SLOW LANE TO THE SCRAPYARD

The government's ambitious vehicle scrapping policy runs aground as states are tardy in implementation, private players hesitant and owners reluctant to part with old vehicles 

- AVISHEK G. DASTIDAR

Every winter, as the veil of air pollu tion descends upon the country, a familiar flurry begins to unfold. Crop-burning is the recipient of the harshest reprimand, but there is equal public bemoaning about the growing number of vehicles on Indian roads, whose noxious fumes contribute substantially to the problem.

“It is a dangerous problem,” says Union road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari, “Forty per cent of the country’s CO2 emissions come from the transport sector. And it is growing every day. It is worrying.” And one of the attempts to fight this annual problem—the Voluntary Vehicle Fleet Modernisation Programme, or the ‘vehicle scrapping policy’—has failed to get off the ground, simply because the states are not ready, almost three years after the policy was rolled out. The central government has now had to defer the start date of the programme from June to October 2024 for all commercial vehicles. This, when its implementation could take around 12 million old and polluting vehicles—or about 4 per cent of the total 330 million vehicles—off India’s roads in one fell swoop. Government data say older vehicles pollute 10-12 times more than new ones.

What It Means

Once the scrapping policy kicks in, owners of private vehicles—run on diesel and petrol—will have to put their 15-year-old cars, motorbikes and other vehicles to a stringent test at fully automated testing stations (ATS), which, among other things, will measure the pollutants the vehicles are emitting (see