistent high levels of pollution in Delhi during the winter season. There are many causes for these crazy AQI (worldwide pollution index) and PM2.5 (the particles that don't get filtered by our nostrils and are thus the most dangerous) levels, the first being caused by travel (mainly cars and trucks). Delhi has more cars than Mumbai, Bangalore, Calcutta and Chennai combined! The good thing though in this case is that the government and many car firms are all working to find more eco friendly ways to travel around such as; electric cars, electric scooters (which are already in use in Europe), etc...Now we come to the second cause. The one WE can make a change about: stubble burning. Scientists have claimed that on the 1st November 2020, stubble burning was responsible for 44% of Delhi's terrible air quality. Let us start by defining stubble burning; stubble burning is caused by the farmers (mainly from Punjab and Haryana) when they burn their crops at the end of the end of the harvesting seasons. Now, you might ask why don't they do it by hand or using a vehicle? The answer is simple: it's either too time consuming or expensive. After having read this, you might also think: why isn't the government doing anything about it? And my friend, the answer to this question leads us to our second point. There are two main reasons: number one is that India's prime minister Modi is more focused on development than ecology, and number two is the fact that if he bans the farmers for a second time he will definitely not get reelected after having made them very angry enough with his liberalisation laws. And we must keep in mind that farmers make up 70% of India's population.

   Our solution is a step by step plan. We must ask the government to create an optional tax of about 500 rupees that we can label as "for ecological reasons". The thing that might surprise you is that only 2% of India pays tax. But don't worry thats still 30 million people! Let us make a generous prediction and say that 5% of these people will pay the tax. That leaves us with 750 million rupees. With this money we can use it as a salary for young Indian men without jobs that would be of about 10 thousand rupees for two weeks. According to our calculations with that money generated from the tax and with those wages we would be able to finance 75 thousand workers for two weeks. These workers could go in groups of 10 to help each of the farmers in Haryana (635,778) and Punjab (1.09 million) to remove the crops by hand. For us, this plan is genius as it makes use of India's young workforce for a great cause and could therefore be considered as a help everyone situation.

   If you believe in this project sign this petition! We need to get 50,000 signatures for our cause to come to the attention of the Delhi government and maybe later on Mr.Modi himself. Always remember the three pillars of success for a good cause: Thrive, Believe, Succeed.