Thirteen of the 20 cities with the dirtiest air were in India, with New Delhi, Patna, Gwalior and Raipur occupying the top four places, according to the WHO study released in May 2014.

So, when the Supreme Court finally acted in December 2015, after months of mounting concern at the deteriorating quality of Delhi’s air and its impact on the health of citizens, it should not have come as a surprise.

In one fell swoop, the apex court slapped a ban on the sale of high-end diesel passenger vehicles with a capacity of 2 litres and above in the National Capital Region (NCR) centred on Delhi till 31 March, made it mandatory for taxis to shift to compressed natural gas (CNG) fuel, doubled entry tax on trucks driving into the city and took 10-year-old commercial vehicles powered by diesel off the roads.

And in January, the court barred heavy commercial vehicles from entering Delhi from national highways 2 (Kolkata-Delhi), 10 (Punjab-Delhi) and 58 (Uttarakhand-Ghaziabad-Delhi) as well as state highway 57 (Baghpat-Ghaziabad-Delhi).

More action followed, this time from the executive.

India will move up to the toughest emission standards of Bharat Stage-VI (BS-VI) from the current BS-IV by 2020, skipping an intermediate level, transport minister Nitin Gadkari said, also in January.

Separately, Gadkari said the government will soon come out with an integrated policy to scrap commercial vehicles that are over 10 years old to check exhaust commissions.

Desperate time, desperate measure

And the AamAadmi Party (AAP) government of Delhi did its bit with a fortnight-long experiment until 15 January under which only cars with licence plates ending in odd and even numbers were allowed to ply on alternate days.

The residents of Delhi, not exactly known for following the rules, complied admirably by all accounts, partly out of their own concern over the need to clean up the city’s foul air and partly deterred by a fine of Rs.2,000.

“As far as air pollution in Delhi is concerned, desperate times require desperate measures. This was long-pending,” said AnumitaRoychowdhury, executive director at the Centre for Science and Environment, a non-governmental organization.

Opinion was divided over the difference it made to Delhi’s air quality although the experiment succeeded at least in reducing traffic congestion in the city of 16.8 million people. The Delhi government intends to perform an encore in the summer during the school holidays.

According to the 2014 WHO report that ranked it the world’s most polluted city, New Delhi had an annual average of 153 micrograms of small particulates, known as PM2.5, per cu. m. To put it in perspective, the Chinese capital Beijing was in 77th place with a PM2.5 reading of 56. PM2.5 are tiny, poisonous particles that are blamed for causing respiratory disease, lung cancer and heart trouble. Delhi’s air quality had become so foul that the Delhi high court last year likened the city to a “gas chamber”.

Copping the blame

Much of the blame for the rising pollution levels has been laid at the door of the automobile industry, which has been worst hit by the affirmative action launched by the courts and the executive.

Delhi accounts for 7% of the about 2.6 million passenger vehicles sold in the country every year. It has 8.5 million registered vehicles—up 97% from 2000—and adds 1,400 new cars to its streets every day.

The automobile industry accounts for almost 7% of India’s gross domestic product (GDP) and employs about 19 million people, both directly and indirectly. India is the seventh largest automobile producer in the world with an average annual production of 19.75 million vehicles.

Understandably, the auto industry says it is being made a scapegoat.

Ask Pawan Goenka, executive director of utility vehicle maker Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd, why the Indian auto industry always reacts to changes in regulation rather than anticipating and preparing for them, and he gets upset.

“It is such a wrong view that everybody has about us. Why don’t you count what the auto industry has done. In 10 years, we have gone through three emission norms—BS-II, BS-III and BS-IV,” Goenka said about the industry’s reluctance to adopt the BS-VI emission norms.

For decades, India subsidized the price of diesel. As the price difference between diesel and petrol widened, many customers started opting for cars with diesel engines. Firms invested in diesel engine capacities. In 2012-13, diesel cars and sport utility vehicles, or SUVs, accounted for 47% of all vehicles sold.

Heavy investments

The government eventually stopped subsidizing diesel in 2014. In the year to March 2015, only 37% of cars and SUVs sold ran on diesel. That has hurt auto companies that invested in new lines for diesel engines.

