Keynote Speech

Smoke house Delhi: a suitable epithet given by The Times of India to the unimaginable and horrible
conditions of the capital of our country, India. I was unable to see anything that was at a yard’s distance.
My nostrils flared with the acrid smell of air around me. I was coughing incessantly and my eyes watered
like what happens when my mom cuts onions. This was how it was post Diwali for at least 2-3 days in the
second most populated city in the world. The high levels of pollution were surely expected, given the lack
of attention and preventive action, but the worst fact is that it cannot even be cured in a bee’s life span
unless we intervene on a war footing. Pollution thus is one of the vastest problems in India and even in
the world but in truth, it’s just a small factor in the list of human concerns.
What can we do to combat this huge problem both at individual and collective levels? The solutions can
be at three levels: immediate, in the midterm and in the long term. I think the most important need is to
increase awareness and bring the problem to everyone’s conscience so that we take small steps in our own
way such as avoiding burning of wastes, reduce using our personal transports unnecessarily or making
Diwali truly a festival of lights and not fire by avoiding the highly polluting fire crackers. The mid and
long term solutions concerns the government and we as a student group should persuade the government
to improve public transport, supply clean fuels, take regulatory action to make construction activity less
polluting and so on…
My next concern is to reduce wastage and be moderate in our personal consumption: be it food, clothing
or other luxurious items. As Gandhi said the earth has enough for every man’s need but not for every
man’s greed. This statement if implemented can address most of the human concerns including food
security, health of populations, maintaining peace , alleviating poverty and optimal utilization of our
natural resources.
We obviously do not have a magic wand to address all the human concerns in one go. But we need
innovative and new ways of thinking. Solutions do not emerge by taking the beaten path but by trying out
new ways. Robert Frost in his poem “the road not taken” said ‘Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-I
took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference”. Similarly, we should think of out of
the box for solutions using some of the tools that are available to us now but were not there for previous
generations. For example, the mobile phone, social media and crowd sourcing are very powerful tools.
We can use these and work with the advertising industry to create a mass movement to fight human
concerns and protect our mother earth.
Therefore, my friends, we have many problems but there are also innumerable ways of solving these
problems. I have just given a couple of examples and due to paucity of time I cannot elaborate on others.
It is said that in every challenge there is an opportunity. I will go further and say that we should not search
for these opportunities but make our own.
Thank you, XieXie, Merci, Gracias, Danke and Dhaniawad.