Delhi’s pollution emergency and India’s aspiration to become a leading economy

As India aims to become the third largest economy in the world, it has considerably failed to develop a policy plan that may control the play of the annual catastrophe in Delhi. Evidently, Delhi has turned out to be one of the most polluted places on this planet, an undesirable achievement for a nation that has always prioritised and promoted the principles of ecological consciousness. So, as a city, while Delhi is choking to death, the executive, legislative, and judiciary are struggling to find any permanent solution to this annual death event.

It is vital to understand the gravity of the ongoing death play in Delhi. First, it must be understood that stubble burning is not the sole reason behind the spike in Delhi’s pollution level. The practice of stubble burning was made illegal in 2015; nonetheless, it continues. The nub of the matter is that stubble burning contributes to 35 per cent of Delhi’s pollution. Hence, the major problem lies elsewhere — both at the atmospheric level and the industrial level — and it is quite disheartening to see a resolute silence that undergirds this catastrophe.

Second, the harvesting season of late October is also a time when the wind direction changes. So, when the stubble is burnt in Lahore, Punjab, and Haryana, the pollution reaches Delhi and its neighbouring parts, and due to the meteorological conditions, it results into a thick cloud that percolates death to the citizens. Last week, Delhi’s air quality index (AQI) — which points to the level of pollutants in the air — reached almost 1,700 in some parts of the city. If we compare this with our closest competitor, China, its capital Beijing, reached the highest AQI of 1,300, which suggests how fast we are heading to convert Delhi and the NCR into a death chamber.

Agreed that PM2.5 (particulate matter) is a major source of pollution in Delhi, but there are many contributing factors. About 40 per cent of Delhi’s air pollution is attributed to vehicular emissions, with diesel vehicles being a major contributor. Yet, other polluting causes lie in the huge number of industries that have piled up across Delhi, including the NCR. They are the major and constant source of pollutants and ‘slow violence’ that the people of Delhi are subjected to. Stubble burning only exacerbates the pollution level, turning the slow violence into a fierce one, thus rendering this catastrophic play visible to all of us.

There is also a misgiven belief that one could beat the spike in pollution during the November-December time with the help of air purifiers, thus making this annual death play impact mostly the unprivileged ones. What one does not realise is that air pollution knows no boundary, and that it can neither be demarcated geographically, nor physically. To situate this problem as a temporary one, or for that matter that only pertains to Delhi, therefore, only breeds more risk to a nation that aspires to become a leading economy in the coming years.

The national figures are also alarming: around 33,000 people across 10 cities die annually from breathing air measured safe by official standards in India. A recent report pointed out that 30 million people living in and around the capital might have been deprived of 12 years of their lives due to its hazardous health impacts. Likewise, leading medical journal Lancet suggests that 11.5 per cent of Delhi’s annual deaths are attributable to air pollution. To understand this further, the State of Global Air 2024 (SOGA) points out that air pollution accounted for 8.1 million deaths globally, becoming the second most risk factor for death, including for children under the age of five. This is exactly why proper policy-level planning is needed. To control this with the help of an odd-even formula, or to move to online teaching mode, or trying to mitigate this only when it starts impacting us most severely can only be seen as virtue-signalling gestures.

The larger question that haunts us at this critical juncture is whether the clean air target is achievable. The answer is yes, but for that, a clear vision and clean consciousness are needed. It is a strange paradox that most of our policymakers are either busy blowing trumpets for their bosses or they have divorced themselves from the public good; still, some of them have convincingly demonstrated their ignorance of policymaking at all, ensconced as they are as spokesperson on television channels or as poets at literary events. When it comes to human security, it needs to be grounded and aimed at a collective level, which is diametrically opposed to self-serving interests that many of our present policymakers suffer from.

As rightly emphasised by JNU Vice-Chancellor Santishree Pandit, human security can only be achieved if we take care of our panchbhoota principles. Everything in this cosmos is interconnected but as humans, we continue to demarcate boundaries and binaries. Speaking at a session on Lok Surkasha (public security), part of an event on Lokmanthan, organised in Hyderabad on November 24, 2024, she argues that human security is inevitably linked to public security, which in turn is linked to ecological security. Hence, it is essential to have more investment in the notion of public security if we are to come anywhere close to becoming the third largest economy in the world and having access to clean air for breathing. Can we go back to that cognizant level of cosmic well-being in our policymaking?

Delhi pollution has been institutionalised and it won’t be wrong to say that it has become an annual apocalypse event in the absence of any convincing policies. All hat and no cattle is symptomatic of this annual performance of the death drive, which also signals that unless we act urgently, we may be on the verge of attaining one nation, one level of pollution soon.

Om Prakash Dwivedi is an author and columnist. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.