I grew up in Delhi. Back in the 1960s and ’70s, I remember November as a wonderful month to be in the city. Those were brisk mornings, crisp nights, and bright and sunny days with strong, cool breezes — cool enough to make the winter school uniform actually tolerable. November was the season for cricket tournaments and school outings and family picnics in the many parks that dot Delhi.
That was a long time ago. Now, November in the national capital is a season of dread and sickness. The choking, acrid smog enveloping Delhi also sucks out the city’s soul, much like the dementors in Harry Potter’s world, feeding on human health and happiness. Every year for the past few years, it has returned — stronger, thicker and more dangerous to public health. And every year for the past few years, the policy responses to arguably one of the largest climate threats to any megacity in India have been increasingly more knee-jerk and far-fetched.
The polluters
There are three main human contributors to the smog. One is atmospheric pollution, primarily vehicular pollution, but also coal-fired thermal power plants and industry. The second is construction dust. And the third, which is by far the biggest, is the burning of paddy stubble by farmers — principally in Punjab, but also in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. The uncontrolled burning of urban waste, the use of smoky wood and cow dung cakes for cooking fires, and rubbish burning for warmth in winter months by those forced by economic necessity or work compulsions to spend nights out in the streets are subsidiary factors.
One can’t do much about climate change. Correction, we can do something about it, but that requires concerted action on a global scale. At the moment, we are finding it impossible to get some concerted action going on a limited, local scale. We are unable to enforce even the limited set of regulations currently in place to lessen Delhi’s problems. We are unable to get Punjab to stop its farmers from burning stubble. We can’t ensure that the millions of vehicles on the roads of the National Capital Region meet the government’s emission standards. We are unable to come up with a sustainable waste management solution. We are unable even to prevent Delhiites, who are complaining about the pollution, from worsening it by bursting crackers on Diwali, or buying more cars and bikes, or even driving to the next door shop to buy eggs and bread.
Tackling bits and pieces
Instead, like the blind men and the elephant, policymakers are grasping at small pieces of the problem. More than a decade ago, the Supreme Court banned diesel-powered public vehicles — buses, taxis and autos — in Delhi and forced a shift to relatively cleaner compressed natural gas. That cleaned up things for a while, but nothing was done to alter mass transport facilities — the bus fleet has actually shrunk over the past couple of years and the metro only takes some pressure off arterial roads, since it cannot, and does not, offer door-to-door connectivity.
A couple of years ago, when things got really bad, the National Green Tribunal banned construction activity and the burning of rubbish, and ordered Punjab farmers to stop burning stubble. It even imposed a ‘green tax’ on heavy trucks passing through Delhi. Everybody thumbed their noses at these orders and carried on, while the municipal authorities said they simply did not have the infrastructure to collect the green tax. Later, the court banned large diesel-run SUVs — demonising both diesel and engine cubic capacity at one stroke, without addressing the bigger polluters: heavy diesel vehicles and two-wheelers.
The Aam Aadmi Party-led Delhi government introduced the odd-even scheme. This helped ease traffic, but did not really impact particulate matter levels. The government wanted to introduce it again this year, with exceptions to two-wheelers, vehicles driven by women, and so on, which were all basically aimed at papering over the lack of alternative infrastructure to meet the transportation load.
Punjab has tried to do its bit, by offering a subsidy of ₹50,000 to farmers to fit a super straw management system to combine harvesters, which cuts the stubble and spreads it. But that is only half the cost. Farmers say they need additional equipment, including balers, rotary seeders, and heavier tractors, to actually tackle the problem at the root level. Punjab wants the Centre to cough up the money for this. This may not happen, seeing as Punjab voted Congress last time around.
Concerted effort needed
The trouble is that the entire issue is a political blame game. Here, Delhi loses out again, since it only has a government with nominal powers. Given our federal structure, a lasting solution — which will require sacrifices by everybody, including Delhi’s citizens — can only be worked out, and more importantly, sold to the public, at the political level. For that to happen, Delhi needs to be politically represented by an entity which has equal bargaining powers with its neighbours as well as the Centre, as the other States. Otherwise, it will continue to pay the price for competitive federalism.
