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Open Forum
New Delhi,
28 April 2015
Air Quality Index
IN PURSUIT OF CLEAN
INDIA
By Dr S Saraswathi
(Former Director,
ICSSR, New Delhi)
The Supreme Court’s refusal to entertain a petition
challenging the order of the National Green Tribunal banning plying of
15-year-old vehicles and 10-year-old diesel vehicles in Delhi must be welcomed.
The Bench led by the Chief Justice observed that the NGT
needs encouragement and not obstacles in its work.
It is reported that several enforcement teams have been
deployed at seven entry points of National Highways to Delhi to check the entry of over-loaded, over-aged
and polluting vehicles into the capital city.
The Tribunal has ordered these vehicles be towed away from
parking spots and their use challenged in a court by the police. The order was
applied to all vehicles – two wheelers, three wheelers, four wheelers, light
vehicles, and heavy vehicles whether run commercially or otherwise. The defence
put forward on the basis of fitness was overruled and the factor of age of the
vehicle was taken as the deciding factor for its removal.
The ban, in fact, comes too late as the Environmental Performance
Index of 2013 ranked India
at 155 out of 178 countries. A study by the WHO in 2014 found that New Delhi had the world’s
dirtiest air among 1,600 cities. An estimate showed that 124 cities were found
to be virtual “death traps” of air pollution far exceeding the limits given. Only
2% of Indian cities had low air pollution. Of the dirtiest 20 cities around the
world, 13 were found in India.
Delhi and Patna
were estimated to exceed safety levels by 15 times. It is not without reason
that Queen Elizabeth II called Delhi
a filthy city. Sufficient historic record and current provocation for intensifying
Swachch Bharat campaign indeed!
Delhi has more vehicles than Mumbai,
Kolkata, and Chennai put together. Over 60% of pollutants in Delhi emanate from vehicles and the rest from
industries, power plants, and domestic sector.
A new Air Quality Index was launched by the Prime Minister
as part of the Clean India Mission. It provides one consolidated number after
tracking eight pollutants and uses colour coding to indicate associated health effect.
The index will help to monitor pollution levels in ten major cities in India.
The term “pollution” has many definitions. Derived from the
Latin “pollutus”, it means “foul”, “unclean”, or “dirty”. Some use it only to denote damages caused to
the environment by human activities, while others apply it to damages caused by
natural conditions also. In fact,
pollution results both from natural and human sources.
The WHO defined air pollution as “the discharge into the
atmosphere of foreign gases, vapours, droplets, and particulates, or of
excessive amounts of normal constituents either from natural sources such as
volcanoes or from man’s activities”. Human activity is an important cause for
pollution. Hence, attention has to be more on pollution prevention techniques
rather than on treatment and disposal of pollutants created.
Since around the 1960s, during the economic boom by fast industrialization,
air pollution became a serious regional and even global problem, requiring
joint international action. Earlier, it
was treated as localized, mainly a problem of urban and industrialized areas to
be dealt with as a by-product of development. Fighting air pollution by
individuals is not possible, but individuals have to cooperate in the efforts
of public, private, and voluntary organizations. Environmental movements –
national and transnational - emerged in many countries in the 1970s not excluding
India.
A scholar,
tracing some historic events
connected with the problem of air pollution, mentions that King Edward I issued
a proclamation in the year 1300 in England prohibiting the use of coal as fuel
during parliament sessions. He also traces the first report on the effects of
air pollution released in 1866. In the 20th century, after the two
World Wars, air pollution has become a serious social-environmental issue.
By the turn of the 20th century, Japan had set
an example for developing countries in overcoming problems arising from air
pollution. An association of women pressurized the government to enact the
Tokyo Prefecture Soot and Smoke Control Ordinance in 1955 as one of the
preventive measures to contain the spread of asthma.
The Governor of Tokyo launched a “say no to diesel-powered
vehicles” campaign in the year 2000 and directed owners of such vehicles to
substitute them with gasoline-powered ones. He argued that the biggest cause of
Tokyo’s air
pollution was exhausts from thousands of diesel vehicles which accounted only
for 20% of vehicular traffic, but created 70% of nitrogen oxide emissions and
100% of SPM emissions. We are more than a decade behind Japan to
realize and take stern steps to fight car-borne pollution.
An American professor’s statement is quoted often which says
that, “to keep the world clean – this
is one great task for women”. What was
called the “filth diseases’ confronted citizens and soldiers alike in the late
19th century calling for a battle against “uncleanness’ in the US. Sanitarians
began to preach that cleanliness was the “first element of health”. Women
became leaders of the movement for cleanliness. It actually became a women’s
war. In the 1970s, environmentalism was intensified and many laws were adopted
in the US
towards achieving all-round cleanliness.
Federal Clean Air Act of 1970 set air quality standards to
help pollution control in the US.
It recommended primary standards oriented to protection of public health, and
secondary standards to protect public welfare.
Pollutants are also of two types. Primary pollutants are
those that originate at the source like dust, pollen grains, seeds, bacteria,
etc. They are mostly natural pollutants. Secondary pollutants are formed by
reaction of two or more primary pollutants like the acid rain.
Pollution Prevention Audit (P2audit) in the US focuses on
practices and technologies that eliminate pollution and/or on devising more and
more cost effective approach to pollution control. It has a strong financial
side. P2 audit is different from environmental audit which focuses on
conforming to environmental standards. Pollution prevention is different from
waste disposal and waste management which come after creation of pollution.
Air pollution causes many types of damages. It contaminates
air, water, and soil, corrodes materials, damages many articles of daily use,
harms plants and animals, and affects human health as cause for a variety of
diseases. It is indeed lamentable that our country is still in the stage of
imparting basic lessons on the harmful effects of pollution and ways of minimizing
its presence, while many countries give cleanliness as much importance as
education. May be, our backwardness is partly due to lack of even universal
elementary education.
Pollution control has never been an election issue in India. It is
not debated as a public issue to find practicable solutions. On the contrary,
such control is received as intrusion into individual freedom and an
unnecessary burden. Simple rules like source segregation of bio-degradable and
non-degradable domestic garbage are openly flouted. Old vehicles happily fly on
the roads covering streets with smoke.
We are constantly chanting the mantra of development. Smart cities, technology parks, rapid transit
systems, and mobile towers are incongruous with polluted city atmosphere. In fact, pollution control at the source
should precede other development projects. ---INFA
(Copyright,
India News and Feature Alliance)
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