Delhi’s groundhog winter: Part two

The Beijing example: Yes, they can

BBC News correspondent in Delhi Vikas Pandey writes:

Covering this story feels like watching (and being in) the same dystopian film every year — following the same characters, plot and script. The outcome is always the same — nothing changes.

Yes, nothing changes. But that’s not because change is impossible. Many cities have sprung back from the toxic depths of pollution. London’s Great Smog of December 1952 lasted from December 5 to December 9 and led to 12,000 deaths. Today, the city is ranked #2516 among cities with a population higher than 100,000. Want something less historical?

Let’s talk about Beijing: In January 2013, the air quality index (AQI) in the city was 775—when the Chinese government declared war on pollution:   

It set a target to reduce air pollution by a quarter by 2017 and rolled out a regional plan that included neighbouring provinces. Between 2013 and 2017, fine particle levels in Beijing and the surrounding region fell by around 35% and 25% respectively. "No other city or region on the planet has achieved such a feat," according to a United Nations review.

Over the same period, Beijing's budget to fight air pollution jumped from just over $430 million in 2013 to more than $2.6 billion in 2017. 

Data comparison to note: The air quality index (AQI) of Beijing on November 19 was 137—right when Delhi hit 750.

History of Delhi pollution: What we tried

So why can’t Delhi be more like Beijing? The throwaway answer is there is ‘no will’. But that’s not really true—just look at the city’s history of legislation.

How it started: Back in 1996, the Supreme Court jumped in and ordered the closure and relocation of over 1,300 highly-polluting industries from Delhi—in response to a petition. The Court also ordered the Delhi government to come up with an action plan—which eventually led to the creation of an agency with a needlessly long, bureaucratic name in 1996: Environmental Pollution Control Authority of Delhi NCR.

Flurry of babu-giri: The EPCA submitted a two-year action plan—which included some changes. Example: The conversion of buses, taxis, and autos to Compressed Natural Gas (CNG). More acronyms were created in the effort to track pollution: National Air Quality Programme (NAMP) to measure key pollutants—and enforce National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). The standards were dutifully expanded and revised—to reflect the best science. 

Enter GRAP: Between 2000 and 2019—after years of bureaucratic tinkering—Delhi became the most polluted city in the world in terms of PM2.5 levels. The Supreme Court jumped in again—and birthed another acronym. Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP). It basically lays out what actions must be taken when air pollution levels rise. For example, banning entry of trucks in Delhi if air pollution reaches an “emergency” level. Excellent intentions but the effect was to encourage procrastination of the worst order.

Not GRAP-pling with the problem: Public officials did nada all year long—only to scramble into action come winter. As the Morning Context notes, GRAP fails due to three key reasons:

• It focuses on the winter although air quality in Delhi remains poor all throughout the year.
• Also this: “GRAP only concerns measures to be taken to control two pollutants—PM2.5 and PM10—but ignores the six other pollutants listed in India’s Air Quality Index.”
• And this: “It is practically impossible to implement many of the action points suggested in the GRAP since they are not grounded in reality—such as a sudden increase in the public transport system, raising the parking fee or shutdown of thermal power plants, etc.”

In fact, GRAP institutionalises the stop-start, seasonal paradigm—laying the foundation for Delhi’s groundhog winter. 

Enter, union government: In 2019, the government launched the National Clean Air Program (NCAP)—a five-year national plan to cut pollution across 132 cities. The aim: to reduce PM2.5 levels by 20-30% by 2024. This has now been revised to 2026. Oddly Delhi wasn’t covered by NCAP when it started. Not that it matters. The city has used only 42% of the funds allotted to it under the program. As a Scroll investigation found:

[T]he plans of the National Clean Air Programme remain largely on paper. The implementing agencies—state pollution control boards and urban local bodies—typically do not have the capacity to undertake mandated actions; action plans created are often unrealistic, and are copy-paste jobs.

Key point to note: Entirely indifferent to all this acronym-manufacturing activity, Delhi continued to grow and grow and grow: 

Between 2001 and 2011, Delhi saw a population spurt from 1.378 crore to 1.678 crore. As of 2011, the population of Delhi and NCR was 25.8 million or 7.6% of India’s urban population. While Delhi’s total area is 1,483 square kilometres (km2), the population density grew from 9,340 persons per km2 in 2001 to 11,320 persons per km2 in 2011. 

Also this: The policies we did implement fell victim to the law of unintended consequences. The public transport shift to CNG barely made a dent in PM10—but the carbon monoxide levels increased. And a Supreme Court cap on autorickshaws made private vehicles highly desirable. From around 4.2 million motor vehicles registered in 2004 in Delhi alone, the registered vehicles increased to around 10.9 million in March 2018.

