North India’s air most polluted in the world

Pollution levels highest this year; states ask central govt to take lead.

Updated on: Nov 4, 2019, 02:10:53 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Chetan Chauhan

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A thick smog of toxic pollutants engulfed the plains of north Indian on Sunday, making the region’s air the most polluted in the world at this time, according to data from the global air quality monitoring website airvisual.com.

A view of Agra city with the Taj Mahal shrouded in smog. (PTI)

While Delhi was on the pollution watch radar, it was a small town in central Haryana, Rohtak, that recorded the highest Air Quality Index (AQI) level of 498, according to the Central Pollution Control Board’s (CPCB) 4pm daily bulletin maps the 24-hour average of aggregate pollutants, in the country.

Rohtak’s AQI was four points higher than that of the Delhi, and two points higher than Faridabad’s. Most of the towns that reported “severe” or “severe plus” levels of pollution were in and around the national capital region (NCR), which extends to Alwar in Rajasthan on the west, to UP’s Hapur in the east and Panipat in Haryana in the north.

According to airvisual.com, Delhi’s AQI was highest, with the Mongolian capital of Ulaan Batar in second place. The live monitoring by the website does not include smaller towns and cities on the CPCB tracker. The website also showed that most of the places in the Indo-Gangetic plains recorded highest pollution levels this year from last Sunday, which was when India celebrated Diwali.

An analysis of the air quality in the Indo-Gangetic plains released on Thursday by the University of Chicago said that an average person living in this region was expected to lose seven years of life.

In March 2019, a Greenpeace report said that 22 of the world’s 30 most polluted places were in India, and most of them were in the northern plains. The report was based on analysis of the air pollution levels in 3,400 cities across the world in 2018 by airvisual.com.

On Sunday, several towns in Haryana -- Karnal, Panipat, Rohtak, Bahadurgarh, Bhiwani, Jind, Gurugram, Faridabad and Kaithal -- recorded the highest air pollution levels in the past three years even though stubble burning cases reported this year were lesser than in 2018, according to data from the state government.

According to the Haryana pollution control board, till November 2, 4341 incidents of stubble burning was reported, which was 15% less than the incidents reported in the same period in 2018 in a state where 1.1 million hectares of farm land was under paddy cultivation in both years.

Most towns in Punjab were also reeling under high levels of pollution, but less than NCR and Haryana. The AQI was 295 in Amritsar and 291 in Bathinda 291 -- the two biggest cities in its paddy growing districts. However, the AQI were over 320 higher in the industrial towns of Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Khanna. The highest recorded AQI in Punjab was 415 in Patiala.

Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh on Sunday said that 2,923 farmers were booked for stubble burning till November 1, which is about 20% less number of cases as compared to 2018. He also said that incidents of farm fires being reported this year was about halve of those in 2018.

In Uttar Pradesh, Noida was recorded most polluted city with an AQI of 495, followed by Ghaziabad at 491 and Hapur at 471. Lucknow continued to reel under polluted air with an AQI of 400, while Kanpur was at 383 and Varanasi at 332, according to the 4pm bulletin.

UP’s chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Friday held a meeting, in which he directed district magistrates, especially of districts in western UP, to take stern action against farmers found to be burning stubble. Directions have been issued to sprinkle water on roads and trees, a government official, not willing to be quoted, said.

Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot on Sunday urged the Centre to take lead and address the air pollution situation after holding a review meeting with the government officials as polluted levels in Jaipur doubled.

“Rising pollution levels in Delhi and in neighbouring states including Rajasthan is a matter of grave concern. People are suffering since long especially children and old people. It is a health emergency, which only Delhi government cannot solve alone, Central government has to take lead,” Gehlot tweeted.

Both Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and Punjab CM Amarinder Singh have sought a meeting of chief ministers of all northern states to discuss a strategy to deal with huge spurt in air pollution in the region and ensure its implementation.

(With inputs from HTC in Chandigarh, Lucknow and Jaipur)

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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