India is moving towards mid-segment and bigger cars, preferably diesel, leading to higher energy consumption and pollution, a new study released by the Centre for Science and Environment on Thursday, said.
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Anumita Roychoudhury of CSE said the combined share of compact and mid-size car has increased from 53 per cent in 2001-02 to 63.2 percent in 2004-05.
The share of small cars (800 cc) fell from 21 per cent in 2001-02 to 11 percent in 2004-05.
She said the bigger cars are less fuel-efficient and therefore, more drain on India's limited energy capabilities. To support her statement she quoted data from the Automobile Research Association of India, which said, the smaller cars are more fuel-efficient than the bigger cars.
Unlike in West, the fuel efficiency certification is not mandatory in India. And, in a bid to provide this vital information to people before they buy a vehicle, the CSE urged the government to have mandatory fuel efficiency certification for vehicles.
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"Other countries like China are working on mandatory fuel-efficiency certification. We have to just enforce a recommendation of Auto Fuel Policy which has asked for mandatory voluntary declaration of fuel economy levels of car models," the CSE stated in a letter to Finance Minister P Chidambaram.
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"Other countries like China are working on mandatory fuel-efficiency certification. We have to just enforce a recommendation of Auto Fuel Policy which has asked for mandatory voluntary declaration of fuel economy levels of car models," the CSE stated in a letter to Finance Minister P Chidambaram.
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What's more alarming is that sale of more fuel-efficient diesel cars is moving at a much faster rate than the less polluting petrol cars, she said.
From about 30 per cent share in vehicle sales in 2005, the percentage is expected to increase to 50 per cent by 2010, the study said.
"There was a rapid increase in sale of diesel cars in the past one year when the government categorised up to 1,500 cc diesel cars as small cars, thereby bringing them under a lower tax net.
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It was a big mistake," she said, while suggesting an environment cess on diesel cars. An idea opposed by car manufacturers since it was first floated for Delhi in 2003.
The study found that as compared to European diesel cars the Indian diesel cars are 20-30 per cent less fuel-efficient and 50 per cent more polluting than their counterparts in Europe. But, in India the diesel vehicle is preferred because of highly subsidised cost of the fuel, she added.
The study also pointed out at irony in the taxation system where public transport vehicles like buses are taxed much higher than private vehicles, in a way encouraging private transport mode.
"To reduce congestion in cities the government should encourage people to shift from private vehicles to public transport," said Sunita Narain, Director, and CSE, asking FM to make corrections in 2007-08 budgets.
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.
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