An idiom in Kannada conveys the simple message that you don’t have cause for fear or bother in any situation as long as the going is good. A philosopher has simplified the phenomenon of fear as the fear of fear itself. The fear of an impending nuclear holocaust resulting in the decimation of all life forms on Planet Earth has been lingering in the minds of masses for some decades. Only microbes are believed to sustain themselves in their countless types and ability to dodge the high doses of radiation as well as heat, in the august company of the never-say-die cockroach, also in all their known types. Was it not the legendary Physicist Albert Einstein who remarked that the fourth (and virtually last) World War would be fought between stones and rubble left behind after the third one that witnesses the free play of weapons of mass destruction. All these points of debate have been raised in the circles of intelligentsia ad nauseam leaving the lay masses mulling the aforementioned idiom with no signs of bother or fear, over-busy adulterating, polluting, fouling up the water bodies, littering, suffering and continuing unfazed.

The most valuable asset, namely soil, hosting all the resources critical to sustaining the human populations, continues to be vandalised with no holds barred as if the asset doesn’t belong to all without any privileges, such as possession of entry visa by individuals of different nationalities.

The realisation of the imperatives of extending life of human, animal and plant stock on earth a bit beyond foreseeable future may not have dawned on more than a minor fraction of even the literati. The extent and nature of the afflictions, relentlessly growing and causing both loss of valuable health and also death have clearly stumped the human populations all over the Planet. The impact of adulteration of food has long past lost its hurting edge to the point of making any talk of that uncivil practice to be treated as a joke. We have reached the point of either consuming any food adulterated or go starving. Thanks to human ingenuity and desire for increased material comfort and delight in life, aided by advances in technology, we nowadays have the menace of imitation foods such as plastic eggs, cashew-nut made of ground-nuts, synthetic milk and what have you.

In short, long before panic buttons are pressed, air pollution has crossed the killing point as being reported from National Capital Region of Delhi. One may choose to place confidence in human capability to overcome any crisis but wisdom lies in not putting that faculty to severe test by indulging in beating the horses galloping as corruption, pollution, adulteration and so on.