Rescue Plan For The ‘Haze Capital'

In a recent paper titled “The effect of pollution on crime: Evidence from data on particulate matter and ozone” by Burkhardt et al in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, the authors show something startling!

- Nilanjan Ghosh

For the first time, this study showed the effect of short-term air pollution exposure (PM 2.5 and ozone) on several categories of crime, with a particular emphasis on aggressive behaviour.

Breeding crime?

Interestingly, the study finds that increased air pollution has a positive effect on violent crimes, specifically assaults! The dataset spans for around 397 counties in the US and, therefore, represents a sizeable component of the US population.

Does this really ring a bell for Indian cities? Of course, in many cases, we have argued that results from the developed world cannot be extrapolated to Indian conditions.

In this case, however, it should be noted that we, the Indians, are probably getting too used to pollution!

The seasonal spike in pollution in the national capital region (NCR) and Delhi, which should now be appropriately described as the ‘haze capital’, is now an annual affair!

Can this really lead to a spike in violent crimes? This remains a working hypothesis: In NCR, that has been reporting one of the worst air qualities and high crime rates, is there a causal relation between these two ‘evils’ (as opposed to ‘goods’ that are assumed to increase human benefits as defined in neoclassical economics)?

NCR probably stands as the biggest example across the world on the ‘worst’ practices that need to be followed for urban environment management.