India accounted for thirty-nine of the fifty most polluted cities in the world in 2022 by annual average PM2.5 concentration. The latest cause of concern is the worsening air quality in newer areas. Swiss company IQAir’s live city ranking shows that at 3.30 pm on Thursday, Mumbai had an average air quality index of 158, slightly worse than Delhi’s 152. Mumbai is known for its sea breeze that pushes out some of the particulate matter, but Delhi has been the bad boy in managing pollution. Now, the sudden worsening in Mumbai has drawn the establishment’s attention to pollution, which is the second biggest cause of illnesses in India and has put an enormous financial burden on the country due to the loss of man-days and increased public health expenditure.
The International Food Policy Research Institute says that the three northern states of Delhi, Punjab and Haryana have lost about $1.5 billion over the last five years due to acute respiratory infections caused by crop residue burning. The overall loss to the country due to pollution adds up to over a hundred billion dollars a year, says another estimate. Airborne particulate matter in many Indian cities are at over twenty times the World Health Organization’s safety threshold. India has been grappling with this issue for over four decades since the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act of 1981. Many steps have been taken since then. But studies show an uptick in most contributors to pollution, such as road dust, stubble burning, vehicle exhaust, diesel generators, industrial discharge and open waste burning.
The central and state governments need to urgently focus on two areas: crop residue burning and transport pollution, which includes vehicle exhaust and road dust. To control farm fires, farmers need to be at the centre of the policy. Merely giving them machines to deal with paddy straw and threatening them with fines have not helped. Farmers need to be offered more incentives to move away from residue burning. To control vehicular pollution, governments need to invest massively in upgrading and expanding public transport. Alternative fuels need a bigger push. The high cost of batteries and a lack of adequate charging infrastructure have kept electric vehicles from achieving their market potential. The Union government needs to help electric vehicle makers to bring down the prices. The time to make these decisions is now.