Delhi’s pollution rut: Why we can’t

There are various reasons—predictable, understandable and plain bloody-minded—as to why even the threat of death doesn’t move the needle in our capital. Here are some of them.

Do-nothing policy: Since no one is cracking the whip, the job doesn’t get done. Take something as simple as dust control. Machines are needed to sweep roads to control dust. But there are only 85 of them. The number needed: 206. There are 8,002 km that require daily ‘dusting’ but only 2,795 km are covered. FYI: this is an ‘only in Delhi’ problem. Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, and Rajasthan have largely met their targets. 

Another example: Vehicular emissions are the #1 cause of pollution by miles—and yet:

The Centre's September review noted that Delhi had aimed to procure 2,350 electric buses in 2024, but none had been acquired. Similarly, the rollout of EV charging infrastructure was behind schedule, with only 3,100 of the targeted 4,793 charging stations installed by the review date.

Toxic shade of ‘green’: Even good intentions curdle when laced with crony capitalism. A recent New York Times investigation revealed an unlikely source of pollution: state-of-the art plants that burn trash—and turn it into electricity. Sadly, one million Delhi residents are instead living with toxic smoke and ash—which is then taken away and dumped in neighbourhoods:

Internal government reports found that the plant pumped as much as 10 times the legal amount of dioxins — a key ingredient in the notorious Agent Orange herbicide deployed by the U.S. military in the Vietnam War — into the skies above Delhi.

And why is this happening—with such impunity? The plant is controlled by the powerful Jindals–who set it up with a $2 million government grant. 

Here’s the kicker: The plant is toxic because it is unmonitored and unregulated. This same solution works quite well in cities around the world:

But current and former workers at the plant in Delhi say that some of the basic steps needed to operate safely have been skipped from the very beginning for a simple reason — to cut costs. Without the proper controls and oversight, they and other experts say, such plants are essentially open-pit garbage fires.

A warning to the wise: “India has nearly 60 cities with one million residents or more, making ‘waste to energy’ plants like the one in Delhi a model of what the government calls its “Green Growth” future.”

The great class divide: cuts both ways. The rich can afford online classes for their children, air purifiers for their homes, masks if they must step out—kinda like an annual pandemic for Dilli-walas. That it happens each year with clockwork regularity offers familiarity and a false sense of security:

Among Delhiites, resignation is running high. Almost two-thirds of families in the capital say they plan to live with the pollution without making major changes to their routine, according to a survey by local advocacy group LocalCircles… “There is no sense of emergency,” said Parthaa Bosu, a Delhi-based air quality expert who heads a consulting firm. “India is starting to get adjusted to the situation in a way.”

As for the poor, they have pressing problems—like water scarcity or electricity—that impact their survival. Air pollution is ‘kal ki baat’:

People don’t die because of air pollution like they do with COVID-19. It is a slow killer. So people don’t react to it like an emergency, and the government doesn’t feel pressured to respond to it with the urgency it deserves.

Lungs don’t vote: Air pollution doesn’t spark protests. No Anna-ji doing dharna on Jantar Mantar. No candlelight marches.The Prime Minister was far from Delhi—campaigning in Maharashtra—because he knows pollution doesn’t move the needle at the polling booth. It’s easier to play ‘pass the parcel’ with rivals—until winter comes to an end—than actually do something. 

The bottomline: That brings us to the real underlying cause for chronic apathy: fighting pollution is hard. Beijing beat this multiheaded hydra because it is single-minded about its goals and their execution. The Indian troika of squabbling netas, careerist babus and crony capitalists is incapable of making that sustained effort over decades. Hell, we can’t even manage a year—as clean air activist Sunil Dahiya points out:

The air is polluted year-round, even during the monsoon. Seasonal restrictions are reactive and insufficient. We need sustained, year-long efforts to reduce baseline emissions across Delhi and neighbouring states. Instead, the government resorts to short-term measures like spraying water on roads and imposing fines to create an illusion of action being taken. Once the visible smog goes away in February, it’s back to business as usual.

Reading list

BBC News offers a solid primer on the Beijing case, while The Hindu gets deep into Delhi’s history of attempts to solve the pollution crisis. Morning Context offers the most pointed criticisms of GRAP, but is paywalled. For more free coverage on the issue, check out Scroll. New York Times (splainer gift link) has the story on state-of-the-art plants that burn trash, while Business Standard looks at Delhi’s failed pollution targets.