Political will needed to clean capital's toxic air

Combating Delhi’s toxic air is possible but it needs a strong political will to take a few bold decisions and make changes at the micro-level.

Updated on: Jun 8, 2015, 14:00:39 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Combating Delhi’s toxic air is possible but it needs a strong political will to take a few bold decisions and make changes at the micro-level.

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It could start with decongesting the entire National Capital Region (NCR), having uniform green regulations across greater Delhi along with a comprehensive plan to manage dust and stringent green norms for vehicles.

The expert consulted by Hindustan Times to get rid of Delhi’s killer air said that decongesting Delhi should not mean building more flyovers and underpasses, whose ability to reduce air pollution has been questioned. Instead, the solutions should lead to providing people with a viable choices to select alternatives to personal transport.

“Most flyovers have reached their optimal level much before the estimated time,” says a study on decongesting Delhi done by the Urban Development ministry, while suggesting other methods such as creating space for walking, cycling and providing public transport within walkable distances of homes.

Parthaa Bosu, India director of Clean Air Asia, which has implemented projects across India for making public places walkable, said convenient last-mile connectivity was essential for the success of public transport systems.

The national capital needs a dust management plan with stringent penalties for violators, especially authorities that keep roads dug up for a long time and builders who fail to manage dust at construction sites. Dust contributes about 38% to Delhi’s pollution load.

Introducing mechanized cleaning of roads only at night as against the present practice of manual cleaning that escalates local air pollution is a must. A study by the environment department of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) had found that this was possible without severe additional costs.

Like most environment friendly cities in the world, Delhi needs decentralised environment management protocols. It means that Dwarka, Rohini, Greater Kailash and Mayur Vihar should have their own air pollution management plans with active public participation. There should also be air pollution management protocols for all authorities.

Anumita Roychowdhury from the Centre for Science and Environment said that phasing out polluting vehicles, stringent penalties for violating pollution control norms and leap-frogging emission norms for vehicles were the need of the hour.

Vehicles contribute about 40% to pollution. Studies show that one-third of the Capital’s children suffer from breathing ailments and air pollution reduces 3.2 years from one’s life in the national capital.

It also affects productivity of a person as it slows down cerebral activity. All this could be a thing of the past if Delhiites decide that electoral politics in the city-state will be decided on the basis of curbing air pollution.

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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