Air quality in Indian cities, particularly those in northern India, has significantly deteriorated over the past few years due to high levels of smoke emanating from traffic, heavy industry and agricultural waste burning. Pollution levels in the capital New Delhi have occasionally crossed the 500 mark of the Air Quality Index measurement, which defines anything above 150 as ‘unhealthy’. The effects of worsening air pollution are already being felt in India’s health sector, with increasing cases of asthma, pneumonia, stroke and chronic lung and heart diseases. Children and the elderly are particularly vulnerable.
India has several national policies and initiatives in place to address environmental challenges. The 1981 Air Act and 1986 Environmental Policy were among the first significant steps towards strengthening environmental health. The Air Act laid the foundations for the creation of other institutional mechanisms such as the national and state level Pollution Control Boards, while the Environmental Policy recommends several actions to help key emitting sectors minimise pollution.
Despite these policy steps, the number of Indian cities experiencing high pollution levels is increasing and the air quality in some southern cities, which had never experienced high pollution in the past, is now also deteriorating. Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, a southern state in India, has gone from experiencing hardly any major air quality issues to recording ‘unhealthy’ levels of pollution in early November 2018.
The predominant source of pollutants in India varies by city, though particulate matter (PM2.5) is the biggest challenge. Kanpur, an industrial hub in Uttar Pradesh, is the most polluted city in India and has significantly high levels of PM2.5. In New Delhi, major pollutants include PM2.5 and smoke from a range of sources like heavy traffic, construction and power generation.
So what can be done? First of all, tokenism is not a policy solution. Air pollution is linked to a whole range of economic activities and energy consumption patterns. This means that isolated policies are not effective. Short-term remedies — like fewer days of transport restrictions or campaigns for tree plantation — that are not supported by a clear long-term vision are also unlikely to be helpful.
Instead, addressing air pollution must be integrated into India’s long-term approach to sustainable development. Measures to address larger environmental and development issues offer enormous co-benefits to curbing air pollution. For example, policies to improve fuel quality, address highway congestion, promote electric vehicles and develop mass transport systems also directly cut pollution. Similarly, stringent laws regulating land use in urban areas and monitoring construction activities help to limit PM2.5 emissions.
Second, plans to address air quality issues in India need to involve a variety of institutions and stakeholders. While government ministries and departments play a leading role in air pollution policy, there needs to be greater capacity-building programs with non-government organisations and the industrial sector. The contributions made by these stakeholders must be recognised with tangible incentives. Entrusting national, state and local administrators who are in charge of managing environmental quality with greater powers to act upon air quality issues could also be an effective strategy, with effective collaboration among them and appropriate monitoring mechanisms in place.
Third, India can learn a lot from the international community. Many of today’s developed economies have experienced extreme air pollution in the past, including the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan. Efficient policy response and the shaping of strong legal institutions helped these countries curb pollution levels. India must enhance its collaboration with these countries, particularly its city-to-city partnerships, to learn best practices and gain access to cleaner technologies. The Japanese government-sponsored ‘Blue Sky Initiatives’ is a noticeable example of the types of external collaborations that India must prioritise.
India’s population is predominantly young, with 35 per cent of the population estimated to be 15–34 years old. Health impacts on this young population will significantly damage India’s long-term political and economic prospects. To ensure not only a reasonable quality of life for its citizens but also the participation of its huge working age population in the economy, India must address its air pollution issues. And the urgency of doing so must be recognised now before the consequences of inaction catch-up with the country.
Nandakumar Janardhanan is an Assistant Professor atJawaharlal Nehru University.
Akihisa Mori is an Associate Professor at Kyoto University.
The views expressed here are their own and do not reflect those of their institutions.
British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli said: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” The automotive industry has gone beyond statistics to mis-represent the real world emissions – standards. As per the latest published report in 2018, the present emissions standards permit as much as 50 per cent variation in laboratory tests reports & on-road / real world emissions (which was earlier 9 per cent).
And further, it does not quantify pollution by quantum of freight ferried – the emission to transport one person from Point A to Point B.
Please visit the link https://www.transportenvironment.org/publications/co2-emissions-cars-facts.
The detailed report can be downloaded at https://www.transportenvironment.org/sites/te/files/publications/2018_04_CO2_emissions_cars_The_facts_report_final_0_0.pdf.
Some key findings in the report are:
a. New car CO2 regulations have delivered only about a 10per cent reduction in on-road emissions in the 20 years since the first Voluntary Agreement was established in 1998; and there has been effectively no improvement in the last five years
b. All the major carmakers have been increasingly exploiting flexibilities in the official tests. The gap is now so wide (over 50per cent for some models and manufacturers, e.g. Mercedes-Benz), that
T&E and other experts are unable to explain how carmakers are able to achieve such remarkably low test results. New additional defeat devices may be the cause (the Volkswagen / Dieselgate scandal).
c. Keeping aside statistics & standards, some common sense throws light on the situation.
A normal person consumes 18 cubic meters of air per day / 24 hours. A 1500 CC engine capacity car running at average speed of 3000 RPM consumes 3 cubic meters of air per minute.
It means that the air a running car uses in one hour, is the air that is required by 240 people for 1 hour. How will all the car emissions / pollution go out of the city?
The following facts are a reflection of the above:
a. Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, Delhi, has found that 50 per cent of lung cancer patients are non-smokers.
b. Richard Muller, the founder & scientific director of Berkeley Earth, found that spending one day in Delhi is equivalent to smoking 25 cigarettes for every man, woman & child living there.
c. 25 lakh people have died in India due to air pollution in 2015. Now it will be much higher.
d. In 2016, India has the highest number of under-5 children deaths of 1,10,000 as per WHO.
If even only 10 per cent of the deaths are due to vehicular pollution, the saving is of 2,50,000 lives, most of them children, whose respiratory systems are developing at the age.
e. The Pareto principle (also known as the 80/20 rule, or the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many situations, roughly 80per cent of the effects come from 20per cent of the causes.
The present situation subsidizes pollution. And most of the lives lost will be of the middle & lower income group, as they cannot afford the medical costs that the rich can.
The solution is common law based on equity (user pays principle) & cost recovery (e.g. infrastructure like multilevel parking). No free parking – parking has to be strictly as per Sanctioned Building Plan & Developmental Control Rules. Car buyers have to own the space for parking the car at home & have a permission to park at the workplace as per Sanctioned Plan.
These intentions are already reflected in the following:
a. In 2012, Hon’ble Rajasthan High Court passed order that RTO to register cars only if car buyer has parking space. If the owner doesn’t have parking space at his house or work place, the vehicle cannot be registered with the RTO. This automatically rules out using public space to park a car.
b. On 23.05.15 Hon’ble Himachal Pradesh High Court passed order that no new vehicle would be registered till the intending purchaser produced a certificate from the Shimla Collector that he owned parking space. A subsequent order to de-register vehicles for not having space has also been released.
c. On 24.08.10, Mizoram State Government made it mandatory for aspiring car owners to own space before owning a car by amending the Motor Vehicle Rules.
d. The Uttar Pradesh RTO has also made mandatory for car buyer to have own parking space for registering cars.
e. In developed economies, they follow the Polluter Pays Principle. The car owner has to pay a circulation tax if he wants to drive on the road.
If these existing laws / rules are implemented rigorously, at least 50 per cent of the problem will be solved.