The Oxygen Crisis . Why?

There was a time when while traveling on a train I used to look out of the window and see my father filling up the bottle of water from a drinking water tap on the platform. Today our kids cannot even imagine that. They wouldn't think of having that tap water and buy nothing short of a branded mineral water bottle. In fact many wouldn't even buy a bottle of Aquafina, Kinley or Bailey, people now go for brands like Himalaya, Qua, and Vedica by Bisleri. Paying for drinking water has become a norm in India but until a few years ago it wasn't.

The system of a Pyau ( A place where drinking water was made available for the public in general by not the government but by efforts of the common people) that we had in almost every lane of our villages and towns were so efficient that we did not even have to buy a bottle of packed water. But then we stopped building those Pyau and stopped helping the society quench their thirst because that probably did not give us any immediate rewards (as the entire system of rewards is now understood in terms of money).

People stopped thinking about the long term effects of their actions and concentrated only on the immediate rewards and probably that is the reason we also need to buy air today.

The entire country is struggling for medical oxygen right now to help increase the oxygen level in blood of the COVID patients. The biggest issue that the COVID patients are facing currently is a drop in oxygen levels . Why is that so prominent in so many people while some can still overcome the infection and breathe properly? They say that people who have a stronger immunity system can fight this virus better. So isn't it true that people with stronger lungs can probably fight the drop in oxygen levels too? Isn't it due to our weakened respiratory system that we face issues with breathing? And why is our system weakened? Who is responsible? It is us. 

We started cutting trees, we started polluting our air with cars and industrial smoke. We have already damaged our systems so well that even a little more pressure on the repiratory system can make it tough for us to breathe.

We need to start taking small steps towards bigger changes now. The damage is not reversible but the situations are. We can still fight to reduce the pollution , we can still try to purify our air, we can still give our coming generations a healthy respiratory system and there is a chance that we can strengthen our own systems too. We just need to start working in the right direction.

We started paying for water and it has become a norm, Today we have started paying for air, don't let that become a norm too.

P.S. If we start keeping an earthen pot filled with drinking water outside our homes, it might quench someone's thirst today without paying for water. If we start planting atleast one tree every month we might be able to make our systems stronger and a lesser need for buying oxygen.