Breathing poison in Delhi: Sense of urgency to tackle air pollution missing

India’s first extensive estimate of air pollution impact on health loss attributes 1 out of every 8 deaths to toxic air

Six-year-old Tara dreads the onset of winter in Delhi. Unlike the kids in other cities who enjoy the winter fun and frolics in parks, Tara’s parents – residents of Noida – prefer to keep her indoors because of her breathing trouble that shoots up when a blanket of toxic haze wrapped the entire national capital region (NCR), leaving its residents gasping for breath.

Or take the case of Shawan Kumar – an autorickshaw driver from Mayur Vihar in east Delhi. For more than two decades, Kumar was navigating Delhi roads braving its extreme weather and toxic pollution. Stinging eyes and persistent coughs are new normal for him as doctors suspect that Kumar like many other residents of Delhi and its satellite towns such as Noida, Ghaziabad, Greater Noida, Gurugram and Faridabad has developed Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.

India’s first comprehensive estimate of the impact of air pollution on deaths, health loss and life expectancy shows that one out of every eight deaths is attributable to air pollution and an average Indian would have lived 1.7 years more had there not been any life-threatening levels of air pollution. The highest increase in life expectancy would have happened in Rajasthan (2.5 years), Uttar Pradesh (2.2 years) and Haryana (2.1 years) – all of them part of Delhi-National Capital region.

Notwithstanding the estimate published in the Lancet in 2018, and numerous other studies explicitly demonstrating the link between the toxic level of air pollution and health loss, there is little action on the ground by the Union and state governments to reduce the NCR’s pollution load throughout the year. The administration wakes up only when the air pollution level is alarmingly visible.

Road dust is a classic example of government inaction. A 2015 IIT-Kanpur source appropriation study showed road dust as a major component of air pollution in the national capital. While mechanical sweeping has limited efficiency, the IIT team suggested wall-to-wall paving of the roads, ensuring no broken stretch (as they are sources of dust flow) and planting of shrubs on the open space to reduce the drift of the dust. This requires road-repair, paving and greening work throughout the year, which is barely practiced outside the Lutyen’s Zone and in the satellite towns of Noida, Gurugram, Ghaziabad and Faridabad, each having their own priorities. Each of these cities also releases a large quantity of dust, thanks to round-the-clock construction work due to the rapid spread of urbanization.

Three years after the IIT report, the Environment Ministry in 2019 prepared an action plan as a part of the National Clean Air Programme that seeks to reduce the air pollution level by 20-30 per cent in more than 100 cities including the NCR. Dust reduction was a key component of the plan but even after two years, there is little “paving and greening” action on the ground.

Also read: Air pollution may lead to premature birth, poor brain development: Experts

Such procrastination angered the Supreme Court, which came down heavily on the bureaucracy for its inertia. “In the entire country, what I have observed as a judge, and earlier as Advocate General, is that the bureaucracy has developed an inertia, an apathy... They wait for the court to pass an order even on things like how to stop a car or a fire by using a bucket or a mop... This is the attitude developed by the Executive. The meeting should have decided on the steps and said these are our directions to be implemented. We could have completed this hearing in two minutes... It is unfortunate the Executive has come to this... They just say ‘let the court pass the order and we will sign’,” Chief Justice N V Ramana said while hearing a litigation on the air pollution issue in the capital.

An analysis by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), which looked into five emission inventory studies from Delhi concluded that transport is the largest contributor behind PM2.5 while road dust is the biggest PM10 culprit. In an affidavit before the top court, the ministry also identified industrial pollution and fire in the garbage dumps as other two major contributors besides road and construction dust, vehicular pollution and agriculture stubble burning.

But, the SC bench raised doubts about the efficacy of the measures adopted by the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) – a body created by an Act of the Parliament to clean up the air – in the NCR and adjoining areas. With the wind speed expected to pick up from November 21 onwards, scientists hope that a large quantity of the dust would be blown away by nature giving some respite after three weeks.

This year’s high air pollution in Delhi was marked by a five-year high in stubble burning in Punjab and Haryana coupled with failure of the government’s plan to utilise a part of the crop residue in the National Thermal Power Corporation unit.

Two independent studies confirm the five-year high. Between September 1 and November 16, there were 74,015 fire counts in Punjab – the highest since 2016 – according to NASA’s VIIRS-SNPP satellite. A CEEW analysis also suggests more than 84,000 fire counts in Punjab and Haryana – again the highest since 2016. The cumulative fire count in the two agrarian states rose from 20,723 (till October 31) to 84,513 (till November 18). The fire count is now on the wane in the natural course since most of the fields have now been cleared.

In September, Union Environment Minister Bhupendra Yadav reviewed the crop burning issues with the state officials, looking for an emergency solution for a problem that was rooted in the introduction of rice cultivation in Punjab since the 1970s.

Also Read | High pollution levels compound health issues of Delhi dwellers amid calls for a 'pollution lockdown'

The problem has been compounded by the Punjab Preservation of Subsoil Act, 2009 that prohibits sowing paddy seeds in nurseries before May 10 and transplanting seedlings before June 10 to reduce the use of groundwater for harvesting the seeds. A similar law exists in Haryana too.

Both the laws meant for arresting the decline in groundwater levels have pushed the paddy crop cycle closer to the sowing for rabi crops, forcing farmers to look for quick-fix solutions such as stubble burning to clear the fields for the next crop.

The amount of crop residue the farmers generate is gigantic. According to a 2019 study published in Science, farmers in north India burn an estimated 23 million tonnes of straw from their rice harvest, an enormous mass which, if packed into 20-kg, 38-cm high bales and piled on top of each other, would reach a height of over 4,30,000 km or about 1.1 times the distance to the moon.

Yadav could not figure out a quick-fix solution and decided to continue with Happy Seeder machines (for mechanised straw management) and bio-decomposter even though the takers for both among the Punjab and Haryana farmers are few. A third option of using the crop residue in thermal power plants also came a cropper due to a supply side problem.

Before the stubble burning season, the NTPC had planned to use 20 million tonnes of stubble, but could manage to utilise only 3.5 million tonnes. The poor response, according to the power company, is due to inadequate supply of crop residue pellets. The company received only 58,000 tonnes of such pellets as against 9.5 lakh tonnes ordered. There are simply not enough pellet-making units.

With every action to reduce air pollution getting derailed due to the bureaucratic inertia in the last few years, the toxic smogs are almost certain to return next year to Delhi-NCR choking the residents once gain. Unless there is a miracle.

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