Publicity-hunters are creating antipathy if not animosity against green issues. The National Green Tribunal and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal are leading the national capital to chaos in the name of checking pollution. They are trying to do something that a city with poor transport link is bound to collapse.

The NGT and MrKejriwal have one concern: They want to be in the focus of the media, ignoring townships like Ferozabad and Moradabad which have 10 times higher particulate matter than Delhi. Who cares for such remote places! It would not help them be in the eyes of the media blitzkrieg.

The economic cost of ban decisions is too heavy on the industry, commuters and the people. The impending traffic dislocation from the New Year day is going to cost millions in terms of man-hours lost and in business matters.

The NGT and Delhi regime decisions are impractical, highly inflationary and perturbing. A car is registered for 15 years and can have a longer life if maintained well. What the NGT is doing to limit its life for 10 years is illegal, unethical and unwise.

The Tughlaqi decision of the NGT of banning registration of diesel vehicles sounds strange. If the NGT is so concerned about diesel pollution, it should order closure of all units that produce diesel vehicles. The Supreme Court realised the folly and restored registration of light-duty diesel commercial vehicles in Delhi for “dependence on such vehicles for supply of essential”".

The court’s decision to double super tax for trucks passing through Delhi, however, lacks rationality. It is not a tax on the trucks but on the poor consumers. The court needs to revise its decision.

Delhi’s odd-even road rationing scheme has been criticised as confusing and unpredictable. How would it reduce pollution? No one knows. Won’t people buy two cars so that their movements are not hit? A study by IIT-Kanpur suggests that road dust and two-wheelers cause more pollution. Should we ban two-wheelers?

Some may ask if MrKejriwal is in league with car manufacturers and wants to boost their sales. He should know (but how can he?) that Delhi Metro is virtually collapsing as Delhi has only a rickety bus service and fleecing three-wheeler auto-rickshaws, who are now being promoted by the Chief Minister. So, how would Delhiites travel to their places of work? Nobody seems to have concern for them. People have only to rue for their decision of electing a flip-flop leader.

With such whimsical policies, knee-jerk reactions, even unfortunately by the apex court banning sale of diesel cars and SUVs above 2000cc and entry of commercial vehicles to Delhi, the auto-makers have rightly said that India was now an unpredictable market. The developed world does not mind having a Euro-4 diesel vehicle across Europe and the US. The policy flip-flop is bound to hit the investment climate that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is assiduously trying to build.

The NGT has also taken a decision to hit the tourism industry in the remote Rohtang Pass of Himachal Pradesh. It has levied Rs500 as tax for each vehicle going to Rohtang and even stopped para-gliding in the “eco-sensitive” area. It has banned rafting at Rishikesh. The NGT is not cleaning the areas but robbing the livelihood of lakhs of locals dependent on adventure tourism.

Why is the NGT quiet on stopping the flow of Ganga at Tehri? It is threatening Himalayan ecology and virtually leading to a desertification of the northern Gangetic plains. Without its natural flow, neither can the Ganga be cleaned nor can man-made disasters be averted. The Tehri, dam bursting at seams during the Uttrakhand disaster, inundated vast stretches in Uttar Pradesh.

The NGT neither bothered about the loss of 263km of dense Western Ghat forests in Shivamogga in Karnataka to plantations over the past four years. Bangalore itself lost 15 times the size of Lalbagh and Cubbon Park — two proud green spaces of the city — since 2013, the Forest Survey of India has reported. It has so far not acted on turning the green Dehradun tea belt into a posh real estate.

The NGT can ask the Government to extend subsidies and encourage manufacturers to promote low-cost electric and solar-powered vehicles. Why cannot it ask the Government to fix a target that, by 2020, 15 per cent to 20 per cent of public vehicles would be electrically operated? A large oil producing country, Norway, has the highest penetration of 12 per cent electric vehicles. India has to go beyond cosmetic introduction of electric buses and publicity stunts by different Governments. There has to be a policy for hybrid and electric vehicles as also for the creation of infrastructure for them.