New Delhi, Nov. 8 -- Come November, and the citizens of metros in India wait with bated breath (literally). Those who can afford to (in terms of having a flexible job and resources) make plans to shift to the hills or the sea for 3-4 months. Those who have to stay put bring out their air purifiers and pray that this year will be better than the last. This predicament is most keenly felt in Delhi, where geography combines with huge numbers of vehicles on the roads to make the air heavily polluted (there are other major contributors, such as road and construction dust, stubble burning in the neighbouring states, etc.).
It was not always so bad. During my college days at Delhi University in 1983-88, I don't recall winter fog or pollution being so threatening. The bus journeys at night to and from relatives' houses or for the occasional English film at Chanakya Theatre in Central and South Delhi were a breeze, with visibility and fog being non-issues. The winter fog and emissions issues came later, in the mid-1990s, when there was a massive push for urban development (roads and flyovers), an unchecked rise in the number of vehicles, and no checks on the age of vehicles. In particular, the past 30 years have seen the inexorable rise of Delhi's air pollution problems (with some respite after the CNG push in 1998), with the problem continuing to persist to this day. Let us discuss some of these issues in this two-part essay.
The efforts so far
Speaking of Delhi, it's not that efforts haven't been made. The GRAP is triggered at the end of October and gradually ramped up as winter progresses. This year, all vehicles except BS6-compliant ones are not being permitted on Delhi roads from November 1, 2026, to January 31, 2027. This triggered massive traffic jams on the Delhi-Gurgaon and Delhi-Noida roads. While the banning of BS3, BS4 and BS5 vehicles will certainly help in cutting down nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter emissions, how much this will address the overall air pollution in Delhi is something that will need to be examined.
The National Clean Air Quality Management is the national programme of the Government of India, which provides funding to 130 cities across India for setting up air monitoring stations and buying EVs and road sweepers. The Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM), on the other hand, is limited to managing air pollution in the Delhi-NCR area. The CAQM implements steps such as the GRAP and regulates vehicle movement in the NCR area, and its actions override any laws of the state governments in the NCR. The CAQM has, however, come under intense scrutiny from the Supreme Court, which has expressed dissatisfaction with its failure to curb air pollution in Delhi-NCR. There are other sectoral programmes, such as increasing solar and wind energy, reducing energy intensity in manufacturing, etc., but the air pollution problem remains.
Even before the current situation, the Supreme Court had pushed for the massive conversion of the bus fleet and auto-rickshaws in Delhi to CNG in 1998. This reduced particulate emissions, but the effect didn't last too long because of the rapid rise in the vehicle population in Delhi.
In the recent past, schemes such as 'odd-even', where cars with odd-numbered licence plates alternated with those bearing even-numbered licence plates on the roads, and work-from-home arrangements were also tried, but they have not really resulted in a solution. Some other measures taken in the last two decades or so include the elimination of coal plants from Delhi-NCR, the transition to piped gas for domestic use, the upgradation of brick kilns, the introduction of peripheral expressways to divert heavy vehicles away from Delhi, the enforcement of age caps on vehicles (10 years for diesel vehicles and 15 years for petrol vehicles), the installation of smog towers, and the identification of pollution hotspots.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.