How governance failures and denial of data undermine Articles 21 and 51A(g)
Pollution in India has been reduced to a predictable annual spectacle—televised debates, scrolling headlines, and ritualistic outrage that peak every winter and disappear just as conveniently. What is conspicuously absent from this discourse is the everyday human cost of governance failures that accompany this crisis. When trains are delayed for hours, the damage is not merely logistical. Patients miss critical medical care, job aspirants lose employment opportunities, students are unable to appear for examinations, and litigants lose cases because justice does not wait for delayed transport. Less said is better about the condition of flight delays, where air travellers today suffer the same helplessness, anxiety, and indignity long endured by train passengers—confined, uninformed, and powerless. These are not inconveniences; they are lived violations of dignity and access.
Since around 2010, rapid industrialisation combined with unplanned urbanisation has resulted in a sustained and measurable escalation of pollution across the country. What was once episodic has now assumed the character of a public-health epidemic. Official assessments consistently show rising concentrations of particulate matter well beyond prescribed standards, while health outcomes reveal a parallel increase in respiratory illnesses, cardiovascular diseases, and cancers. Alarmingly, regions once considered relatively insulated—particularly coastal areas—are now recording pollution levels comparable to land-locked industrial cities. The crisis is no longer seasonal or regional; it is nationwide, chronic, and cumulative, steadily eroding the breath and health of citizens.
What makes the official narrative even more disturbing is that the data exists within the Government’s own records. Mortality statistics maintained by the Registrar General of India document deaths due to cancer and other serious ailments, while status reports of the Central Pollution Control Board acknowledge the adverse health impacts of polluted air. Despite this, an astonishing statement was made on the floor of the Apex House of India asserting that there is “no data” linking pollution to deaths. Such denial is not a gap in information; it is a failure of constitutional responsibility. When Parliament is presented with a narrative that contradicts the State’s own data, accountability itself is compromised.
It is also a matter of record that all major projects and development plans receive prior environmental clearance from the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change through its Expert Appraisal Committees. These approvals are based on Environmental Impact Assessment reports prepared by project proponents and scrutinised by statutory expert bodies. The regulatory framework is therefore designed to anticipate, assess, and mitigate environmental harm before it occurs. When pollution levels continue to rise despite this elaborate clearance mechanism, the failure cannot be attributed to lack of foresight or absence of data, but to deficiencies in appraisal, monitoring, and post-clearance enforcement.
What is most intriguing—and troubling—is that the Central Government operates through an extensive institutional architecture directly connected to environment, health, transport, land use, and industry. This includes the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Ministry of Mines, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilizers, the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare, the Ministry of Railways, and the Ministry of Civil Aviation—all supported by parallel machinery at the State level. Each of these institutions is headed by senior bureaucrats vested with statutory powers, technical expertise, and access to data.
Yet, despite this dense governance ecosystem, environmental degradation continues unchecked, pollution worsens year after year, and public-health indicators remain under severe stress. The unavoidable question is this: when authority is spread across so many institutions, has responsibility become so diffused that accountability has effectively disappeared? If Article 21 guarantees the right to life with dignity, clean air, health, and access are not policy choices—they are constitutional obligations. A Parliament that debates pollution without confronting these documented human costs risks hollowing out the very promise it is sworn to protect.
Beyond the enforceable guarantees of Article 21, the Constitution also casts a fundamental duty under Article 51A(g) on every citizen to protect and improve the natural environment, including forests, lakes, rivers, and wildlife. This duty applies with far greater force to those who exercise State power. Ministers and senior functionaries, having taken a solemn oath to uphold and implement the Constitution, cannot claim exemption from constitutional morality. When environmental degradation is normalised, statutory data is denied on the floor of Parliament, and regulatory mechanisms are reduced to procedural formalities, it amounts to an abdication of the very fundamental duties the Constitution demands. Power does not dilute responsibility—it magnifies it. The failure of those in authority to act in accordance with Article 51A(g) is not a lapse of policy; it is a breach of constitutional trust.
The time has come for voters to reclaim their role as the ultimate custodians of the Constitution. Casting a vote cannot be the end of civic responsibility—it must be the beginning of sustained scrutiny. Citizens must ask hard questions, demand honest answers, and insist on measurable performance from those they elect and those who govern in their name. Ministers, legislators, and bureaucrats alike are public servants, not unaccountable authorities. Environmental collapse, public-health crises, and daily governance failures thrive only when silence replaces vigilance. If voters do not demand transparency, data-based decision-making, and constitutional fidelity, the right to life and dignity promised under Article 21 and the duty to protect the environment under Article 51A(g) will remain hollow assurances. Democracy survives not on slogans, but on citizens who refuse to look away.