Anumita Roychowdhury
IT IS ASKED, year after year, why Delhi’s air remains unbreathable despite several interventions to reduce pollution. The toxic blanket of smog that enwraps the city every winter is the lasting reminder of the tough pollution battle that is becoming increasingly difficult to win.
This is the time of the year when anger and angst explode, political drama of blame game unfolds, prescriptions are offered liberally to solve the problem, and social media is abuzz with agonies of breathing the harmful toxins.
Yet, the moment the thick winter smog lightens and becomes invisible, the memory of the suffocating experience disappears, and the agenda for systemic action round the year to eliminate the risk is forgotten. While it is a good sign that a lot more people are aware and voicing their concerns about the toxic air than earlier, the public opinion has to now drive the real solutions on the ground.
What will it take to clean up the air?
This puzzle needs demystification. What has Delhi done so far to clean up and what more is needed to meet the benchmark?
Delhi has bent the long-term pollution curve, but is at risk of losing this gain. An analysis of air pollution in Delhi by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) shows that the long-term PM2.5 levels have shown a downward trend, close to average 25 per cent reduction over time, since 2013. The more recent trends show that the annual PM2.5 levels have reduced by 7 per cent in 2023 from the 2019 levels.
Despite the improvement, Delhi still requires another 60 per cent reduction to meet the National Ambient Air Quality Standards for PM2.5. Such elevated levels despite the reduction can easily turn into a severe smog episode when cool and calm conditions of winter trap the air.
What has contributed to the downward trend? It cannot be so simplistic to hold that nothing has happened to control air pollution in Delhi. In fact, the multi-sector action that has unfolded over the past decades―especially driven by the directives of the Supreme Court―has unleashed a set of measures that no other city has wholly implemented.
The spate of action include moving entire public transport and local commercial transport from diesel to compressed natural gas (CNG), phasing out of old vehicles, restrictions on truck entry, introduction of Bharat Stage 6 emissions standards, growing electrification of new vehicle fleet, banning of petcoke and furnace oil, replacement of coal with natural gas in the legal industrial areas, closure of all coal-based power plants, action on construction activities and recycling of construction waste, and dust management.
These changes have enabled energy transition in the city. Coal consumption has reduced drastically, and the use of high-speed diesel and the share of diesel vehicles have reduced significantly.
While the action already taken is not small, the tougher challenge is to decide the next scale of change to get yet another 60 per cent cut in PM2.5 concentration.
The impact of local pollution sources remain elevated: Delhi cannot hide behind the smokescreen of farm fires any longer. This seasonal episodic pollution cannot continue to mask and detract attention from the significant contribution of local pollution sources and sources from the surrounding regions.
This winter, despite a slowdown in farm fires, the air quality in the capital is bad, and the reason is the high impact of local air pollution sources. The contribution of farm fires has mostly remained 1 to 3 per cent, reaching up to 8-16 per cent occasionally and up to 30 per cent only on a few days.
What are the gaps in action? An analysis of the real time dynamic estimation of the relative contribution of different pollution sources to Delhi’s air quality put out by the IITM’s Decision Support System (DSS) provides an insight into the contribution of each local source. These pollution sources include transport, industry, construction, waste burning, energy, residential sources, road dust and some other groups.
Vehicles are the top pollution contributors with more than half, followed by residential burning, which is 13 per cent, industry at 11 per cent, construction at 7 per cent, energy at 6 per cent, waste burning at 5 per cent, and road dust and others at 4 per cent each. The gap in action in these sectors require immediate attention and upscaled action.
Why are vehicles a special problem? Despite taking several technology measures to reduce vehicular emissions, explosive motorisation, choking congestion, inadequate public transport services and slow pace of electrification are undercutting the emission gains.
Vehicles are also the fastest growing source of pollution in Delhi. As per the Economic Survey of 2023-24, Delhi has a total stock of 79 lakh vehicles. It added 6.5 lakh vehicles in 2023-24, as per the VAHAN database. Most of these are two-wheelers and cars. Delhi also sees daily entry and exit of around 1.1 million vehicles.
Since 2018, several comprehensive clean air action plans have been notified under the aegis of the Supreme Court and by the Air Commission. Every year, at the onset of winter, the Delhi government also puts out a winter action plan, and subsequently emergency measures are evoked by the Air Commission during severe smog episodes.
These efforts, however, are not adding up to meet the benchmark. Sectoral solutions are well known, but strategies for scale and speed of implementation are not worked out annually to make a difference.
The dependence on cars has become irreversible. The modal share of private vehicles has increased from 38 per cent to 49 per cent while public transport usage has gone down alarmingly by 20 per cent over the past decade and metro ridership has not met its projected target.
The city still falls short of meeting the 1998 Supreme Court directive for 10,000 buses with just 7,683. The service level of buses remains very poor. Less than one per cent of the bus stations in the city have waiting time less than 10 minutes.
Weak multi-modal integration and inadequate last mile connectivity, and lack of focus on walking and cycling are slowing down change. The city has also failed to implement the Supreme Court directed Parking Management Area Plan as per the 2019 parking Rules as a vehicle restraint measure.
A lot more also needs to be done to control pollution from industry, waste sector, and the residential use of solid fuels. The city government needs to provide the details of households and migrants that are dependent on solid fuels for cooking and provide a time-bound strategy to improve their access to clean fuels. To control waste burning and fires in the waste dump sites, the city government needs to provide the status of its preparedness for 100 per cent waste collection, segregation and diversion of at least 80 per cent of fresh waste from reaching dumpsites and remediation of legacy waste. The list of bulk waste generators need to be put out in the public domain for tracking their waste, recycling and disposal.
In the construction sector, in addition to enforcing strong dust control measures, 100 per cent of waste recycling needs to be ensured while building the markets for rapid uptake of recycled products.
It is important to put out the details on the gap in action and resources for meeting the needs of implementation. It is inexplicable why a small fund of Rs42.69 crore allocated to Delhi under the National Clean Air Programme remains underutilised by 68.24 per cent.
The author is executive director, research and advocacy, Centre for Science and Environment.