Delhi shines on green map

Delhi residents can breathe easy as the pollution levels in the national capital are diving, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Published on: Nov 10, 2006, 02:30:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Delhites can breathe easy. Pollution levels in the city are diving. According to the recent studies by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), Delhi has made the biggest strides towards a pollution-free environment and is now one of the cleanest cities in the country.

The state with the notoriety of contributing most to air and coastal water pollution is Maharashtra.

In Delhi, the concentration of all pollutants, except suspended particulate matter (SPM), is falling. Levels of benzene, the by-product of CNG combustion, were measured at seven locations — Ashok Vihar, ITO, JNU, Moti Bagh, East Arjun Nagar, Siri Fort and Town Hall. On an average, the levels were lower than the standard of 16 ug/m3. Only in ITO, was the concentration higher than the permissible standard.

Even the concentration of carbon monoxide (CO) — related directly to the combustion of petrol —has fallen in the last three years. "Despite an increase in number of vehicles, CO levels have fallen in the last few years. The decrease may be attributed to conversion of three-wheelers into CNG," the report said.

But the growing number of vehicles is a worry for Delhi as well as 87 other cities. More cars on roads are pushing up SPM levels in residential colonies resulting in breathing ailments. The board has suggested better traffic management, improvement in public transport and developing new alternative fuels as some of the measures to lower the pollution levels in the country.

As far as the national situation is concerned, Maharashtra is the biggest villain, contributing 45.11 per cent (2,382 metric litres per day) of the total waste-water dumped into seas. West Bengal and Tamil Nadu together contribute another 35 per cent. States like Orissa and Karnataka contribute much less.

Municipal waste-water from 87 cities and towns is the largest single source of coastal marine pollution. The increase in marine pollution can be gauged from the fact that generation of waste-water in coastal areas has increased by about 2.5 times in the past two decades. About 25 per cent of India's population lives in coastal areas.

Maharashtra is not only polluting the seas. Four locations in the state have been ranked as the top 10 polluted cities of India. Among 100 residential locations in the country, RTO Colony and Municipal Council Building in Nashik, Swargate, Pune, MIDC office Nagpur and Solapur are the most polluted areas as far as sulphur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxide (NO2) levels are concerned.

Maharashtra's bright spot is its capital city Mumbai, where most of the pollutants are on a decline. But again, rising SPM levels in residential areas are a matter of concern.

Email: chetan@hindustantimes.com

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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