Why year after year, promises are made but Delhi's pollution doesn't get better

In Game of Thrones, the phrase ‘Winter is coming’ is not just a weather forecast; it’s a dire warning of the difficult times ahead. For residents of Delhi, ‘Winter is coming’ has become a similarly dreaded metaphor. It symbolises the approaching season not just of cold, but also of smog, where survival tactics (like air purifiers, masks, restricted outdoor activities) become a must, mirroring the bleak preparedness Westeros residents face with their long winters.Unlike people in GRR Martin’s fiction, people of Delhi live in a modern democracy where they are governed by the people they elect, where they can appeal to courts and where bureaucracy is called a public service. Yet, after more than a decade of sound and fury by the courts, promises by politicians and plans after plans by multiple layers of bureaucracy there is no visible fall in pollution. What is more visible is how people are struggling to adjust to the persistent toxic air.On one extreme are a set of people who can afford to leave Delhi during winters. There are cases of private sector executives and embassy officials relocating work to other cities because of pollution. But that’s a luxury of the few. Most Delhiites end up paying for cleaner air by having to purchase masks and air purifiers at home, offices and even in car — this after paying a ‘green tax’ at Delhi’s entry points. Children can’t play and adults can’t walk or exercise in open — tragic in a city where winters once used to be the best time to be.Yet, none of these desperate measures protects beyond a point. “Hospitals report a 30-40% increase in respiratory cases during periods of high pollution, particularly in the winter months. This includes a surge in asthma attacks, bronchitis and other respiratory infections, affecting both vulnerable groups and individuals with no prior respiratory history,” said Dr Nitin Rathi, senior consultant, pulmonology, Dharamshila Narayana Hospital. medium nocaption114319292 medium nocaption114319319Not enoughIt’s not that nothing has been done all these years. The list of measures include tried-and-abandoned steps like ‘odd or even’, or road use on designated days by vehicles with odd-or even-numbered plates, limited period ban on fire crackers, emission checks in 11 thermal plants within a 300-km radius of Delhi, green tax on commercial vehicle entry (collection of which causes jams, and pollution, every single day), scrapping of aged vehicles, and a 4-level Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) that includes a whole host of measures.Yet if the pollution levels have flattered to deceive it’s because steps taken to cut it have been insufficient, focusing often on the effects rather than the causes. Take odd or even, for example. Aimed at reducing vehicles (only private cars in this case) on the road, it had negligible success in the absence of adequate, affordable, predictable and inter-connected public transport. Many officegoers were faced with the choice of a salary cut or paying the penalty for driving their ‘odd’ car on an ‘even’ day, or vice versa. Similarly, banning use of generators without ensuring 24x7 power supply is asking for defiance, and failure. Then there are perpetually neglected issues of bad road engineering — which causes traffic jams, resulting in pollution, for most unlikely of reasons — and outdated quality of public work that triggers dust pollution all over the city. medium nocaption114319930Anumita Roychowdhury, executive director, research and advocacy, Centre for Science and Environment, said areas where more interventions are needed include transport, waste management, small-scale industrial units in non-conforming areas and household cooking using solid fuels. “Technology improvement over time has reduced emissions from new vehicles, but this gain has been undermined by the sheer volume of vehicular traffic,” said Roychowdhury. “This requires massive scaling up and transformation of integrated public transport services across neighbourhoods and restraint on the usage of personal vehicles with parking restraints, low emissions zones and congestion pricing,” Roychowdhury said.The office of Delhi environment minister Gopal Rai said several measures have been taken to control pollution in the city, including increasing the city’s green cover from 20% in 2013 to 23% by 2021, inducting 1,975 e-buses in its total fleet of 7,545 and implementing an annual winter action plan.“We launched the electric vehicle policy in 2020 with 3,21,132 registered e-vehicles in the capital. All 1,959 registered industrial units in Delhi are now operating on 100% piped natural gas,” Rai’s office replied to a query. “By providing round-the-clock electricity, Delhi govt has eliminated the use of millions of diesel generators. The peripheral expressways built on both sides of Delhi have significantly reduced non-destined traffic entering the city. Delhi govt has shut down thermal power plants in the city too.” medium nocaption114320024The efforts made to cut pollution would have fallen short even if Delhi’s pollution originated and ended in Delhi — which isn’t the case. If Javed Akhtar were to write the song "Panchhi, nadiyan, pawan ke jhoken" today, he may have added pradushan (pollution) to his 2000 hit. There are days when up to 70% of Delhi’s pollution originates outside the city. Surely, just as Delhi is polluted by others, it also pollutes other cities. Air flow is a multi-city, multi-state and multi-country phenomenon. The twice-a-year burning of stubble left after the rice harvest by farmers that flares up toxicity in the air across states is just one example. So far, this fact has been cited more to shift blame than to work out a regional or national plan that pools resources and cleans air across geographies and jurisdictions. medium nocaption114319833 medium nocaption114319844Delhi isn't aloneA National Clean Air Programme was launched by the Union environment, forest and climate change in January 2019 with the aim of improving air quality in 131 cities in 24 states. The target has been revised to achieve up to 40% reduction in PM10 level or reach the national safe standard (60 microgram per cubic metre) by 2025-26. So far, Rs 11,211 crore has been released to these cities to implement a set of measures.The ministry says PM10 concentrations in 95 cities were lower in 2023-24 than in 2017-18. While that’s a start, absolute levels of pollution are still very high and the reduction in PM2.5 has to be measured too.It’s not that institutions or funds are lacking. Between the National Green Tribunal, National Capital Region Planning Board, all levels of courts and state ministries, there should be enough understanding and implementation power to clean up air across the country. It’s also not that India outside Delhi is breathing better air. At least seven cities in India were more polluted than Delhi in the top 10 polluted cities ranked by PM10 levels in 2023 by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. Even Mumbai and Kolkata are seeing unprecedented spikes in pollution. There are examples from across the world and through time of cities and countries — London, Los Angeles and Beijing, to name three — that have cleaned up air dramatically. China, in fact had lower pollution levels compared with India at a similar per capita income. medium nocaption114319886What is perhaps lacking in India is pressure on political parties to eliminate pollution. Do parties think they can lose an election or not get re-elected, because they have failed to provide clean air to their voters? Are voters going to place pollution free air higher than caste or freebies in deciding for whom to vote? Three state elections in the coming three months will clear some air on this. medium nocaption114319896