Urban dystopia

Come winter, and the capital and other cities in the region are enveloped in a noxious smog that only gets worse each year. Galling statistics on pollution levels — for a day as a whole the air quality index for Delhi is in the region of 470-500, whereas anything greater than 300 is considered ‘hazardous’ and a reading below 50 considered ‘good’ — have triggered a blame-game between various governments (Centre, Delhi, Punjab and Haryana) and their agencies, even as various emergency steps have been announced in recent days, such as a ban on construction activity and on burning dirty fuels. The mess is the result of a ‘perfect storm’ of factors such as the burning of paddy stubble in Punjab and Haryana, low temperatures, low wind speeds, and vehicular and industrial pollution. However, the solutions are not far to seek; it only entails government agencies rising above scoring petty brownie points and acting in concert.

To begin with, the Punjab government has not been able to abide by the National Green Tribunal’s order to implement a ban on burning paddy straw — nearly 20 million tonnes of it. The farmers are not at fault — they need to clear the land in quick time to prepare for the wheat crop, whereas the combine harvesters leave too tall a stubble of paddy straw for it to be manually removed, both expediently and cheaply. Incidentally, the residue of the basmati crop, which is generally manually harvested in regions around Amritsar because it fetches a better support price, is not burnt. The technological solution — ‘the super straw management system’ which, when attached to a mechanical harvester, shreds the waste to small bits so that it need not be burnt and can instead be put to better uses such as biomass and ethanol and electricity production — has not worked out because of subsidy wrangles between the Centre and the States. Millions of citizens, including farmers, are paying a price for this short-sighted niggardliness.

That said, straw burning is a seasonal issue whereas vehicular pollution is arguably the rhinoceros in the room. The Delhi government was set to implement its odd-even scheme for the third time with effect from today, only to be stopped in its tracks by the NGT which has raised questions on its efficacy and wondered why two-wheelers should be excluded. Extending the scheme to two-wheelers can lead to a huge load on buses and metros, beyond their capacity, whereas a curb on cars can lead to pooling. The assertion that the two earlier attempts led to an increase in particulate matter is not convincing as the time-period was too small. The solution for large cities is to ramp up public transport (Delhi’s bus fleet has actually been falling, and it needs land for bus depots) and encourage a shift away from cheap industrial fuel to solar, clean thermal power and natural gas. But the fight for better air quality cannot be successful without citizens exercising lifestyle choices to that end.

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