Air Pollution Rising - Time to Slash Delhi Metro’s Fares?
Farm fires have begun, vehicular pollution remains a major source of pollution. Smog guns are out in the Capital’s streets, there's a new air quality policy in place. Is change really in the air?
October’s barely begun and pollution levels in Delhi, the world’s most polluted capital, are rising once again. There’s a flurry of pollution control steps being announced and those in government insist that things are getting better in Delhi. Glaring gaps remain, stop-gap - and possibly ineffective - measures like smog guns are prioritised and there’s poor implementation especially outside Delhi. The last factor is important because Delhi’s air gets replenished twice a day from outside.
Smog Guns Are Now a Common Sight in Delhi: Missing Air Quality Targets
India’s battle against air pollution is very complex given the sources of pollution, geography, climate and polity. Going into peak pollution season, the idea of this column is to break it down simply, dive into the policy and see how that may affect those of us living not just in Delhi but the entire north Indian belt worst affected by this crisis.
A good starting point is perhaps the new measures announced.
OH GRAP.
The first is that curbs will be introduced based on forecasts of high pollution levels rather than after the event, after people have been exposed to it. This is in the new version of GRAP or the graded response action plan which will use three-day forecasts from IITM, Pune. It has been overhauled by the CAQM or commission for air quality management which was set up by an Act of Parliament last year. It’s listed a whole lot of curbs which kick-in when the AQI or air quality index is ‘Poor’, that is between 201-300. The curbs become tighter as the AQI number increases. The second stage, from AQI 301 to 400, will see a ban on the use of coal and firewood in eateries which will affect cooking in tandoors.
‘SEVERE + AIR QUALITY’ BUT WHAT ABOUT THE KIDS?
The most stringent controls start at stage 4. This is when the AQI is projected to be above 450. This is officially called ‘Severe + Air Quality’. At this level, the curbs, with some exceptions, are on trucks coming into Delhi, diesel vehicles, construction of flyovers, roads etc, and enhancing parking fees to discourage people from using private cars, vehicles being a major source of pollution, more than the ubiquitous stubble burning.
Right at the end of the 25-page document, the very last of over 50 ‘action’ points comes the mention of children, who are among the most vulnerable section of the population. The CAQM leaves it to state governments on whether schools and colleges should be closed as ‘emergency’ measures. Clubbed with this are other emergency measures such as suggesting a large-scale lockdown and the headline-grabbing odd-even vehicle curbs.
But there’s an issue with this. The AQI doesn’t usually jump from safe limits to Severe+ in the span of three days. The AQI usually trends upwards for more than just three days, possibly hovering in the ‘Poor’ to ‘Severe’ range for several days. During this time, school-going children are already being exposed to very high levels of PM 2.5 pollutants, usually the dominant pollutant in this season. Being a fraction of a human hair’s breadth these toxic microscopic particles settle deep into the lungs and spread to other organs. The developing lungs of children are particularly vulnerable. The CAQM acknowledges that the air pollution risk is growing for major categories of diseases including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or chronically diseased lungs, lung cancer, heart disease, stroke and pneumonia, especially in children and the elderly.
Simply put, any action to protect children that waits for the AQI to hit 450+ is likely to be already too late. When the AQI is above 450, that means the PM 2.5 level is above 250 micrograms per cubic metre of air - that’s a staggering 50x the safe limit set by the World Health Organisation. A point to note here is that while the AQI is an index and varies from place to place or app to app, the PM 2.5 measure is universal. So while India’s highest, ‘emergency’ AQI is above 450, in the US it’s above 301; but a PM 2.5 concentration of 250 micrograms is the same in any part of the world. Because of this and its terrible health consequences, it is a commonly used measure of air pollution.
Doctors globally have repeatedly found that even short-term exposures to this pollutant can affect mortality, most recently a study by an AIIMS team. Higher PM 2.5 levels are linked to more deaths.
The big picture doesn’t improve much. The CAQM in its recent policy statement showed how the three-year average of PM 2.5 in Delhi is 105 units, the second worst in the neighbourhood after Ghaziabad, next to east Delhi. Punch in ‘105’ into the AQI calculator (try it out) and the AQI shows up to be 250; the official warning reads, “Breathing discomfort to people with lung, heart disease, children and older adults.” Now this is not to say that Delhi’s AQI is always ‘poor’ and it always needs curbs under GRAP. But what it does call for is a far greater scrutiny of whether the multiple policies, agencies and officials are doing their job in cutting emissions at all. Since 2014, when Delhi’s air pollution hit the headlines after being ranked the most polluted city in the world the situation has by and large remained terrible across northern India, from Punjab to West Bengal - that’s an affected population of over 400 million. India’s cities frequently dominate the list of the most polluted places. The health risk, specially death, has been documented by top agencies in India and abroad, shortening lives by about a decade in places like Delhi and Lucknow.
