Remember the last time you slept peacefully at night and woke up refreshed the next morning?

The sleep that was not haunted by the urban nightmares of streetlights sneaking through your windows or of the faint, annoying noise of traffic rumbling by? Then you were probably in the hills, or the forests or remote rural land.

Lack of quality sleep in your everyday life is the bedrock of most physiological and psychological disorders — ranging from hallucinations to depression, diabetes to strokes. And this, dear reader, is the direct consequence of light pollution.

Do not be swayed — not all pollution involves clouds of black smoke from factories and trucks. Light pollution is defined as the unwanted, excessive, misdirected or obtrusive artificial (usually outdoor) light — in abundance in urban areas.

According to a study published in the Urban Climate journal in January 2019, brightness from outdoor lights is on a steady rise in various parts of India as seen over the past two decades.

Blinded by the dazzle? (Photo: Reuters)

“New Delhi, Telangana, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh, which were already experiencing high levels of outdoor brightness, showed a further increase from 1993 to 2013. West Bengal, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu transitioned from low to high light pollution areas,” the study, led by Pavan Kumar, states.

Light pollution can come in forms such as glare, light trespass and sky glow, in addition to over-illumination and clutter.

According to ecologist Franz Hölker of Germany’s Leibniz-Institute for Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB), light pollution has ecological consequences, with natural light cycles disrupted by artificial light introduced into the night-time environment. Increased sky glow can affect human sleep, he noted.

“In addition to threatening 30 per cent of vertebrates that are nocturnal and over 60 per cent of invertebrates that are nocturnal, artificial light also affects plants and microorganisms,” Hölker reportedly said. “It threatens biodiversity through changed night habits, such as reproduction or migration patterns, of many different species: insects, amphibians, fish, birds, bats and other animals.”

Nilesh Desai, a resident of south Mumbai’s Kalbadevi, filed a public interest litigation on light pollution disturbance due to excessive, inappropriate and misdirected artificial lights.

He likens his ordeal to a “curfew-like situation”.

“I ask my children not to look outside windows, fearing for their eyesight. We have put up thick curtains in our houses and use blinds to block out the glare from floodlights to watch television or even to sleep at night,” Desai tells DailyO.

Good night? An image of Paris in the evening as photographed from the International Space Station. (Source: NASA)

However, Desai’s efforts bore fruit when the Maharashtra government acknowledged light pollution as a legit source of pollution and the Mumbai city district collector asked the Wilson Gymkhana on Marine Drive to take down the floodlights on its premises.

Studies have shown that humans are dependent on natural body cycles called circadian rhythms and the production of melatonin, regulated by daylight and darkness at night. “People are already experiencing the effects of light pollution in various forms but we do not recognise it as pollution in India yet,” says Desai.

Owing to the lack of awareness of the effects of light pollution, there are no laws to regulate it till date.

“I used to consider it a ‘light nuisance’. When I got in touch with the NGO Awaaz Foundation, the director, Sumaira Abdul Ali, used the term light ‘pollution’. That was the turning point for me. When I say ‘light pollution’, it is given the gravity it deserves and the authorities consider it seriously,” Desai says.

From the intensity of headlights and streetlights to unnecessary floodlights — regulations are needed to cap the blinding intensity of all sources of luminosity.

Article 21 of the Indian Constitution mandates the right to live in a pollution-free environment. Unless such studies and campaigns by aware citizens like Nilesh Desai are taken seriously into account, we would be witnessing yet another violation of Article 21.

The future may not be so bright after all.

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