Why is pollution not an issue in the Haryana elections?

“My three year-old granddaughter has been diagnosed with a lung problem,” Jagmal Singh lamented. “The doctor told us to move out because there is too much pollution where we live.”

Singh is a resident and former sarpanch of Dholera village in the Nangal Chaudhary sub division of Haryana’s Mahendragarh district.

Dholera is one of at least 35 villages in Nangal Chaudhary, nestled within the Aravallis, suffering from severe dust pollution caused by the unchecked stone crushing in the area.

Due to this, several residents suffer from breathing ailments such as asthma, silicosis, tuberculosis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Because of the dust constantly blowing in and around these villages, there is a sickly greyish-brown hue in the air. Visibility is rarely more than a few metres. Plants and trees in the villages are covered with dust.

Dholera is representative of the pollution crisis that faces Haryana. In addition to the much-talked about air pollution in the urban parts of the state in the National Capital Region, the state is also afflicted by rampant deforestation, water depletion and contamination, land degradation, lack of climate resilient planning and hazardous waste management.

However, as Haryana goes to polls on Saturday, none of these problems find mention in the election.

Pollution crisis

Eight of the world’s 50 most polluted cities are in Haryana. Much of this is driven by vehicular emissions, industrial activities and waste burning. This pollution has led to respiratory diseases such as asthma, cancer and silicosis, particularly in mining areas.

Haryana also has the lowest forest cover in India at 3.6%, as against the national average of 21%, with deforestation in the Aravalli and Shivalik hills worsening water shortages, air quality and biodiversity. Legal and illegal mining in the Aravalli hills further reduces groundwater recharge and damages natural habitats.

Poor waste management is another significant challenge, with toxic landfills like in Bandhwari contributing to soil and water contamination. Industrial waste from neighbouring states is also dumped in rural Haryana, polluting farmlands. Extreme weather events, including heatwaves reaching 50°C, and land degradation affecting 8.24% of the state's area, further strain agriculture and public health.

People struggle

In the Dholera village of Mahendragarh, about 40 stone crushers operate on the perimeter of the village.They predate the arrival of the BJP in the state but increased exponentially only in 2014-’15, after the party took power in the state, residents of the village said.

The pollution is so bad, it has forced people to migrate. “About 80-90 of the 1,100 households in the village have left in the last few years,” former sarpanch Singh said. “Only those who cannot afford to leave, stay.”

As a result of the dust pollution, not only are people suffering, but the average crop yield in the village has also decreased. Even visitors stay away, fearing the dust.“None of our relatives who come to the village stay over,” Singh lamented.

Awareness of the health risks of breathing in this dust, however, is low. This combined with low incomes means villagers medically treat their breathing ailments only when faced with a health crisis. “Most of us don’t have a lot of money so we don’t go to doctors and manage,” one of them said.

In the adjoining village of Khatoli Jat, stone crushers operate right next to a plot of land that was allocated to Scheduled Caste families in 2013 under the Mahatma Gandhi Grameen Awas Yojana. About 200 people live in 60 houses on this land.

“What is the value of being assigned land by the government here, then?” asked Raj Kapoor, a labourer who lives here. He complained that everything in his home is always covered in dust.

Residents of both villages have publicly protested against the stone crushers’ operations and even approached the National Green Tribunal for relief. It has had no effect. Singh alleged that the stone crusher operators spent an amount, in his estimation, of Rs 3 crore to Rs 4 crore every month on bribing bureaucrats and politicians to let the machines operate.

Residents told Scroll that while the Congress MLA candidate Manju Choudhary has assured them that he will act against the crushers, the incumbent two-time BJP MLA, Abhe Singh Yadav, never mentions the issue. However, the Congress might not benefit much from its stance since older political calculations such as caste trump pollution.

Since Yadav is from the Ahir caste, which is the numerically and socio-economically dominant community in the seat, whereas Choudhary is a relative political novice from the Gujjar community, it is unlikely she will unseat him in the Nangal Chaudhry seat.

In the Khori Khurd village of the Tauru block 106 km away in Nuh, residents of the Sohna assembly constituency are dealing with the pollution of their land, air and water by industrial waste being brought here from the bordering industrial city of Bhiwadi in Rajasthan.

“Only eight to ten families collect, store and burn toxic wastes in their farmlands and in panchayati land,” said Sameem Ahmad, a farmer who has been campaigning against this pollution in his village for the better part of a decade. These families are paid exorbitant sums of money by the factories that generate this waste, he alleged.

Sonu Sarpanch, a medical doctor who has been sarpanch of the village since 2022, said that the smoke from the burning waste leads to breathing problems and skin diseases among the village residents.

“Cattle and wildlife in our village have been dying after drinking the waste water that flows out of the chemical waste,” he said. “Our crop yield has also substantially decreased.”

Ahmad claimed that the waste collection units were closed on paper in 2016 and 2023 but are still operating, flouting all environmental norms. Sonu said that residents of the village had raised the issue with their MLA, the BJP’s Sanjay Singh. Though he assured them he would look into the matter, the pollution continues unabated.

Politicians deny, activists decry

Neither the Congress nor the BJP highlights pollution as a major policy problem in their manifestos. In their campaign speeches, politicians don’t even pay lip service to these measures.

Mohan Lal Badoli, the BJP state president and an MLA denied that the BJP has failed to focus on pollution as an issue. “All our leaders start their speeches by pledging allegiance to the swachhata abhiyan,” he said, referring to a Union government sanitation programme.

However, when pressed further, Badoli only spoke about air pollution and claimed that it had reduced in Haryana in the last ten years. He quipped, “It is the other political parties that have created pollution in politics.”

Sushil Gupta, the AAP state president, agreed that pollution is a major concern in the state. “But the people of Haryana don’t vote on the basis of pollution,” he said. “Politicians will only raise issues that will get them votes.”

Dheeraj Gaba, member of the Haryana Congress Manifesto committee, said that voters are not sensitised about these problems. “A people’s movement and public pressure is needed to make pollution an electoral issue,” he said.

There is some truth to the fact that pollution as an issue has low public resonance. “There is no awareness among villagers about public interest in politics,” said Ajay Yadav, an environmental activist in Khatoli Jat. According to him, the villages should have organised a mahapanchayat or mass meeting and informed MLA candidates that they would not be getting votes unless they evict the stone crushers.

Yadav has been actively campaigning for the Congress candidate in the seat, Manju Chaudhary, even though she is from the Gujjar community. Whereas the incumbent BJP MLA, Abhe Singh Yadav, who is re-contesting, shares Ajay Yadav’s Ahir background. This is because the BJP government is, in his view, in favour of industrialists which in turn exacerbates the pollution problem.

Dholera’s former sarpanch, Jagmal Singh had a more cynical outlook. “All politicians are in the pockets of the industrialists,” he said. “If the BJP MLA is replaced by someone from the Congress, then these people will buy her as well and keep her quiet.”

He said that the stone crusher problem “could not be stopped by an MLA. This is a chief minister-level problem.”

Sonu was of the same view. “All politicians will give assurances but won’t do anything,” he said, arguing that politicians were controlled by their funders far more than their voters.

However, Neelam Ahluwalia, founder of People for Aravallis, a group of rural and urban citizens and ecological experts working to conserve the Aravalli range running through Haryana, Rajasthan and Gujarat, dismissed the idea that people must mobilise around an issue before politicians take note of it. “Does something only need to come up through a public movement to become an electoral issue?” She added: “Elected leaders must take steps to improve the lives of their constituents.”