Consent forms are a trick, a marvellous invention of trust-goons — the hospital that will not pledge to cure, the insurance company that will never pay. Last week we were asked to sign one such consent form. Speaking through the school administration, the Delhi government gave us a choice: Would you like to send your child to school? Do you consent — after 19 dark months — to school mornings, lunch boxes, running through corridors, wearing the prefect badge, whispers and gossip, some real learning? Do you consent to exposing your unvaccinated child out there into the city? If yes, then sign a consent form and let your child wear your consent on their sleeves every morning.
We lost no time in saying yes. A fearful, what-if but resounding yes! Despite the raw wounds of the past year and half, we placed our trust in the system. My seven-year-old played scrabble with GOVERNMENT. I drew for her a flow chart of democracy and governance. Grade six chose to discuss the Indian Constitution and history of human rights.On the first day of school, turn out was less than 10 per cent. Timetables were disrupted since hybrid teaching must take into account long gaps between lessons. But the children, our dear faithfuls, played to their heart’s content and birds sang once again.
Far North, up at COP 26,world leaders played their games. Tall promises were made only to be broken the next day. We will phase down and not phase out. If you want an inch, first give us a mile. What about history? What about relative wealth? As they squabbled and Greta summed it up — blah, blah and blah, Delhi air turned poisonous. The AQI touched 600, 12 times the safe threshold. Mornings smelt like 1,000 cigarettes. As shopping malls thrived, factories around Delhi kept spewing their venom, swanky cars pulled out of showrooms, the Central Vista project stirred up a cloud of dust and felled trees with full impunity, to atone for the sins of Titans, the schools were ordered to shut down. Gardens fell silent again. Winter came early.
With frozen hearts, our children are back in front of their screens and we wonder if we could make our elected leaders sign a consent form. How would it be worded? Do you consent to being liable for a life term or a penalty of several million dollars if you fail at the office? Do you consent to being court martialed? Do you consent that your time at the office will be as per our terms? At home we build a Lego tower called COP26, installing in it paper cut-outs of leaders who we called by name. There is learning and catharsis in bringing down that tower, block by block, in tearing apart the leaders and reminding ourselves collectively the history of injustice. Meanwhile, in Glasgow, yet another pact is signed and consentless we are doomed to the rising seas, heatwaves and a waterless wasteland. In 50 years where will our children be? Will they adapt and learn to remain indoors, sunless, boxed in? Will air be home delivered in Amazon boxes or arrive parcelled in JIO cables?
According to Save the Children, in the two weeks that the COP26 negotiations were being held, more than 5 million babies were born into a world where they will face seven times as many heatwaves, 2.6 more droughts, and three times as many crop failures as their grandparents. Days after India pledged to Net Zero by 2070, we learnt that zero is not a number; it is a symbol of our moral superiority and oratorship. Experts and climate watchers have called the Glasgow deal Earth’s suicide pact. This was our chance to reverse the dangerous slide, turn back from the tipping point and it was squandered away. Earth systems will now overshoot safe limits and pass on to a perpetually hostile state. To remind the world leaders that they are a greedy selfish lot, children were to have a seat at the table. UNICEF UK has said that they were “repeatedly told by young people who attended COP26 that they were not getting into the rooms they needed to be in due to event access restrictions and accessibility. What was needed and deserved by children and young people was a seat at the table to inform the decisions being made that directly affect their lives and futures. Sadly… COP26 fell short of this”. Naked Emperors who want no stray questions popping their gosammer nudity, shut out the children.
Be it the recent chapters of Fridays for Future, Steve Rocha’s band of warriors who have been holding children’s parliament for years, or school projects on the burning of Amazon forests, climate activism is the new bicycle. Children must learn to ride whether or not the city has a bicycle track. Awareness is not enough anymore. Nor a well-roused conscience. It is time for children to take action to pay for the price of our inaction. A climate action-based school curriculum could be the start, depending on who writes the curriculum.
If we let our political leaders have their say, there will be multiple choice questions on fossil fuel and quizzes on the woolly mammoth. It certainly will not be a toolkit for reversal. One year into the pandemic, UNESCO had projected that close to half the world’s students are still affected by partial or full school closures. Over 100 million additional children will fail to recover their learning loss or never return to school. Perhaps we are headed for a post-school age, one in which curriculums will emerge from droughts, floods and thunderstorms. Meanwhile, as schools remain shut to make the Naked Emperors look dapper, let the alleyways fill up with climate bicycles. Let us consent to not give consent.
The author is a writer with a day job in global policy