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NEW DELHI – A toxic fog settles on New Delhi. Children go to school with plastic masks attached to the face. Sporting events are canceled. The eyes are burning. The throat itches. The breasts rise.
This is the season of the dreaded pollution in India, when the amount of vehicle smoke, dust and smoke from agricultural fires reaches such high levels that experts say that children who breathe this air could suffer irreversible brain damage. .
Agra. Lucknow. Varanasi. New Delhi. India's most legendary cities are now among the most polluted in the world. According to some recent rankings, India holds nine of the top ten places. Sign of the number of people – especially members of the elite – who are worried about it, Delhi stores are now selling sunscreen and "anti-pollution" shampoo.
Toxic air has become a global threat that kills seven million people every year, the United Nations Environment Program announced in a dismal report released on Tuesday. The bulk of these deaths occur in the Asia-Pacific region, he added.
This week, the World Health Organization is holding the first global conference on air pollution and health at its headquarters in Geneva.
Air pollution has become the "new tobacco", wrote in a letter its general director, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. editorial last week. "The world has turned its back on tobacco," he said. "Now we have to do the same for the" new tobacco ": the toxic air that billions of people breathe."
In its new report, the United Nations Environment Program outlined 25 measures that could easily reduce air pollution (which also contributes to climate change). One tactic: stop burning agricultural waste, like the countless farm fires that are currently sweeping the north of India.
While data from India indicate that dangerous air pollution continues to increase, progress is being made. The central government, for the first time, spends more than $ 150 million to deter farmers from burning their fields.
Take the village of Bishanpur Channa, in the state of Punjab, in the north of the country. Every November, farmers in Bishanpur Channa burned dried rice stalks to clear the land for the next wheat season, as long as people remember.
The sky had become so overcast that the afternoons looked like evenings. The smoke drifted nearly 200 miles southeast, covering New Delhi. Dalbir Singh Kaleka, a snow-white bearded farmer, said that he and his neighbors were comfortable with the fact that burning was an inexpensive and easy operation.
"We all did it," he said.
But this November could be different. Mr. Kaleka and his fellow farmers were jostled with public service messages, including a new hit song, "Do not burn the stubble brother, do not burn. "
Perhaps more compelling is the $ 156 million that the Indian government has set aside to subsidize alternative crops, such as renting large steel machines that push excess rice stalks into the ground to serve natural fertilizer.
This year, Mr. Singh said that many of his neighbors and himself were trying to burn as little as possible. "Look, I do not want to pollute," he said. "My son said to me," Even if you lose money, we should save the image of India. "
It is clear that Indian government agencies are able to take bold action. In addition to subsidies granted in Punjab, the authorities closed this month the last coal-fired power station near New Delhi. They have hijacked traffic and banned some dirty fuel sources.
But Indian ecologists say their government is lost. At the same time, some measures to reduce pollution are being adopted, as well as others that open the doors to stale air.
This year, the central government proposed remove environmental approvals for construction projects of up to 50,000 square meters, or approximately 540,000 square feet, more than double the previous threshold. Dust from such projects is a major polluter; the new policies would surely create more.
India, like many developing countries, is on a precarious path trying to stimulate infrastructure, industry and economic growth, all of which weigh heavily on the environment. Unlike China, where a communist government reacts to its own toxic air by accusing polluters, the Indian political system is much more free and disordered, a sprawling democracy that often avoids the use of the stick.
Last week, when a group of officials and ecologists traveled to the west of Delhi, they discovered that construction sites run by government agencies were polluters. the most egregious. In a new subway station, the supervisors had not even installed the proper barriers or sprinkled with water to retain the dust.
"They unduly take the advantage of being government organizations," said V. Selvarajan, secretary of Green Circle, a group working on environmental issues.
The subway was fined 500,000 rupees, or about $ 7,000.
In the coming weeks, air pollution is expected to reach a choking peak. Winter will slow down the winds, which means that calm air and cooler temperatures will trap the soot and smoke rising from the incredibly populated cities of India.
For those working in the field of anti-pollution masks, these are profitable days.
Four years ago, when Jai Dhar Gupta, an Indian entrepreneur who attended the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, started selling anti-pollution masks, he was lucky enough to move 200 per day.
Now, he says, his company, Nirvana Being, sells thousands in a single day.
"We have seen online orders from villages in the north-east of the country, from Goa, places I do not even know," Gupta said. But that makes sense, he said, because it is a Panindian problem.
Many of India's major failures are spreading through polluted air. In the absence of a good waste disposal system, for example, many people simply burn their garbage and send plastic, rubber and other toxins in it. air.
The situation is particularly difficult in the north of India, where the Himalayas form an imposing barrier that prevents dirty air clouds from parking in some of the largest urban areas of the country. But the data shows how bad the air is in almost every major Indian city.
In Chennai, on the south coast, average annual PM 2.5 concentrations, small particles insidiously Scientists estimate that they have killed millions of people and quadrupled in the last three years, from 24 to 105 micrograms per cubic meter, according to data from the first 10 months of each year collected by the US consulate. Hundreds of kilometers to the north in Kolkata, their numbers almost doubled from 40 to 78 micrograms per cubic meter over the same period.
The latest figures represent eight to ten times the level of hazardous particles that the World Health Organization considers acceptable.
The air of Mumbai, the seaside commercial capital of India with 20 million inhabitants, is also deteriorating. At two months of smog, average annual PM 2.5 concentrations have increased by almost 50% over the last three years.
The experts attribute a number of factors, including the thickening of road traffic in Mumbai, harmful gases from landfill fires, construction dust and emissions from suburban coal-fired power plants. Some local groups are trying to pressure the government to take serious action, but they say the authorities are without intelligence.
"They are trying to build more vertical and coastal roads, increase car traffic and put less emphasis on public transport," said Ashok Datar, chairman of the Mumbai Environmental Social Network. "It's like we're investing in emissions."
The Indian Supreme Court intervenes regularly, as in a recent order limit the use of firecrackers during the next holiday in Diwali. His orders are not totally ignored, but they are not usually vigorously enforced either.
In Punjab, where several million farmers live, thousands of pounds of carbon dioxide are usually released into the air each season of burning.
But this year, there is hope, said S. S. Matharu, a government engineer working for the Punjab Pollution Control Commission. In just two years, Mr. Matharu said, the number of fires has decreased by nearly 70% after heavy fines, advances in agricultural technology and aggressive outreach actions in villages and on social media , including the catchy new song.
"The motherland has birds and other living things to feed," says the song, "do not burn rice straw to smother them to death."
Described by a farmer as "the most advanced village in all of Punjab", Bishanpur Channa has become a model. Many farmers said that instead of burning, they planned to use machines like the one called Happy Seeder, which mixes excess straw to the ground.
"Our goal is to reduce pollution," said Harinder Singh, 45, who was screaming when he spoke.
But in the poorest villages, people seemed less inclined to change. About 20 miles down the road, a group of farmers who had gathered near a field presented a list of grievances.
A government program that subsidizes harvesting equipment is still too expensive, they said. Government agents promise new equipment and then disappear. Politicians seem less interested in the poorest farmers because their plots are very small.
Gurmeet Singh, a dishonest young farmer, said that reducing pollution was a good idea, but that in the absence of money, "the whole village will burn".
When night fell, he went to his rice fields. His plot was littered with dry straw. He leaned over and hit a match.
Soon clouds of smoke rose in the sky.
