Delhi not transparent in pollution data: Yale Univ

In a stinging remark on how Delhi monitors its air pollution quality, the Yale University on Wednesday said the national capital’s pollution data is not as consistent or transparent, making direct comparison impossible.

Updated on: Jan 31, 2014, 02:10:14 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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In a stinging remark on how the national capital monitors its air pollution quality, the Yale University on Wednesday said Delhi’s pollution data is not consistent or transparent, making direct comparison impossible.

The statement issued by the university in wake of a storm after its Environment Performance Index describing India as one of the worst-polluted countries in the world said the index was based on more reliable satellite data processed by a team of atmospheric chemists and remote sending experts.

"The data permit robust comparison across all nations. On such indicators, India has emerged as having air quality worse or as bad as China’s which fueled questions about how air quality compares in the two capital cities," the report the statement read.

Read:Pollution control plan in limbo as Delhi gasps for breath

The latest national pollution data of over 280 cities across India is available till 2010 only.

Pollution watchdog, Central Pollution Control Board, which compiles the data from its own monitoring stations and those run by the state pollution control board accuses the states of delay in filing information about pollution data.

India does not have a national online mechanism where data collected by monitoring stations gets directly transmitted to a national server. The data is first scrutinised by scientists at various monitoring centers and state pollution boards before sending it CPCB, thereby raising a possibility of tampering.

Read:How air and water pollution plagues Indian cities

The daily average particulate matter 2.5 microns data for different locations in Delhi in the last few days, when pollution levels were high, has not been disclosed on the ground that it was under scrutiny.

On many locations where PM 2.5 microns is monitored on daily basis, the data for a longer period is not available on the respective websites of CPCB and Delhi Pollution Control Committee.

And this was precisely the issue raised by Yale University in its statement, which said Delhi was much behind Beijing in making air quality information available to its citizens.

HT Edit: Choking to death: Delhi's air is dirtier than Beijing’s

The lead author of the report Angel Hsu said there is no substitute for reliable, timely, local level air quality measurements.

"It is precisely the absence of a global network of such data that forces us to rely on satellite data," he added.

However, the scientists have questioned the use of satellite data to calculate PM 2.5 microns saying it can misleading as defining country specific or city specific boundaries become very difficult.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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