New Delhi is gasping for air with alarming levels of pollution turning the city virtually into a gas chamber
Infamous for being the world’s most polluted capital, New Delhi is facing a public health emergency ever since Diwali celebrations last month left its air so toxic that schools had to be shut down to limit children’s exposure to the environment.
Delhi sees an annual increase in air pollution in the winter as seasonal crop stubble burning, dense cloud cover and smoke from millions of Diwali firecrackers turn the national capital into a virtual gas chamber.
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal blames stubble burning in Punjab and Haryana for the city’s pollution levels and is exploring possible solutions for disposing the agriculture waste that is left behind after the harvest of the paddy crop.
“Over the past few years, Delhi has seen an annual spike in air pollution that can be directly linked to the burning of agricultural waste in the months of October and November in the neighbouring states. Although this issue was identified some years ago, there has been no solution so far with lakhs of acres of farms being set on fire every year,” an official statement said.
However, farmers in Punjab and Haryana say it is wrong to hold only them accountable for the smog that settles over the capital every winter and ignore other factors that contribute to air pollution all year round — the rapid loss of green cover, construction work, and vehicular as well as industrial pollution.
On November 12, the air quality index (AQI) of Delhi was 416 in the morning, according to the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB). The AQI of the national capital region was also high with Ghaziabad (445), Noida and Greater Noida (436), Faridabad (404) having a similar experience. Haryana’s Panipat (462), Hisar (406) and Jind (439), too, were in the “severe” category, according to the System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting And Research (SAFAR).
According to SAFAR, AQI reached as high as 999 in many parts of Delhi on Diwali night. The safe level AQI is 0-50. So, it was over 14 times worse than the recommended level.
An AQI between 51 and 100 is termed satisfactory, 101-200 is moderate, 201-300 poor, 301-400 very poor and 401-500 severe. An AQI that crosses 500 is ‘severe plus’ or calls for desperate emergency measures.
Kejriwal believes the only way to get rid of stubble burning is to develop commercially viable processes to dispose of the paddy straw.
The air pollution issue is likely to play a key factor in the upcoming assembly polls with the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) facing increasing pressure from the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress on this front despite its praise-worthy performance in areas such as healthcare and education.
The two opposition parties have blamed the AAP government for not taking adequate steps to control air pollution. While the government has re-introduced its odd-even scheme to tackle pollution, the Delhi Electric Vehicle Policy 2018 awaits to be notified even though almost a year has passed since it was drafted.
The government says that it is working on details of the drafts, but manufacturers of electric vehicles say the policy could have played an important role in controlling pollution in the long term.
Sohinder Gill, Director General, Society of Manufacturers of Electric Vehicles (SMEV) said odd-even is meant for tackling a crisis-like situation and has an extremely short-term effect.
“Ironically, we wait 300 days a year of inaction, then proudly announce a series of ad hoc measures and conveniently forget everything a few weeks later. Unless we do meticulous planning and take comprehensive corrective measures, we are all destined to suffer more severely,” Gill said.
He said one significant step could have been mandatorily shifting to cleaner and less polluting vehicles like electric.
“The very positive and forward-looking Delhi EV policy seems to be on the backburner for more than a year leading to a worsening situation on the roads due to ever-increasing vehicles and ever-growing traffic jams. If we would have just replaced 10 per cent of the petrol two-wheelers with electric, it would have reduced 50 lakh tonnes of CO2 and greenhouse gases in a year,” Gill added.
Similarly, he said, the use of electric cars, e-buses and e-autos would have been useful in bringing down CO2 levels significantly.
However, the draft is yet to be notified even though the AAP government says it will be done very soon.
The Delhi Transport Department in the policy draft, introduced in November 2018, had said the vehicular pollution was a consistent source of air pollution in Delhi and contributes up to 30 per cent of particulate pollution.
Union Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar recently held a meeting to review air pollution mitigation efforts in Delhi-NCR with the state governments of the region.
The meeting was attended by Delhi Environment Minister Kailash Gahlot, Environment Secretary C.K. Mishra and SP Singh, Chairman, Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB). Senior officials from the state governments of Delhi, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab also attended the meeting.
Javadekar said that the officials of five states attended the meeting and this practice had been initiated since 2015 to review pollution control efforts with the states. He said such meetings will take place every month in order to review the steps undertaken to tackle air pollution.
The minister said that stubble burning share of Delhi pollution, which had gone up to 30-35 per cent in the recent weeks, has come down to 3-4 per cent.
However, stubble burning, vehicle emissions and dust constituted around 70-80 per cent of the pollution in Delhi and due to its geographical location, the pollutants were not able to disperse, thereby causing a pollution cloud.
In 2014, both Delhi and Beijing had similar pollution levels but the Chinese authorities devised a plan that helped its capital clean up its act and Beijing now stands on the verge of exiting the list of 200 most polluted cities in the world while Delhi continues to annually increase its pollution levels.
China’s pollution control emergency plan and the political will of its authorities helped Beijing breathe. Now that Delhi is gasping for air, perhaps India need only follow suit.
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