Small cities hit by smog, govt hazy

Alarm bells ring as winter phenomenon goes beyond metros, affects several places across India. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Nov 9, 2012, 02:13:14 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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This winter, Delhi and other metropolitan cities are not the only places with smog worries. Data with the Central Pollution Control Board show a sudden rise in particulate matter - a primary cause for smog - in smaller cities such as Lucknow, Kanpur, Ludhiana, Amritsar, Ahmedabad and Solapur across Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Maharashtra.

"It is spreading like a slow epidemic," said a scientist.

While the board has failed to suggest any remedial measures to state governments, studies conducted on its adverse effects have been quite conclusive.

Kolkata-based Chitranjan Institute has already established that high exposure to particulate matter, especially during the smog period, may result in life-long breathing disorders among children. CPCB data show that smog levels in Punjab towns, including Jalandhar, Ludhiana and Amritsar, were very high - with the respirable suspended particulate matter (RSPM) rising above 500 micro grams per cubic metre, five times the national standard.

"The entire region is covered by a thick blanket of smog, showing a steady degradation in the overall environment condition of the state," said SS Hundal, head of department of agro-meteorology in the Punjab Agricultural University.

Burning of agricultural waste is one of the main reasons for high pollution levels. Stating that the answer to this lay in using the waste to generate bio-fuel, officials in the ministry of new and renewable energy said that state governments should push farmers to go for that option. Agricultural waste worth R10,000 crore goes up in smoke every year, he added.

A spokesperson from the India Meteorological Department said that besides the usual weather conditions, the smog situation was exacerbated by the Cyclone Nilam - which hit southern India last week.

Making this worse is the fact that many smaller towns and cities do not even have air pollution monitoring mechanisms in place. The CPCB helps monitor primary pollutants only in 240 locations across the country, which accounts for less than 100 cities.

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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