New Delhi: A National Air Quality Index (NAQI) will be launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday, giving people access to real-time information of the quality of air they are breathing. However, questions loom over who will pay for it. The ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) wants the project to be financed as a public-private partnership (PPP)—a sum of over Rs.500 crore is needed for it and the ministry is low on funds. The environment ministry’s budget was slashed by the finance minister in the Union budget presented by 25%. For 2015-16, the ministry’s budget is only around Rs.1,681.60 crore, which has already affected its plans for wildlife conservation. “There is already a fund crunch. In such a situation, there is no clarity on source of funds for NAQI. While the plan is to raise it under PPP, there is no surety, and that could seriously harm the project,” said a senior environment ministry official. NAQI will provide air pollution information in simple and understandable form. The service will be available in 10 cities from Monday. A similar service is already provided by the US embassy in Delhi. Several reports in the past few months have found Delhi to be the world’s most polluted city. According to a World Health Organization (WHO) study, 13 Indian cities figure among the 20 most polluted cities of the world. According to environment minister Prakash Javadekar, the service will be expanded to 46 cities with a population of 1 million or more each and 20 state capitals in the next couple of years. The main aim of the project is to enhance public awareness and involvement in efforts to improve air quality. To begin with, the system will only give data about the quality of air, but the government plans to expand it further in the months ahead. Similar to systems in other countries, the environment ministry is thinking of giving daily health advisories to citizens. “But the problem is funds because, as per estimates, around Rs.520 crore would be required for so many new monitoring stations across many cities that can give real-time quality of air. We would utilize the currently installed stations in some cities. But we would also need to harmonize the whole system so that all stations follow a uniform model,” the environment ministry official added. “As an ideal PPP model is not a bad bet, there is no clarity on it. If things remains like this, the effort is doomed,” the official said. Asked about the funding crunch, environment secretary Ashok Lavasa said the plan is to involve private firms to overcome the problem. Members of civil society groups lauded the move, but admitted there was a challenge about the funds. “Right now, there are around 247 Indian cities that have some air-quality monitoring mechanisms and, of that, at least 16 have online real-time monitoring capabilities,” said Anumita Roychowdhury, executive director (research and advocacy) at Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), an environmental non-governmental organization (NGO). “Yes, funding is a challenge because air quality monitoring is expensive. But the good part is the government for the first time is making a serious effort to tell people about the daily quality of their air, which people can understand in a simple way.” “Once this system is rolled out, the next step would be to tackle pollution,” she added.