EcoWorldly

When I was looking at Delhi’s environment almost a decade back, Delhi was entering its bitter battle against being the ‘fourth most polluted city’ in the world. Much thought and action (or shall we say reaction) was devoted to the problem. Delhi was able to remedy both its ‘fourth most polluted’ status and its air quality with unprecedented ‘hyper-activity:’ remarkable for being so well concerted across the different levels and different arms of the government.

Picture: Delhi Smog in January 2009

As I revisited the problem more recently, I was both shocked and saddened to see a decline so visibly and so quickly. Examining Delhi’s data, in January this year, I found an increase in vehicular pollution. I was not expecting this to happen in face of the phenomenal and difficult measures that Delhi had undertaken: like relocation of industries out of residential areas (something that had come about as a result of the developmental dream for Delhi in the 1950s) and conversion of the entire fleet of Delhi Transportation Corporation (DTC) buses into Compressed Natural gas or CNG (resulting in the largest CNG-operated public transportation in the world).

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I was quickly reminded of the growing crowd of vehicles on Delhi’s streets. I had thus far viewed this as simply a reflection of the growing prosperity of the city. Economic boom had not only changed the city’s fortunes – increased tax-collection had enabled unprecedented activity, allowing Delhi to finance a network of over-bridges and highways, especially high-speed, tolled ones, ensuring faster commutes –but, first and foremost, it had affected personal fortunes of the large middle and lower classes; thus increasing their demand for consumer goods. So, even as a very popular Metro (/subway) network grew in Delhi, so did the demand for personal vehicles. About a thousand vehicles are added to Delhi’s roads each day and one-third of these are diesel vehicles. Diesel is a worse polluter than petrol, more so since unleaded petrol is now the norm.

The irony of the situation is that diesel is subsidized by the government; the aim being to reduce the operational costs for farmers when the diesel vehicles are used for agricultural purposes. What could be more of an agricultural machinery than a tractor? But in certain suburbs of Delhi (e.g.: NOIDA) tractors can be seen plying people on the road all day long. The good intentions are abused openly and Delhi’s air-quality continues to suffer. Once again, it reiterates the need for better enforcement and better vision.

As I had been looking at the recent data, I had found that mobile sources of pollution had continued to dominate – as they had done in 1998. The growth of vehicles on Delhi’s roads (which most current studies have identified as the culprit) was only partly to blame. Buses, which had been converted to CNG, were rightly exonerated. By association, three-wheeler scooters that had also been converted to CNG are also exonerated typically: This time, wrongly so. As deeper delving reveals, three-wheelers must shoulder much of the blame for increases in nitrogen-oxide, Respiratory Suspended Particulate Matter and Suspended Particulate Matter. Though they have been converted to CNG to fight pollution, the technology used in conversion is of a very poor quality, leading to higher emissions of nitrogen-oxide and particulate matter.

The manner of working does indicate to certain lacunae. The changes were introduced in a high pressure situation on a tightly binding decision from the Supreme Court of India; ignoring which constitutes a contempt of court. Clearly, Delhi would have benefited more had the Supreme Court directive (demanding CNG conversion) also specified acceptable pollutant levels Thus, it would essentially safe-guard against the worsening of situation from these sources.

Apart from better enforcement now, better vision and planning earlier would have helped avoid such puzzling and problematic situations and yielded superior returns. This is an area where true gains can only be realized with much advance planning and realistic forecasting.

Picture Credits: Delhi Smog in January 2009, courtesy Mr Bula, via Flickr.com under Creative Commons License.

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