AIR POLLUTION: DELHI NEEDS PERMANENT SOLUTION

Chandan Sharma

As an unprecedented pollution crisis engulfed the National Capital Delhi, people started questioning that why the capital city has been chocking again and again despite several warnings and preventive measures. The situation is so grim that a health emergency declared in the city and several emergency measures took place to reduce the impact of air pollution in the city.

Although, much has been debated on the national and local media and even, Supreme Court had to take suo moto cognizance on the matter and expressed anguish on the issue on Wednesday. The apex court’s order is an eye-opener for top brass of the various adjoining states and Delhi. It not only rebuked top officials of Delhi, Punjab and Haryana for their failure to curb the pollution but also gave an action plan to execute within a given time frame of seven days so that an emphatic control could be seen on pollution.

Here it must be noted that Delhi’s people are still facing the burnt of odd-even scheme as half of the population are unable to use their cars due to strict rationing of the vehicles on the road and hefty fines on violation. According to an estimate about twenty lakh vehicles have been staying away during the period of implementation of odd-even scheme. Certainly, this provides some relief to the residents of Delhi but the question remains that why the city faced severe pollution on Sunday and Saturday as there is not much crowd on the road due to weekend holidays. Interestingly, the apex court has also raised serious questions on the logic of implementation of odd-even scheme and asked that why people were dying due to pollution and related ailments.

This must be noted that although the impact of such kind of severe pollution has not been recorded or researched in Delhi as yet. But the condition can be understood by the fact that the government distributed about five million masks among school children and that was 24-hours ahead of the distribution schedule (1^st November). A health emergency declared in the capital and if go by the data the local health centres and hospitals witnessed 30-40 percent spike in the pollution related ailments among the patients.

According to a UN report, although the impact of the pollutants cannot be seen immediately but it is a silent killer and it can cause even cancer of lung and respiratory system in the future. According to world body, although it reflects the effect of climate change but there are several immediate impact on human body and it can cause irritation in eyes, breathlessness, increase in the intensity of Asthma and other heart related problems and many others.

Actually, the problem is not just poisonous gases like Carbon dioxide, Carbon monoxide, Nitrogen oxide, Sulphur or other gases but the unprecedented increase in micro pollutant particles like PM2.5 or PM 10 in the atmosphere. These pollutants does not only affect our lungs or respiratory systems permanently but also create a haze or smog in the atmosphere and city reduced to a gas chamber. This year the AQI of the city based on PM 2.5 crossed even 1000 marks in some of the areas of Delhi. 

Although, intermittent drizzling helped the city to a great extent and emergency measures too helped a lot. But the city yet to recover from the nightmare of pollution completely. And, city needs a permanent solution in this concern so that the national capital does not choke again. 

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(Chandan Sharma is founder of Yuvavani.com)