My lung cancer is a punishment for living in Delhi: Atul Kumar Jain, lung cancer survivor
Development should be environment-centric, not individual-centric: Dharambir Singh, BJP MP
How do you visualize the crisis? How do you tell personal stories that people can relate to?
-Aruna Chandrasekhar
Visitors gather in the art gallery of Bikaner House, erstwhile residence for the Bikaner princely state during the British Raj. It has been renovated to house exhibitions, public discussions, a performance garden, and artisanal craft.
Korba district of Chattisgarh is often called the 'Power Capital of India', housing at least three large open cast coal mines, a super thermal power plant with 2500 MW capacity, four thermal power plants, a petroluem containment complex, and several factories with furnaces and smelters. It is widely acknowledged that Korba's residents are exposed to one of the most polluted air, water, and soil in the world.
For young women of Korba, the dupatta affords protection from coal dust and sun. For some, its a way towards moving anonymously in the industrial hub.
Mahul, a fishing village in Mumbai, houses the Eversmile Layout, a residential complex for persons displaced to develop Mumbai's stormwater disposal system, road-widening and construction projects. Gas pipelines, a refinery, and chemical factors border the village. After moving there, residents have experienced deteriorating health. Some of them have mobilized evidence of disease and held protests.
Some artifacts collected by Anita Dhole, a resident of Mahul's rehabilitation complex developed by Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority (MMRDA). She collects and organizes medical reports of those who have fallen ill after being relocated to Mahul.
Kabbadi is a contact sport where holding breath matters.
This image tells the story of R. L. Srinivasan, a Kabbadi coach and a fisherman, heads the fishing cooperative and mobilized a six-village committee to file a petition to the National Green Tribunal, asking for health studies to be conducted in Ennore.
Ennore is a neighborhood in Chennai bounded by two thermal power plants, two major ports, a coal terminal, a petroleum refinery, ash ponds, and leaking natural gas pipelines.
As stubble burning in rice fields of Punjab are held responsible for Delhi's polluted air every winter, farmers reveal that burning stubble is tied to history of Green Revolution, diminishing groundwater, and barriers against crop diversification that are not easy to overcome.
Sweepers and waste workers in Bangalore have not been paid in months. Those who clean the city of its dust and waste inhale polluted air the most. Precarious contracts with the municipal government and unaffordable healthcare compound health burden.
Atul Jain, a resident of the Shahdara neighborhood in Delhi, is a lung cancer survivor. He attended the event with his wife and son. Together, they told stories of medicalized lives and caring.
Shahdara is near the Jhilmil industrial estate.
Graviky Labs is an "MIT spinoff" that captures air pollution to manufacture ink and stationery based on that ink. They claim to have cleaned 1.6 trillion litres of air so far. Visitors of the exhibition could leave messages using this ink.
Exhibition attendees observe panels telling a story of stubble burning in Punjab.
Children from highly stresses communities in Sukhdev Vihar and Jasola flyover write messages to India's politicians and policymakers urging for emergency action against air pollution
The ink with which I write my message is made from Delhi's toxic air
" I am Anshu, and we should not produce pollution"
Atmos by UrbanSciences is a real-time air quality map of India constructed of feed from "India's first scientifically validated, indigenous built network of low-cost air monitors". As governemnt monitors are very expensive, low-cost monitors can be used to monitor air quality of areas not covered by government networks.
Faiza Khan directed a VR short film 'The Cost of Coal', exhibited in a VR booth alongside the message board. Delhi's air quality map forms the background.
