When Will Delhiites Steer the Climate Change Narrative?

By Shubhangi Thakur

ایک دن میں نے اپنی روح سے پوچھا کہ دہلی کیا ہے تو میں نے اس طرح جواب دیا کہ یہ دنیا جسم کی طرح ہے اور دہلی اس کی زندگی ہے۔

 (One day I asked my soul: What is Delhi?  She replied: The world is the body and Delhi is its soul.)

                                                                                                       ~ Mirza Ghalib

When asked about his postal address, Mirza Ghalib (the legendary Urdu poet)  replied, "Delhi will suffice." So it was. So it is today. Except for the fact that Delhi’s name is now synonymous with air pollution. For the third year in a row, Delhi was named the world's most polluted capital by IQAir in 2020. Not a surprise when I say, air pollution killed more Indians in 2019 than any other risk factor (Source: https://vizhub.healthdata.org/gbd-compare/india#).

As the coronavirus pandemic tore across New Delhi in 2020, inhabitants in the national capital area inhaled pure air and witnessed bright, blue sky for the first time in years. The Air Quality Index in New Delhi (April 2020) recorded the cleanest air since quality monitoring began in 2015, as well as a substantial fall in particulate matter content in the air during the first week of the shutdown (Source: https://www.cpcb.nic.in/air/NCR/jantacurfew.pdf)

But, with the capital's very first pollution lockdown declared, have we learned our lesson?

Delhi struggles to breathe in the face of the lethal trifecta— Diwali, agricultural fires, and winters

Every year Indians brace themselves for  enormous jumps in air pollution levels when crop burning becomes rampant especially in the northern belt of the country. The capital city runs on fumes every year and tragically turns into a living gas chamber. Annual crop burning causes months of suffocating air in Delhi. It is illegal to burn fields, and farmers who do so face hefty fines. However, no amount of sanctions, court rulings, or government crackdowns have been effective in putting a halt to this practice, simply because farmers have no acceptable solution to their yearly quandary: how to handle the brief interval between rice harvesting and wheat sowing in the same areas. The simplest, cheapest, and most accessible technique is to burn the crops, polluting the air well downstream, including the capital city. 

After receiving multiple petitions from concerned citizens, the Indian Supreme Court deemed the stubble fires and associated pollution a "severe infringement of the right to life," and held the farmers liable for threatening "the lives of a sizeable population" (Source: https://www.epca.org.in/court_orders/SC-ordee-dated4-11-19.pdf)

With all the stubble burning at its peak, Diwali only makes it worse. Diwali is India's most significant celebration of the year, marking the triumph of light over darkness, and good over evil. Widely celebrated among more than a billion people from diverse faiths across India and its diaspora, the five days of Diwali are distinguished by prayer, feasts, fireworks and family get-togethers. For some, Diwali marks the start of a new year. 

However, Diwali is primarily recognised as a festival of lights. Fireworks are thus a big feature of the festivities, especially in New Delhi, where they are frequently chastised for generating increases in the city's infamously terrible pollution.

With air quality plummeting to dangerous levels  in Delhi during Diwali, which coincides with the stubble burning season in Punjab and Haryana— the Supreme Court banned traditional firecrackers in 2018. Only “green firecrackers'' have been allowed in the capital city since. 

Green crackers or eco-friendly crackers, an idea of the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute,  are manufactured from alternative raw materials that have a reduced ecological impact and carry fewer health hazards, according to the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute. 

Green crackers are 30% less polluting than regular ones. However, despite their numerous advantages, these eco-friendly firecrackers are more expensive than standard ones.

Even so, the air quality index (AQI) in Delhi a day after Diwali in 2020 was 435, the worst in the previous four years, according to statistics from the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB). In 2019, it was 297, 390 in 2018, and 403 in 2017. Even though the AQI is slipping into the dangerous zone each year (despite the apparent prohibition on traditional firecrackers), it's still daunting for us to give up on fireworks and crackers.

Air pollution is one of the most serious global environmental issues, and it is widespread throughout India, with Delhi, in particular, suffering from severe air quality issues. Exposure to particulate matter - very minute dust floating in the air – has the biggest public health impact from air pollution (Source: https://www3.epa.gov/region1/airquality/pm-human-health.html)

Since the dust particles are so minute, they can reach the lungs and cause major health hazards including breathing and respiratory system complications, cancer, and premature death. According to a recent research conducted by Greenpeace Southeast Asia Analysis and IQAir, air pollution is responsible for an estimated 54,000 premature deaths in New Delhi by 2020.

Some hazardous components, such as lead, zinc, and aromatic hydrocarbons, are present in especially high concentrations throughout the winter. This is because the inversion height — the altitude beyond which pollutants cannot disperse into the higher layer of the atmosphere — tends to decrease as the temperature drops. When this happens, the concentration of contaminants in the air rises. 

High-speed winds also are very effective at dispersing pollutants, but wind speeds are relatively lower in the winter than in the summer. The city is prone to pollution due to the confluence of several weather conditions. Air quality worsens much more when farm fires and dust storms are added to the city's already high base pollution levels.

Call to Action

Despite, or possibly because of, its ubiquity, air pollution has rarely received any attention. This is a debacle, given that air pollution is a worldwide killer.  But it's also an opportunity for change and action because this is a fixable environmental issue.

Air pollution has almost become a connotation to Delhi as a city despite the fact that this city is so much more. The foul, polluted air should not smother its landscapes when the city and its streets reek of history and its vagaries. This city has emerged as a perpetual muse for a generation of poets who have immortalised it in their creations, and the only smell visitors should smell are the poetic verses and the remnants of history tucked in the city’s corners. 

Temporary emergency measures like lockdown and the cessation of coal-based industries and power plants are critical in dealing with the imminent health disaster caused by pollution. However, more consistent year-round intervention is required to ensure that the anti-pollution mechanisms operate throughout the year. 

Instead of expensive technologies that attempt to clear severely contaminated air, the city requires a solid, long-term way to mitigate pollution at its source. The government is taking initiatives to enhance air quality, but they are few and far between. Several coordinated, integrated approaches, according to TERI, might decrease particle pollution in Delhi by half. Turning agricultural waste into lucrative goods might cut PM2.5 levels by 12% in the winter. Enforcing emission rules in industry and installing 8,000 electric buses would result in an additional 10.5 percent reduction.

Even basic measures, such as effective waste management to minimise trash and landfill fires, construction dust control, and promotion of clean fuels and renewable energy, would have a significant short-term impact. These solutions must be implemented in concert with stricter standards and increased enforcement. The need of the hour are permanent sustainable solutions, not band-aid remedies.

We can't just shut our doors and windows to the grey-orange gloom and switch on our air purifiers and resign to the deathly annual smog that has hung over us for years. 

The city is a remembrance of the greats (not pollution) and let us not plunder our beloved Dilli.