Delhi’s Average PM 2.5 Level is 105 Micrograms, 21x the WHO’s Safe Limit
India’s National AQI Calculator
The CAQM’s policy, released last July, is an important document and deserves closer scrutiny at this time when the air quality worsens. It is perhaps the most powerful agency to tackle air pollution; whether it’s using those powers fully to address the crisis is another question.
The policy document is broadly a step in the right direction (although oddly enough it doesn’t address climate change, whereas the IPCC sees both crises as two sides of the same coin.) It lists several action points and advisories and details the complexities.
It calls for the ‘strict implementation’ of the various orders of courts and governments on firecrackers, including bans.
It calls for decongesting traffic but not by encouraging more flyovers and wider roads at the expense of public transport.
It points out that vehicles are the second highest contributors to particulate pollution in the region; that Delhi has 13.5 million vehicles, and its next-door cities have another 4.4 million; during 2016-22, Delhi and its next-door cities (Noida, Gurgaon, Ghaziabad, Faridabad) added almost 800,000 vehicles annually. But over 70% of the population uses public transport, walking, cycling, auto-rickshaws and trains. It recognises this as a “significant opportunity” for improving air quality.
Yet, in the run up to the peak pollution season that’s upon us, there is no substantive direction either in the policy or in the actions of the Delhi state government and neighbouring UP and Haryana governments to rapidly improve transport, essentially to shift people from private cars to public transport. It’s just more of the same that’s been seen in the last few years, appeals to citizens and bans on a few vehicles. The one notable addition make a pollution-under-control certificate mandatory for a driver to fill petrol or diesel has been questioned in the past with experts saying it doesn’t check for the main ingredients of ambient air pollution.
SLASH METRO FARES, PRIORITISE PEDESTRIANS
Governments and agencies, rightly, call on residents to use public transport. Delhi and its neighbours are connected by a world-class metro. To drive this shift from private to public transit, during these months of rising pollution, why not slash fares of both metros and public transport buses? Start with a 20-25% discount between October to, say, February; on days of high pollution increase the discounts to 50-75% if needed. There are sufficient ways to fund this - the Delhi green cess, from the coal cess which has been diverted to GST compensation, the state govt maintains it has a budget surplus, levying a pollution cess on petrol and diesel during these months among some options. There’s already a disincentivisation built into GRAP by enhancing parking fees on high pollution days. Slashing metro and bus fares can be the incentivisation, positive corollary. The ridership in Delhi Metro is still about 19% below its pre-pandemic peak of almost 5.1 million passenger journeys a day, as per recent data.
The CAQM documents the immense shortfall in buses in India’s Capital. Delhi has failed to implement a Supreme Court order for 10,000 buses for almost 25 years! Now the requirement is for 15,000, and there are still far less than 10,000 buses on the roads. The state government has promised thousands more, many of them electric.
FROM FARM FIRES TO POWER PLANTS
The most visible sign of India’s peak pollution season are farm fires or stubble burning. These have already begun in Punjab and other places.
These seem almost certain to continue in large numbers this time as well. The fires are lit by farmers who want to get rid of the stubble left by the paddy harvest, and burning it is the quickest and most economical way they find. A plan to provide a cash incentive has flopped; the move to provide a bio-decomposer by the AAP, in power in both Delhi and Punjab, appears to have few takers; and despite tens of thousands of machines across Punjab, Haryana, UP and other states to help farmers remove the stubble, there are last-mile hurdles. The focus is on Punjab because in the past few years it’s had the highest numbers of fires, and this time Delhi and Punjab have the same party in power. Farm fires from across the states can contribute to more than 40% of Delhi’s air pollution on some days.
The CAQM has called for the stubble to be used as fuel in place of upto 10% of coal in thermal power plants. Last year the CAQM took the unprecedented step of temporarily shutting down power plants outside the Capital. The environment ministry has acknowledged that coal is a heavy polluting fuel, and the shutting down of a few coal-fired power plants located within a 300 km radius of Delhi helped in reducing pollution levels, along with some of the other measures. The levels rose end-December soon after the plants and factories using captive coal-fired power plants were allowed to re-start, though climatic factors play a major role as well.
MOST COST-EFFECTIVE SOLUTION? CUT POLLUTION AT SOURCE
As the government acknowledges, on the controversial issue of smog towers set up at tremendous cost but rejected by scientists, there’s nothing like cutting pollution at the source itself. It’s more “cost effective” than installing smog towers. The towers are meant to suck in polluted air, filter it and throw out clean air.
The CAQM has the power to take all measures to improve the air quality in and around Delhi and neighbouring areas as well. It has empowered officials as part of the wider commission, including senior police officials. Perhaps it should flex its powers more and its jurisdiction should be broadened beyond the Delhi region to cover at least the entire Indo-Gangetic Plains which suffers the worst air pollution globally.