Dr S Saraswathi
The Supreme Court’s refusal to entertain a petition challenging the order of the National Green Tribunal banning plying of 15-year-old vehicles and 10-year-old diesel vehicles in Delhi must be welcomed. The Bench led by the Chief Justice observed that the NGT needs encouragement and not obstacles in its work.
It is reported that several enforcement teams have been deployed at seven entry points of National Highways to Delhi to check the entry of over-loaded, over-aged and polluting vehicles into the capital city.
The Tribunal has ordered these vehicles be towed away from parking spots and their use challenged in a court by the police. The order was applied to all vehicles – two wheelers, three wheelers, four wheelers, light vehicles, and heavy vehicles whether run commercially or otherwise. The defence put forward on the basis of fitness was overruled and the factor of age of the vehicle was taken as the deciding factor for its removal.
The ban, in fact, comes too late as the Environmental Performance Index of 2013 ranked India at 155 out of 178 countries. A study by the WHO in 2014 found that New Delhi had the world’s dirtiest air among 1,600 cities. An estimate showed that 124 cities were found to be virtual “death traps” of air pollution far exceeding the limits given. Only 2% of Indian cities had low air pollution. Of the dirtiest 20 cities around the world, 13 were found in India. Delhi and Patna were estimated to exceed safety levels by 15 times. It is not without reason that Queen Elizabeth II called Delhi a filthy city. Sufficient historic record and current provocation for intensifying Swachh Bharat campaign indeed!
Delhi has more vehicles than Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chennai put together. Over 60% of pollutants in Delhi emanate from vehicles and the rest from industries, power plants, and domestic sector.
A new Air Quality Index was launched by the Prime Minister as part of the Clean India Mission. It provides one consolidated number after tracking eight pollutants and uses colour coding to indicate associated health effect. The index will help to monitor pollution levels in ten major cities in India.
The term “pollution” has many definitions. Derived from the Latin “pollutus”, it means “foul”, “unclean”, or “dirty”. Some use it only to denote damages caused to the environment by human activities, while others apply it to damages caused by natural conditions also. In fact, pollution results both from natural and human sources.
The WHO defined air pollution as “the discharge into the atmosphere of foreign gases, vapours, droplets, and particulates, or of excessive amounts of normal constituents either from natural sources such as volcanoes or from man’s activities”. Human activity is an important cause for pollution. Hence, attention has to be more on pollution prevention techniques rather than on treatment and disposal of pollutants created.
Since around the 1960s, during the economic boom by fast industrialization, air pollution became a serious regional and even global problem, requiring joint international action. Earlier, it was treated as localized, mainly a problem of urban and industrialized areas to be dealt with as a by-product of development. Fighting air pollution by individuals is not possible, but individuals have to cooperate in the efforts of public, private, and voluntary organizations. Environmental movements – national and transnational – emerged in many countries in the 1970s not excluding India.
A scholar, tracing some historic events connected with the problem of air pollution, mentions that King Edward I issued a proclamation in the year 1300 in England prohibiting the use of coal as fuel during parliament sessions. He also traces the first report on the effects of air pollution released in 1866. In the 20th century, after the two World Wars, air pollution has become a serious social-environmental issue.
By the turn of the 20th century, Japan had set an example for developing countries in overcoming problems arising from air pollution. An association of women pressurized the government to enact the Tokyo Prefecture Soot and Smoke Control Ordinance in 1955 as one of the preventive measures to contain the spread of asthma.The Governor of Tokyo launched a “say no to diesel-powered vehicles” campaign in the year 2000 and directed owners of such vehicles to substitute them with gasoline-powered ones. He argued that the biggest cause of Tokyo’s air pollution was exhausts from thousands of diesel vehicles which accounted only for 20% of vehicular traffic, but created 70% of nitrogen oxide emissions and 100% of SPM emissions. We are more than a decade behind Japan to realize and take stern steps to fight car-borne pollution.
An American professor’s statement is quoted often which says that, “to keep the world clean – this is one great task for women”. What was called the “filth diseases’ confronted citizens and soldiers alike in the late 19th century calling for a battle against “uncleanness’ in the US. Sanitarians began to preach that cleanliness was the “first element of health”. Women became leaders of the movement for cleanliness. It actually became a women’s war. In the 1970s, environmentalism was intensified and many laws were adopted in the US towards achieving all-round cleanliness.
Federal Clean Air Act of 1970 set air quality standards to help pollution control in the US. It recommended primary standards oriented to protection of public health, and secondary standards to protect public welfare.
Pollutants are also of two types. Primary pollutants are those that originate at the source like dust, pollen grains, seeds, bacteria, etc. They are mostly natural pollutants. Secondary pollutants are formed by reaction of two or more primary pollutants like the acid rain.
Pollution Prevention Audit (P2audit) in the US focuses on practices and technologies that eliminate pollution and/or on devising more and more cost effective approach to pollution control. It has a strong financial side. P2 audit is different from environmental audit which focuses on conforming to environmental standards. Pollution prevention is different from waste disposal and waste management which come after creation of pollution. Air pollution causes many types of damages. It contaminates air, water, and soil, corrodes materials, damages many articles of daily use, harms plants and animals, and affects human health as cause for a variety of diseases. It is indeed lamentable that our country is still in the stage of imparting basic lessons on the harmful effects of pollution and ways of minimizing its presence, while many countries give cleanliness as much importance as education. May be, our backwardness is partly due to lack of even universal elementary education.
Pollution control has never been an election issue in India. It is not debated as a public issue to find practicable solutions. On the contrary, such control is received as intrusion into individual freedom and an unnecessary burden. Simple rules like source segregation of bio-degradable and non-degradable domestic garbage are openly flouted. Old vehicles happily fly on the roads covering streets with smoke.
We are constantly chanting the mantra of development. Smart cities, technology parks, rapid transit systems, and mobile towers are incongruous with polluted city atmosphere. In fact, pollution control at the source should precede other development projects. INFA