A report card of AAP's Green Budget 2018-19

Pollution of every kind is just so much part of a Delhite's life. that nothing alarms anymore. Little wonder that the Aam Aadmi Party government announced a Green Budget to get recreate breathing space in the city. Under this, 26 anti-pollution programmes have been listed. These span four departments, namely Environment, Transport, Power, and Public Works.

Green cover

Some of what these programmes are expected to do is include a real-time, round-the-year study in partnership with the University of Washington, and replace all street lights on PWD roads with energy efficient LED lights. Plus an extensive tree plantation drive, and new city forests in Jaunapur, Ayanagar, Dera Mandi and Bela Farm among others. As incentivizing steps, the budget has also declared sops for switching to non-polluting fuel, including 50 percent concession in registration charges for private cars with factory-fitted CNG kits. The government had additionally, decided to woo restaurants with a subsidy of Rs 5,000 per 'tandoor' to replace coal-based ones with electricity or gas-based variants to reduce air pollution. To counter it further, a subsidy of up to Rs 1 lakh has been offered to industries in approved industrial areas, to switch to piped natural gas from existing polluting fuels. Meanwhile, a subsidy of up to Rs 30,000 is also on offer to replace diesel generator sets with clean fuel ones.

More buses

The Green Budget also seeks to empower the transport system with a larger fleet of buses and last mile connectivity. The government is expected to buy 11000 buses to make public transport more accessible, apart from bringing on roads 1000 electric buses and 900 feeder buses for Delhi Metro Rail Corporation. While the claims were made in March, it was only last week that the government conducted trial runs of two electric buses, which will be inducted in the fleet only in 2019 when the smog season would have passed. "This is the problem with the government's combat mechanism- the machinery moves at an extremely slow pace. Why did it take them so many months to start the trials, leave alone making it a reality?, asks Dr Priyanka Kulshreshtha, the lead researcher at Indian Pollution Control Association.

Parking Woes

On the other hand, the government has passed the buck to lack of parking space as the reason behind not procuring new buses. Interestingly, the present fleet has also been reduced from 5,852 buses to 5,425. "This is just a lame excuse. The government agencies knew about the challenges they were going to face and instead of addressing them, they chose to make other departments the scapegoat," says Barun Aggarwal is the chief executive officer and founder of Breathe Easy. "This is one of the foremost issues that need timely intervention. A well-oiled transport system including last mile connectivity will bring down the share of vehicular pollution considerably," he adds. After facing ire of the Environment Pollution (Prevention & Control) Authority (EPCA) and the NGT, the government, on Monday, wrote to the land-owning agency, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA), seeking 135 acres of land. In another decision, the Cabinet has said that it will increase the fleet by 2,000 more buses. It will be at least 6 months before anything will work on this front. Besides, even that fleet size will be insufficient.

Feeder problems

On the other hand, the DMRC's proposal to induct 427 air-conditioned feeders has been caught in cost warp. The State Transport Authority (STA) has reportedly found them to be an expensive fare compared to already functional cluster buses. Hence, the rail body has been asked to rework on it.

RFID for commercial vehicles

Another part of the Green Budget installation of Radio Frequency Identification smart tags at 13 toll collection booths, starting from Aya Nagar. The Delhi transport department was the nodal agency for the implementation of the project on a pilot basis by March this year. The idea was to decongest the roads and curtail air pollution. The project is lying in limbo as due to lack of funding.

Subsidy on CNG cars

The cabinet decided to offer 50 percent concession on registration of CNG cars to make them more popular among people. The status of this proposal is unknown. Repeated texts and calls to environment minister Imran Hussain and Environment Secretary AK Singh, went unanswered. Kulshreshtha, meanwhile, told DNA that there is no information about the proposal in the public domain, hastening to add that the idea is futile as it is marked with glaring inconveniences to people. "The city does not have enough CNG pumps, and the handful that are there, have long queues. Cost of this fuel has also increased. But there is still a silver lining in the long queues outside stations that show that people want to switch. The only thing that is stopping them from doing so is insufficient pumps," reasons the environmentalist who herself drives a CNG-car.

Waste burning

The municipal bodies have been assigned the job of monitoring waste burning and preventing fires. . While the MCD gets proactive only during smog season, the remaining part of the year, it seems to be business as usual for offenders.

ECC

The government has collected close to Rs 1800 crore as Environment Concession Charge from trucks entering Delhi. The specific purpose of ECC as mandated by the court is ' transport augmentation .' However. The utilization of this amount is unclear. According to transport secretary Varsha Joshi, the department has sought permission from the Supreme Court to use the money to buy electric buses and a final decision is awaited.

CONCESSION CHARGE

The govt has collected close to Rs 1,800 crore as Environment Concession Charge from trucks entering Delhi. The specific purpose of ECC as mandated by the court is ‘ transport augmentation’.