PM Modi to launch country’s first air quality index next week

Next week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will formally launch the country’s first air quality index which rated Delhi’s air, this winter, as being polluted enough to earn it the dubious distinction of being world’s most polluted city.

Updated on: Mar 30, 2015, 24:54:09 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Next week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will formally launch the country’s first air quality index which rated Delhi’s air, this winter, as being polluted enough to earn it the dubious distinction of being world’s most polluted city.

The air quality index is a global standard based on the national ambient air quality standard. India will be adopting the index at a time when the quality of air in most cities is fast deteriorating in the absence of a national policy to combat rising pollution.

Despite this move, the Centre may not be able to help states reduce air pollution as the budgetary allocations for the environment ministry have been cut and it does not have extra funds for pollution abatement.

The environment ministry had expressed its inability to help state governments with the execution of air quality standards.

While the index will become the basis for state pollution control boards to issue advisories on cities’ air quality and forecast air pollution, the government is yet to devise a strategy on how to ensure that the advisories reach every resident in a city.

“Percolation of information is a challenge,” admitted a senior CPCB official.

In Beijing, whenever a high air pollution advisory is issued for an area, industries are forced to close down and restrictions are imposed on the number of personal vehicles that can ply.

“The advisory will work only if local administrations act on them,” the CPCB official added.

With the launch of the index on April 7 at an environment conference, the Centre hopes the state governments will focus on introducing and promoting greener means of public transport to clean their air.

Environment minister Prakash Javadekar will discuss the issue of air quality with state ministers in a special session on air quality. “We will be proposing some action plans which will be discussed,” a senior ministry official said.

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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