Pollution: loss of face in Davos!

India is on the edge of environmental disaster. Environmental performance Index released on the sidelines of World Economic Forum has put India at 177th position. India has slid 36 ranks in the last two years. This has happened mainly due to air quality

At the time when the best of economic brains of the world were discussing ways and means to improve global economy at Davos in January 2018, a small report, brought out by two American universities was released on the sidelines of the much-hyped World Economic Forum meet. Known as the Environmental Performance Index (EPI), it is released every two years and shows different nations’ performance not in the field of economy but on the environmental front. In the list of 180 countries, shockingly, India has stood at 177th position. In 2016, India occupied 141st slot, meaning she slid down by as many as 36 ranks to be competing with neighbours China and Pakistan–which all face public health crisis, as per the report. The major reason for this shockingly poor performance at global level was due to deteriorating air quality all across the country and not just in the national capital region (NCR) of New Delhi. Following the EPI release, in February Jeffrey Sachs, head Columbia University’s Earth Institute in New York termed Delhi as “ unliveable city “due its catastrophic air pollution and blamed it on lack of clarity in government strategy.

The recent (November 2017) global congregation of representatives of governments from over 195 countries and many NGOs, under the annual Conference of Parties (CoP 23) at Bonn in Ger-many, once again deliberated upon the uphill task of reducing the imminent  rise in global temperatures, controlling carbon release into our atmosphere and how to cope with the other climate change challenges. Unending greed of humankind and consequent processes of industrialisation and a set of commercial activities, coupled with the advent of newer and newer technologies to meet the multidimensional needs of millions of people are undoubtedly impacting the environment we all live in, as never before.

A lot has been said and being written about climate change, as also about water scarcity the world is facing with fast depleting sources of fresh water all across the continents as well as in India. Scholars, researchers, journalists and domain experts are dutifully presenting the grim scenario that we are going to witness in just a few years from now. Yet, in India, unlike in Israel, for instance, we have not really understood the looming threat of acute water short-ages, including for drinking purpose, let alone for other uses such as agriculture and industrial. I say it from my personal experience of saving a huge urban lake–it took me and my colleagues over 20 years–that people still take it for grant-ed that water will continue to be avail-able to them at will and infinitely.

Since I work in the field of environment and have witnessed worst spells of air pollution in the national capital, New Delhi in the past few years. But this does not mean pollution levels are crossing their limits only in the mega city of New Delhi or NCR, the home to more than two crore people–rich and poor! Be it Lucknow or Gwalior, Kanpur or Raipur, Indore or Singrauli–one finds the deadly menace all over. Unfortunately, our official system is not tracking the air quality in a large number of cities and people residing there are equally exposed to toxic air, as they are in New Delhi.

Brief history
Air pollution or smog (smoke-laden fog) that we find in 21st century urban world has had its origin in the West where the world first experienced it in worst form in December 1952 in Brit-ish capital London. British authorities sat up to realise that they are paying the price of wanton industrialisation. Coal was the early villain, as they found out later. Although, Britain had earlier laws relating to smoke and pollution (The Smoke Abetment Act 1853 and 1926), the Great London Smog of 1952 ( there is also a reference available of such an event in 1873) shook the entire world. British empire was the mighty ruler of the world in those times and under the nose of the King and the Queen, the London skyline got blurred and blackened. Besides the world wide humiliation of British powers, the four-day long smog had more disastrous results for everyone to see–the smog killed as many as 4000 people!

Elsewhere, in the world, Mexico, Brazil (Sao Paolo) have had their share of urban air pollution. But in India, urban pollution is a problem of pretty recent origins and has acquired humongous proportions in the past few years with some senior and responsible medical experts in the government sector saying New Delhi’s continued pollution levels kill some approximately 30,000 people annually. It’s a frightening figure for nowhere in the world a capital is filled with toxic air so much. The figures of other cities are not yet available. The Delhi air pollution was so severe that the air quality monitoring machines almost crashed as the particulate matter (PM 2.5 ) levels crossed 1000 mark soon after Diwali festival of 2017, despite a ban order issued by the Supreme Court on sale and purchase of fire crackers a fortnight before Diwali, India’s most celebrated ancient festival.

Since air pollution (as also water or food pollution) is a silent and slow killer, people did not pay serious attention to it earlier, though NGOs and doctors have been raising their voice for more than 30 years now. The Environment Ministry formed the Bhurelal commit-tee in 1998 with wide ranging powers but that has also not been able to do much. With the consistent failure of the political and administrative executive wings, the judiciary stepped in and issued orders from time to time for passing of relevant laws to curb pollution. Now the Bharat-6 standard is being made mandatory for automobiles and that’s an encouraging sign.

India woke up to water pollution first as it enacted The Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution), Act 1974 by which the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), the top pollution control authority of the Government of India, governed. In the wake of the Bhopal Gas Disaster of 1984, the new all-encompassing Environment (Protection) Act 1986 was passed to take care of different aspects of environment and a number of rules were framed under it, including one related to building materials in 2016.

What was, however, very embarrassing for the nation collectively, was the media reports of 2015 when American President Barack Obama had visited India and had stayed in New Delhi as the chief guest for the Republic Day parade and related functions. The reports in American media suggested that their President may have lost at least six hours of his total lifetime due to inhaling extremely polluted air of New Delhi during his three-day state visit–mean-ing two hours a day!

The causes of the pollution in Delhi have been identified–automobiles fuels (Delhi has over a crore registered vehicles plying on its roads) to agriculture stubble burning in neighbouring states of Punjab, Haryana and UP, to the power plants emissions (now the old Badarpur power plant is being closed down) and building construction activities to the rising desertification–all this combines to create and mix small particles of dust and other elements into the air that people inhale. Forest cover loss is also one of the reasons adding to pollution in the atmosphere. These fine particles result in bronchitis and other ailments and take a heavy toll on hu-man life. Awareness campaigns, fuel-efficient automobiles, making easy medical treatment available and searching alternatives for crop burning are still a long way.

For a modern country, launching satellites and missiles into the space one after the other, controlling pollution should not have been a problem. Most of the progressive countries have shown us the way. But the problem in India was of strong political will which is now being shown to fix it with stern implementation of existing laws and a new set of measures, scientific and administrative, both. A budgetary announcement in 2018, shows a ray of hope as the issue of crop burning is now being tackled from the top. But the EPI ratings of Davos should actually jolt the policymakers and the executive into taking quick measures to deal with this monster.