My problems of pure air

In Delhi, the only coal-fired power plant has been shut down; In the National Capital Region, industries that use coal as fuel have been encouraged to shut down. all construction activity has been stopped; and stone crushers, brick kilns and hot mix mills have been closed. All for more than a week. Old diesel vehicles are removed from the roads. Then there are strict orders to make sure garbage is not burned; the authorities are doing their best to control the dust. All this to contain the deadly and toxic air pollution as the winter advances and the weather turns bad. These are extraordinary emergency measures taken to deal with an urgent public health crisis.
The fact is that with all this done, air pollution levels over the last week remained in the very poor category and even reached extreme levels on certain days when the weather was unfavorable and the winds were dragging emissions from burning crops. In the end, even though the region is virtually closed, the air quality is not yet up to our expectations. This should worry us and make us think.
So what do we do? First, it is clear that the scale of the crisis is enormous and that one-off measures will not work. Secondly, we can not deal with this crisis by emergency measures. The Graduated Response Plan (GRAP), which my colleagues and I proposed and implemented, was designed only to take decisive action when pollution levels exceeded danger levels. It does what it can, but it is neither intended nor a substitute for action to reduce pollution.
The action must be on a scale corresponding to the crisis. It's critical. In the early 2000s, when Delhi introduced compressed natural gas (CNG) as fuel for its vehicles, it was scaled. No less than 100,000 vehicles converted to CNG in two years. More importantly, it targeted vehicles traveling the most kilometers: all buses and coaches in the city converted to clean fuel. The supply of CNG has been built and developed rapidly; new CNG vehicle manufacturing facilities have been created; the technology has been found, adapted and put to work after responding to security concerns.
The scale was also in the introduction of cleaner fuel and vehicle technology. We went from 10,000 parts per million (ppm) of sulfur in a 500 ppm sulfur fuel. This jump was drastic and brought us great benefits. We could see the evening sky and admire the stars at night.
But our current action does not correspond to the scale of the crisis. In my opinion, last year's biggest win was to ban the use of dirty pet coke as a fuel; set standards for sulfur and nitrogen dioxide emissions of the industry; and agree to upgrade to 10 ppm sulfur in gasoline and diesel by 2020 – Bharat Stage VI (BSVI) fuels and emissions standards.
But these will only add up if much more can be done. We first need a very strict application of emission standards in industries and other sources. This is our Achilles heel. We can not implement pollution control in part because we do not have the institutional means to ensure compliance – our pollution control boards are overworked, understaffed and have not even the basic equipment to monitor emissions. Over the years, we have outsourced compliance to the private sector and it just does not work. Then, over the last few years, in the name of the ease of doing business, we have emasculated any forgetting that it would have led to a "Raj inspector" and high transaction costs. We replaced this system with an inefficient and poorly designed online monitoring system – a scam that must be triggered. In fact, he is called in this season of pollution.
Then, this time, when the BSVI is introduced, the sulfur in the fuel will be reduced from 50 ppm to 10 ppm – it's not radical. This time it is not the quality of fuel, but the advanced vehicle technology to control emissions that is great. The radical difference concerns vehicle emissions, which are expected to decrease by 60 to 90 percent. But these vehicles only arrive in April 2020 – which in itself is a huge win, given the opposition of automakers. The fact is also that obtaining the benefits of BSVI will take time, just like the park transition. India is not a rich country where all the old vehicles can be hunted overnight.
So what are the options? What should we do for our right to clean air? I will discuss it for two weeks.

(This article was first published in the issue of Down To Earth from November 16 to 30).

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