How vehicular pollution is not primary cause of poor air quality in Delhi

In its Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) report for 2023, the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute has said that air pollution cuts short the lives of people of Delhi by about 11.9 years. An earlier report by the university had said that the lives of residents of northern India could be shortened by over nine years if the 2019 air pollution levels continued. Some progress indeed! More polluted than Delhi’s air is the discourse on the environment, for it is all about an incestuous clique agreeing with each other and thrusting their dogmas on the government and society. The clique’s diktats must be obeyed in letter and spirit. Period. Any dithering on the part of the authorities or people evokes righteous indignation. For years, we were lectured by the self-appointed guardians of the Earth that vehicular emission was the root cause of dirty air in the national capital. This is contrary to empirical evidence. The real reasons are dust and biomass burning in Delhi-NCR. It is also evident from the fact that during rains, the Delhi AQI drops sharply, despite congestion in various parts of the city caused by waterlogging. It is not that a non-vehicular source of pollution was never suspected or detected. In July 2021, for instance, a study by IIT Kanpur’s Prof Sachchida Nand Tripathi found that in summers 52 per cent of Delhi’s PM 2.5 concentration was because of dust. Yet, the entire debate about the cause of air pollution revolved around vehicles, especially cars. This was the reason that the Delhi Government had earlier opted for the odd-even scheme to check it. In March this year, a most authoritative study on the subject pointed out that in winter the real reason for air pollution is something else: biomass burning. Peddlers of the ‘vehicles-pollute-Delhi’ narrative were conspicuous by their silence on the matter. According to the US Energy Information Administration, “Biomass is renewable organic material that comes from plants and animals.” It includes wood and wood processing wastes, agricultural crops and waste materials, biogenic materials in municipal solid waste, and animal manure and human sewage. The study, led by the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, had contributions from 19 scholars and experts from the Physical Research Laboratory, IIT Delhi, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI), Switzerland, and University Helsinki, Finland. Researchers Suneeti Mishra and Tripathi, both from the Department of Civil Engineering, IIT Kanpur, co-authored the paper. In the study, published in the prestigious Nature Geoscience journal, the scholars “observe[d] intense and frequent nocturnal particle growth events during haze development in Delhi from measurements of aerosols and gases during January-February at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi… We estimate that this process is responsible for 70 per cent of the total particle-number concentration during haze”. It went on to say “that the condensation of primary organic vapours from biomass burning is the leading cause of the observed growth”. It further said, “As uncontrolled biomass burning for residential heating and cooking is rife in the Indo-Gangetic plain, we expect this growth mechanism to be a source of ultrafine particles, affecting the health of 5 per cent of the world’s population and impacting the regional climate.” In other words, the health of almost 40 crore people is adversely affected by biomass burning. No one disputes that the quality of air is extremely poor in not just the national capital but also in the entire northern India. It is the diagnosis that is not just wrong but also dangerously misleading. Worse, there has been a persistent endeavor on the part of doctrinaire environmentalists to distract attention from the real cause and heap the entire blame on vehicular emissions. Nothing could be farther from the truth. According to the latest National Family Health Survey-5, just about 8 per cent of Indian households own cars. In Delhi, one in five households owns a car. In comparison, in Helsinki, the third cleanest city in the world, there are more than two cars for every individual. In general, Western nations have more cars per household than in India, and yet the air there is much cleaner than in our country. At the heart of the problem of air pollution in India is not automobile density (which is low anyway) but illegal urbanisation. These are the results of rampant encroachments, incompetence, corruption, and unregulated and dangerous construction. The consequences are deplorable: solid waste dumping, contamination and death of water bodies, drying of aquifers, and long is the list of woes. Unsurprisingly, many areas become dust bowls—and are shrouded in a haze caused by biomass burning. But nobody is interested in addressing these issues, the real issues. Politicians are busy selling freebies to voters; environmentalists happy with their fancy climate change slogans. Meanwhile millions of people suffer grievously. The author is a freelance journalist. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.