Quietest, cleanest Diwali since 2001

It was the cleanest and quietest Diwali since 2001 in Delhi, mainly because of fewer crackers burnt and warm weather. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Oct 30, 2008, 24:23:02 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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It was the cleanest and quietest Diwali since 2001 in Delhi, mainly because of fewer crackers burnt and warm weather.

“From the study of noise levels in the city we can easily conclude that lesser number of crackers were burnt this Diwali,” said SD Makhijani, member secretary of Central Pollution Control Board, which monitors air quality and noise pollution levels in the city.

This can be attributed to the success of an anti-cracker campaign in schools and poor cracker sales this year. “From addressing only issues of pollution, students are now talking about the more serious issue of child labour used in manufacturing crackers,” said Amita Wattal, principal of Springdales School, Pusa Road.

Also, the Delhi Police this year cut down the number of cracker shops. Praveen Khandelwal of the Confederation of All India Traders said only 800-900 crackers shops functioned after police reduced the number shop licences from 3,000 last year to 1,000.

Along with this, the pollution watchdog said, a warm Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning, when the temperature was around 27 degrees Celsius, had a role. Makhijani said pollutants rise much higher in air in warm conditions. In cold conditions, a blanket of pollutants is formed, making it uncomfortable.

Usually, the morning after Diwali, Delhi’s landscape used to be covered in smog because of high levels of sulphur dioxide and pollutants categorised under suspended particulate matter (SPM) and respirable suspended particulate matter (RSPM).

In 2001, the level of sulphur dioxide ranged between 12 and 130 microgram per cubic metre as compared to 7 to 24 this year. Similarly, SPM and RSPM levels in 2001 were more than double Tuesday’s levels.

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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