The industry wants more time to switch to BS-VI norms. It also wants an assured supply of fuel that meets BS-VI standards. BS-IV fuel, for instance, is available in just 50 cities more than five years after India adopted that as its norm. According to Goenka’s estimates, the industry will have to invest between Rs.50 crore and Rs.100 crore to upgrade every car model to BS-VI norms. The total investment, including the money that auto component suppliers will need to spend, could range between Rs.50,000 crore andRs.60,000 crore. “It is very easy to say (to switch to new norms). (But) where does the investment come from? Money does not grow on trees,” Goenka said.

Mahindra and Mahindra, along with Tata Motors Ltd and Mercedes-Benz India Ltd, are the firms worst hit by the apex court ban on the sale of diesel vehicles with over 2-litre capacity in NCR. Although NCR accounts for only 7% of total auto sales (across segments and categories), judicial and legislative activism could eventually mandate the use of clean technologies and fuels across the country.

Ecosystem overhaul

That would require auto makers to make a series of adjustments to their operations and prepare for a greener future, including placing greater store by CNG, hybrid and electric vehicles, downsizing diesel engines to meet revised standards, finding new export markets and sharpening their focus on petrol models.

That will entail a complete overhaul of the ecosystem, given that heavy commercial vehicles and passenger vehicles work differently. Commercial vehicle makers would need to fit their products with a diesel particulate filter or a urea-based selective catalytic reduction system to reduce nitrogen oxide in exhaust fumes. The government will have to make urea available everywhere and someone has to make sure the “fellow puts urea in the fuel tank”, said C.V. Raman, head of engineering and research and development, Maruti Suzuki India Ltd.

The problem is, there is no established inspection and maintenance regime in India, although it was first proposed in 1998. Also, India is heavily import dependent for urea, the most widely used and highly subsidized fertilizer in the country.

Every year, India imports over a quarter of its urea requirement. For instance, in 2014-15, of the 31 million tonnes (mt) urea consumed domestically, 8.75 mt were met through imports.

Coping with change

The spectre of the shift has sent some auto firms into a tizzy. After coping with a decline in sales for two consecutive years, in 2012-13 and 2013-14, when India’s economy went into a downturn, they have been trying to cope with vehicle safety issues and demand for star ratings based on average fuel efficiency.

Now, the faster switch-over to BS-VI norms will mean steep investments and make their vehicles more expensive, although whether it will discourage potential buyers remains to be seen. “The upgrade to BS-VI norms may alone increase the cost of diesel vehicles by Rs.1 lakh,” said Kenichi Ayukawa, managing director, Maruti Suzuki India. “The point is how to minimize that cost?”

To be sure, the auto industry does have a point when it claims that it alone isn’t to blame for environmental pollution and shouldn’t be made to pay the whole price.

According to a report by the Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur, a big contributor to Delhi’s air pollution is road dust that accounts for about 35% of PM2.5 in the air, followed by vehicles, which account for an average of 25% PM2.5 levels, going up to 36% in the winters.

The other big contributors include domestic cooking, power plants and industries.

Bite the bullet

Even so, as the second largest contributor to air pollution, vehicles are more culpable than other key pollution sources such as trash burning, construction dust and diesel generator sets, says the Centre for Science and Environment’s Roychowdhury

“If secondary particulate matters are considered—formed by gases emitted by vehicles and industry—vehicles’ share to overall pollution gets further enhanced. This helps us to understand the danger from vehicular emissions,” Roychowdhury said.

She thinks the auto industry will be better off making the investments necessary to switch to cleaner technologies and fuels now to benefit from long-term profitable growth.

“Experience shows a direct leapfrog to BS-VI standards makes more economic sense than spreading investments over several incremental steps. Across industry, improving and integrating resource efficiency makes both business and environmental sense. This will make production cost-effective,” she said.

Additional pressure will also build up from the government’s own target of reducing the energy intensity of its GDP by 35% under its commitment to the UN climate change summit in Paris last year.

“We will try to find solutions. We are positive. We are helping the industry but we are not going to compromise on issues related to pollution,” Gadkari said in an interview.