Delhi's Pollution Crisis

What is the issue?

The rising proportion of smog over Delhi is yet another reminder of the government's failure to act before an emergency.

What is the recent concern?

• The Delhi-NCR faces with difficult situation each winter when air pollution levels goes up out of control.
• Last year, the day after Diwali, air pollution levels were recorded at eight times the safe limit, in Delhi.
• In response, the Supreme Court-appointed EPCA, a body empowered to enforce the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP).
• The GRAP aims to roll out progressively tougher actions as pollution levels rise, without waiting for an emergency to impose strict measures.
• The main objective of EPCA and GRAP is to institutionalize measures to tackle air pollution emergencies.
• Besides these, there was recently a ban against firecrackers in the National Capital Region.
• Despite these measures, pollution levels did surge after the festivities, though lower compared to the past two years.
• Notably post-Diwali smog never receded and very recently the city registered “severe” on the Air Quality Index (AQI).
• This comes along with a warning for serious health effects.

What are the administrative shortfalls?

• Response - EPCA is the nodal authority for tackling pollution in the national capital.
• With the recent serious pollution crisis, the EPCA has recommended a series of measures to be undertaken by various government authorities.
• It suggested that parking fees be quadrupled, and asked Delhi Metro to lower fares during non-peak hours for at least 10 days and introduce more coaches.
• But, the EPCA should not have waited for pollution to rise to the level of being a public health emergency.
• It failed to respond earlier when air quality was deteriorating due to long persistence of haze.
• Coordination - An even more serious problem pertains to the passive attitude of the authorities.
• The EPCA's proposals require at least 16 authorities to work together.
• However, there is a lack of coordination among the implementing authorities leading to delayed response.
• E.g. The EPCA wants to re-enforce the odd-even policy but the Delhi government is delaying to submit time-bound plan on it as directed by the Delhi High Court.

What should be done?

• The EPCA and the Delhi government should devise a coordination mechanism between various governmental bodies.
• This is essential to ensure the timely implementation of various policy initiatives.
• More importantly, the crop stubble burning practice in neighbouring states is a major reason for the present worsening of air quality in Delhi.
• Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan should stop crop stubble burning, in keeping with the National Green Tribunal (NGT) ban on the practice.
• There should be a system in place to facilitate subsidies for stubble-removing machinery.
• An alternative is the Bathinda (Punjab) district administration's use of MGNREGA to drive construction of compost pits in farm land.
• This aims at encouraging farmers to use the crop stubble as raw material for composting.
• Such inclusive, innovative and feasible practices could be implemented in other states as well, to address the multi-rooted air quality problem of Delhi.

Source: Indian Express, Financial Express