If you thought leaving Delhi was one option to escape its toxic air, you might need to think again about where you’re going. For, different versions of the Delhi story appear to be playing out in the other metros, too, and in even some of the smaller cities.
On the WHO’s 2014 database of air pollution across cities, it’s not just Delhi that is more polluted than Beijing, the world’s second-most polluted national capital. A number ofIndian cities are in between, according to Central Pollution Control Boardmeasurements of that dangerous invisible dust called RSPM.
Mumbai, despite the sea breeze, is on that WHO list; Kolkata is shrouded in a dust cloud caused by a construct boom; Chennai is dealing with a spurt in RSPM due to brick kilns and road dust. As for Bangalore, researchers are connecting the dots between a rise in RSPM levels and deaths due to lung cancer.
The big hope now is that Delhi can show the way once again: from the historic switchover of all transport vehicles to CNG by 2002, which was followed by 60 other Indiancities, to the latest directives by the National Green Tribunal to ban all diesel vehicles over 10 years old from the capital’s roads and put a lid on construction waste.
“Delhi is a mirror for the rest of the country,” said M C Mehta, a lawyer whose petition in Supreme Court on pollution led to a series of orders and the introduction of CNG. “If you can’t clean your capital, what face will you show to the world? There should be at least one city that you build as a model that other cities can replicate.”
Mumbai: Vehicles villains
In Mumbai, officials said the sheer number of vehicles has negated the advantage of the winds from the sea. In 2013, the city had 21.87 lakh vehicles on the road, 50% more than in 2006, according to the state transport department. “The increase in vehicles is defeating the efforts of bringing in more stringent emission norms,” said Dilip Boralkar, former member secretary of the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board and the Maharashtra Coastal Zone ManagementAuthority. “The only solution is a proper transportation policy and effective trafficmanagement, backed with well-planned infrastructure,” added Boralkar, who was a member of the expert committee appointed by the Supreme Court for monitoring air quality at Taj Mahal.
Kolkata: Building a disaster
Kolkata too benefits from coastal winds but experts say that advantage is being frittered away. The rising danger is dust from construction, according to a study by the West Bengal Pollution Control Board
