AIRPOCALYPSE: WHY DELHI HAS FAILED AND WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE

Delhiites now know everything there is to know about pollution in their city.

- AVISHEK G. DASTIDAR

It's a multilayered curse: vehicular and industrial emissions, construction dust and burning of waste, topped each winter with smoke that blows in from farm fires in Punjab and Haryana.

No less than the Chief Justice of India, Justice Surya Kant, complained of the effects of pollution, recounting how a 55-minute walk in the late November air had left him gasping for breath.

Concerned citizenry did break out in protest: a crowd of 400 gathered on the India Gate lawns in November flashing placards demanding 'Smog se Azadi' and declaring 'Breathing Is Killing Me'. But the protests ended with a few arrests. The government juggled its GRAP (Graded Response Action Plan) norms: with stricter actions kicking in at earlier stages.

A month before, on October 23, the PMO had gathered top bureaucrats from eight central ministries and five states for an emergency review. With the current action plan based on pollution data which is seven years old, P.K. Mishra, principal secretary to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, instructed updates of emissions inventories, alongside focused dust control on major roads and flagged 'overage' vehicles, non-compliant industries and the missed landfill and road-dust cleanup targets.

On December 6, Delhi chief minister Rekha Gupta formed an expert group on air pollution mitigation, chaired by Leena Nandan, retired Union environment secretary. With retired officials of the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) and IIT professors forming the 11-member group, it has been mandated to “discuss scientific solutions as well as other actions, distilling a lot of practical, implementable ideas into recommendations”, Nandan told INDIA TODAY.