Clean-up act: Why Delhi has consistently failed to make its air breathable

Experts say a China-like approach is needed with neighbouring states working alongside it

A “gas chamber” is how Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had described the city in November 2017 as air pollution hit severe levels. Five years later, while the number of "severe" days might have fallen, for the national capital, poor and very poor air quality days have been a given – despite emergency measures such as temporarily banning construction, or diesel and old petrol vehicles from roads, or shutting down industries.

This winter, too, Delhi’s air is far from breathable. The city remains India’s most polluted.

The National Capital Region’s air quality index (AQI) was in the “Very Poor” category for 66 days in 2022 – the worst in four years. The number of “poor” air quality days also increased from 80 in 2021 to 130 in 2022.

The question, then, is: Why has Delhi consistently failed to clean up its act? Are there lessons to be learnt from China, which managed to reduce air pollution in seven years as much as the US did in three decades?

Before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, China had phased out 300,000 high polluting vehicles, halted major construction activities, and shut down hundreds of factories and power plants.

Similar steps were taken for Delhi, too, during Sheila Dikshit’s regime. Dikshit had mandated the use of CNG and also shut down polluting industries operating from within the city. Many of these were moved out of city limits. While this brought some relief to Delhi, what’s needed is an across-states coordinated model like China’s to fight pollution.

According to the University of Chicago’s Air Quality Life Index (AQLI), China, under its National Air Quality Action Plan, reduced PM2.5 pollution by 39.5 per cent in seven years, from 2013 to 2020.

Here’s what it did: increased renewable energy generation; reduced iron and steel making capacity in industry; suspended the production of 553 car models that did not meet fuel economy standards; and closed power plants from populous cities and shifted others to cleaner fuels.

On the other hand, in India, most of the industries that were uprooted from Delhi shifted to adjoining states like Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Rajasthan, which do not have a robust infrastructure to control pollution, environmentalists say.

Besides introducing CNG, there was no curb on the use of old fuel or on new industries coming up around Delhi, say environment researchers. This reversed the gains of CNG. However, in China, there were emission limits for all cities, they add.

Also, “in China, industries that were 300 km away from major cities were also asked to shift to cleaner fuels unlike in India,” says Sunil Dahiya, analyst, Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air. “This helped China achieve its targets of controlling pollution.”

India lacks regional-level pollution control mechanisms. “There are about 12 power plants in the Delhi-NCR region, almost all operating without effective pollution control,” Dahiya says. It’s the same for other industries. “Till now, no city in India, including Delhi, has an emission load reduction approach. No sector has been given a target to reduce pollution.”

According to the World Health Organisation’s Air Quality Database released in April 2022, almost the entire global population (99 per cent) breathes air that exceeds WHO air quality limits, and threatens their health.

“Until there is a cap on emission from petroleum and coal units, and in the absence of state-of-the-art technology, it will be hard to control pollution in India,” Dahiya says.  

The AQLI report says if all the areas in India that were not complying with the WHO PM2.5 guidelines in 2019 were to permanently reduce their particulate pollution levels, then 510 million people in northern India alone would live at least 8.5 years longer on average. These people represent nearly 40 per cent of India’s current population, the report adds. And overall, India’s life expectancy could increase by 5 years as against 2.6 years in China and 0.2 years in the US.

The National Clean Energy Programme (NCAP) Tracker also suggests an “airshed” approach for better management of air pollution in the region beyond Delhi. Airshed, according to WHO, is a common geographic area where pollutants get trapped.

“The analysis reiterates the need to check pollution at source to obtain maximum benefit from pollution mitigation efforts,” the AQLI report says.