Both houses of the Indian Parliament in the first week of the Monsoon session of the Parliament approved the ‘Commission for Air Quality Management in National Capital Region and Adjoining Areas Bill’, 2021, that seeks to set up a commission to manage and monitor air quality in the National Capital Region (NCR) and its neighbouring areas.
The bill repeals an ordinance to the same effect and establishes
the commission as the sole authority with jurisdiction over air quality management in the region. Delhi’s
air pollution crisis has been fuelled by the lack of an efficient governance mechanism and concerted regional efforts, ambiguity in identification of sources of air pollution, and gaps in adequate public infrastructure (the city has half the buses it needs for public transport). The formulation of this commission is expected to put an end to the buck-passing that has occurred in previous years regarding air quality monitoring and management amongst target states—NCR, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, and Punjab. The formation of a national-level authority has long been seen to be necessary to efficiently coordinate amongst states.
Delhi’s air pollution crisis has been fuelled by the lack of an efficient governance mechanism and concerted regional efforts, ambiguity in identification of sources of air pollution, and gaps in adequate public infrastructure (the city has half the buses it needs for public transport).
India’s capital, New Delhi, is one of the
world's most polluted metropolitan agglomerations. The pandemic-induced lockdowns seem to have given no respite from the dismal air quality in the city, as in March this year, a report by Swiss technology company IQ Air ranked Delhi as
the world’s most polluted capital in the year 2020. The air pollution in the city causes
devastating impacts on the health of its residents as well as their economic well-being. Despite abundant interventions to tackle the severity of air pollution and its impacts, one can invariably find particulate matter levels well-above the ‘severe’ categorisation in the capital. The problem is exacerbated during and before winter, when winds slow down and pollution collects closer to the city's surface, resulting in a
brown haze.
Significant advances in understanding Delhi's pollution problem came through in 2016, when IIT Kanpur undertook a
source apportionment research, and in 2018, when The Energy Resources Institute (TERI) conducted
a study to identify major pollution contributors. However, these studies were not dynamic in nature. They underlined that in the past few years, the poor air quality in Delhi has aggravated due to a multitude of contributing factors including crop or stubble burning, industrial pollution, vehicular emissions, construction activities, and power plants. Despite years of efforts to tackle these challenges,
Delhi’s grave pollution problem continues to exacerbate in intensity and frequency. This year, a new method called the Decision Support System (DSS) is expected to begin detecting the particular sources of air pollution in Delhi, potentially backing policies in focusing attention on specific factors. This
pollution tracking model developed by the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) aims to identify the contribution of known sources, such as vehicle tailpipe emissions, road dust, and farm fires, in real time.
Despite abundant interventions to tackle the severity of air pollution and its impacts, one can invariably find particulate matter levels well-above the ‘severe’ categorisation in the capital.
Combatting air pollution
In order to design a convergent and coherent strategy to combat air pollution, it is imperative to address the specific complexities of the economic geography of the region, which leads to a high pollution footprint in specific pockets. The DSS is being developed as a tool to intensify and support a better understanding of this nuance in the context of the NCR.
In order to address short-term episodes, in November 2016, the Supreme Court instructed the government to initiate and implement a
Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) to limit the cases of severe pollution in Delhi, however, it was not implemented holistically. Subsequently in 2019, the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) was launched as a five-year objective to strengthen pollution monitoring and citizen awareness. However, it has been critiqued for lack of clarity on funding provisions and a binding legal framework.
Besides these, many policy solutions such as the
odd-even scheme which aimed to address vehicular decongestion, have been put in place, but, air pollution in Delhi is a recurring, long-term crisis that requires holistic targetting. As the revival from the COVID-19 pandemic is prioritised, it provides an opportunity to factor in mitigation measures into policy processes to avail co-benefits from reducing air pollution and greenhouse gas emmisions. There is a need for efforts that are cognisant of the multitude of stakeholders to the air pollution problem, through intra-state and inter-state strategies. Hence, the synergistic interplay of technological interventions for evidence-based policy, and a robust mechanism of targeted, multi-level, and multi-faceted decision-making can pave the way forward towards mitigating air pollution in NCR.
As the revival from the COVID-19 pandemic is prioritised, it provides an opportunity to factor in mitigation measures into policy processes to avail co-benefits from reducing air pollution and greenhouse gas emmisions.
To this end, the recently passed bill seeks to extend a participatory and collaborative mechanism amongst central ministries, state governments, local organisations, and other stakeholders to fulfill the lack of a permanent, dedicated framework to tackle air pollution in NCR. According to the
Statement of Objects and Reasons of the Bill, piloted by the Ministry of Environment, Forests, and Climate Change, the commission envisioned would streamline public engagement, inter-state cooperation, expert involvement, and ongoing research and innovation.
More than 2.2 million schoolchildren in Delhi are threatened with irreversible lung damage, which indicates the extent of the effect of air pollution on life in Delhi, and necessitates asserting emphasis on the impact of air pollution on public health. It has been presented that the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) be included in the commission to investigate the evaluation of the impact of air pollution on public health, particularly that of the elderly and children. Furthermore, in the future, it can also be considered to expand the scope of the commission across various states of the country to facilitate an extensive addressal of air pollution, which is not a localised phenomenon.
Since the prominent observation that has come to light so far has been the lack of policy redressal of competiting priorities, an initial step in the right direction can be to align the air pollution agenda with emerging state objectives. This effort, therefore, must entail the reconciliation of monitoring, regulatory, and policy agendas.
Environmentalists and leaders have flagged concerns regarding specific provisions of the bill. It
penalises contravention of provisions with imprisonment of up to five years and a fine of rupees 1 crore, and while this penalty still exists for other sectors and individuals, imprisonment is no longer imposed on the farming community (according to Clause 14). However, the comission “may impose and collect environmental compensation from farmers causing air pollution by stubble burning, at such rate and in such manner, as may be prescribed” (Clause 15), which has been opposed by farmers and parliamentarians. Moreover, since the commission has the power to supercede over state governments and other bodies, it has also been argued that it may lead to a lack of decentralisation in the decision-making process.
The commission’s overarching jurisdiction has the potential to pave a way for convergent implementation by multiple agencies, including the State Pollution Control Boards (SPCBs), the Central Pollution Control Board, and the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) by postively anchoring the mandate that overlaps amongst them.
At the same time, the commission’s overarching jurisdiction has the potential to pave a way for convergent implementation by multiple agencies, including the State Pollution Control Boards (SPCBs), the Central Pollution Control Board, and the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) by postively anchoring the mandate that overlaps amongst them.
This should be facilitated by leveraging the progress in terms of monitoring efforts, to streamline action plans on the basis of a rationale that subsumes economic, social, and environmental concerns. Without cohesiveness in approach and collaboration, however, the commission will render itself akin to its predecessors — an ideal in principle.
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