Battling smog: Blame game without a game plan

As always, the season’s first severe smog episode in Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR) has unleashed yet another routine cacophonous din. This time too, it is quite likely that the public furore and political frenzy may lose steam soon and fail to energise the deeper and longer term action for sustained change in the entire region.

This year, after a clean October -- owing to prolonged rains and deferred burning of agricultural straw -- the sudden build-up of pollution in early November was dramatic. As expected, winter inversion and cool and calm conditions trapped local and regional pollution that spiralled out of control.

Even though the notified Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) requires emergency measures during such episodes, it did not kick in when it was needed the most. The delayed response ultimately led to the closure of schools, a temporary ban on construction, closure of industry and six power plants running on coal in the region, and halting of truck traffic at the Delhi border (among other measures targeting open burning and vehicles).

The inconvenience and harshness of some of these measures and their disproportionate impact on the poor already impacted by the

pandemic dislocation, has set off a concern around the need and effectiveness of such measures. When pollution is already trapped and only the wind can blow it away, emergency measures can only prevent the situation from worsening. But this cannot ensure a blue sky.

Yet, this failure to adhere to the annual routine of emergency action which is unavoidable when the smog is too thick, has exposed the deeper fissures in the strategy of the state governments in NCR. Even emergency action is constrained as the systems, infrastructure and institutional capacity in each sector of pollution remains inadequate.

Evidently, private vehicles cannot be stopped without adequate and affordable public transport, diesel generator sets cannot be switched off without reliable electricity, industry is disrupted without access to affordable clean fuels and strictures on waste burning don’t work without adequate municipal system to process and recycle waste. Dust remains a miasma with no strategy for arresting deforestation, green walling and soil stabilisation.

Also read: Breathing poison in Delhi

Need blueprint for local-to-regional action As the science improves to track air pollution and its sources – both local and regional -- it is possible to know the changing profile of pollution. Satellite images further show how the local smog over Delhi-NCR is part of the gigantic entrapment of pollution across the Indo-Gangetic Plain. This blurs the administrative boundaries of cities and states.

Pollution source assessment by The Energy Resources Institute (TERI) and Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI) in 2018 has shown significant contribution from outside sources to Delhi’s air quality. Delhi also contributes substantially to downwind towns such as Noida. Similarly, the 2015 assessment by Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur shows that more than 50 per cent of secondary particulates in Delhi are due to coal and biomass burning outside Delhi.

Thus, science, instead of stoking a political blame game between state governments, has to harmonise the regional strategy. The Supreme Court was the first to ask for an integrated comprehensive action plan for Delhi and NCR that was notified in 2018 under the Environment Protection Act, making it legally binding. This is the first ever approach to region-wide strategy and compliance monitoring within an airshed. But there is barely any public or political focus on its harmonised implementation and further refinement.

This has not yet catalysed the system-wide changes in the sub-regions of different state governments in the NCR to accelerate the implementation of a multi-sector plan. Delhi illustrates the difficult challenge of curbing pollution. It has shut down all its coal power plants, expanded use of natural gas in the legal industrial area, banned dirty fuels, phased out old vehicles, put its entire public transport and local commercial vehicles on compressed natural gas, restricted truck entry among others. While this has stabilised and bent the longer term pollution curve, Delhi still has to go a long way to address the remaining gaps in action to meet clean air standards.

The entire region has to gear up for a massive scale of change. Coal consumption still dominates the industry and power sectors in NCR. Without the central government’s intervention to make clean fuel affordable, a scalable transition to electricity or natural gas in industry is not possible. Natural gas, being outside the scope of GST, is loaded with state taxes. The power sector needs tighter deadlines with right incentives and deterrence to meet the new emissions standards. Every household in the region needs access to affordable and reliable clean cooking fuels. Public transport, walking and cycling infrastructure and electric vehicles have to expand at an unprecedented scale. Entire waste needs processing and recycling.

All this will need integrated strategy and committed funding at the central and state levels to support this scale of regional action.

While the state governments’ own resources have remained business-as-usual, there is barely any support for the NCR region under the National Clean Air Action Programme. Also, under the national funding programme of the 15th Finance Commission for air pollution control, only Faridabad and Ghaziabad have qualified.

Without a blueprint for stronger local action and resources across the entire region, the next winter cannot be any different. Political and public discourse has to insist on verifiable and measurable progress and track this transparently in each sector. The region needs a game plan and not a blame game.

(The writer is Executive Director, Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi)

Watch latest videos by DH here: