Come winter and the already perilous air pollution in most northern cities scales new heights. Though the dismal air quality of the national capital hogs media attention because of it being among the world’s worst, the situation in many other relatively smaller but thickly populated cities is no better. The latest pollution data of 1,600 world cities, released by the World Health Organisation (WHO) last month, puts Gwalior and Raipur ahead of Delhi in terms of foul air. Allahabad, Patna, Ludhiana, Kanpur, Lucknow and Firozabad are among the numerous other towns where the content of harmful particulate matter and other pollutants exceeds safe limits by huge margins. Little wonder, therefore, that air pollution has emerged as the fifth-largest killer, giving India the unenviable distinction of having the world’s highest death rate due to chronic respiratory diseases. The big worry is that the administrative response to this grave menace is woefully inadequate, with hardly any long-term preventive strategy being in place.
Unlike the common perception, smoke from burning crop residue is not the most critical contaminant of ambient air in Delhi and other northern cities. An IIT-Kanpur study has listed it only as the third-biggest contributor, after dust and vehicular emission, to the capital’s winter air pollution. Several other factors also add to vitiating the atmosphere. Notable among them are burning of urban waste and fallen leaves; presence of huge garbage landfills within the urban boundaries; manual sweeping of roads that tends to disperse dust into the air; use of unclean fuel for cooking; and the existence of thermal power plants and polluting industries in and around towns.
It is noteworthy that most of these sources of pollution are not too hard to manage. Mechanical (read vacuum) cleaning of roads and greening of vacant areas in the cities can lessen the dust appreciably. The burning of fallen leaves can be restrained through disciplinary action. Regular pollution checks and better traffic management to reduce road congestion can curtail vehicular emission. More importantly, the process of discarding Bharat-III and Bharat-IV standard automobile fuels to give way to higher grade ones can be expedited. Moreover, polluting industries, power plants, brick kilns and waste dumps can be shifted away from the cities.
Crop burning, though only a seasonal phenomenon, remains the trickiest menace to tackle. Farmers find it the most convenient, quickest and cheapest way to get rid of the crop stubble left after mechanical harvesting. States such as Punjab and Haryana have enacted laws to curb this practice, but authorities refrain from enforcing them for fear of an adverse political fallout. Hardly any cultivator has been booked under these laws in poll-bound Punjab and very few in adjoining Haryana. A better way to check this menace would be to promote recently developed machines, such as the rotavator, roto-seeder and happy seeder, which can manage residue and sow seeds for the next crop in one go. Farm scientists are also working on perfecting techniques to hasten in situ decomposition of crop residue to convert it into bio-manure. Once such technologies are available – and it may be fairly soon – burning crop residue will become a thing of the past.