DNA In-Depth: Delhi braces for smog-filled winters

If October brings festive cheer across the country, it is also the season that Delhi dreads.

The month spells pollution with a capital P for the city. Having earned a global notoriety for being one of the most polluted cities in the world, the national capital achieves new lows every Diwali, with its air quality reaching 'severe' mark brazenly and quickly. Wavering between an Air Quality Index (AQI) of 'poor' to 'very poor' for more than a week, Delhi's tryst with stubble burning has started early this year. DNA reviews if this premature onset of pollution has caught Delhiites off-guard and how grim the smog crisis will be this winter as the city remains on the verge of becoming a gas chamber.

Choking On Poison

Delhi's air quality has been slipping repeatedly since the beginning of October. Data collated by apex body Central Pollution Control Board shows an average variation of 270 to 320 AQI every day. PM 2.5 (particulate matter of diameter less than 2.5) and PM 10 (particles with diameter less than 10 micrometers) have been sharing space amongst themselves as primary pollutants, recording their presence manifolds beyond permissible limit. As neighbouring states of Haryana and Punjab start stubble burning in their fields, Delhi is gasping for breath. Its satellite towns of Gurugram, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, and Noida are also battling 'very poor' to 'poor' air quality at the moment. In 2017, PM 2.5 breached the 999 mark in Delhi, more than three times of what is considered harmful.

The Culprits

Stubble burning in northwest India is the main aggregator behind the perilous air that residents breathe during winter. Smoke and fine particulate matter combined with industrial, vehicular pollution, and dust due to construction, mix with fog to create a toxic blanket of smog.

"During winter, stable atmosphere (zero wind speed) decreases the capacity of aerosol to mix with air to 1 to 1.5 km vertically. Less height leads to thick smog, which needs strong gushes of winds to get dispersed," says a senior official of the Indian Meteorological Department. Since there is no wind activity in the region during winter, Delhi won't have any escape from smog in the coming months.

Meanwhile, farmers in Haryana and Punjab have begun burning their paddy fields with impunity to sow rabi crops despite the state authorities' blanket ban on farm fires. According to figures, 12 million tonnes of rice straw is burned in Punjab every year, emitting toxic gases like carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen oxide, sulphur oxide, carbon monoxide, and copious amount of particulate matter (PM). The smoke emanating from blazes in Karnal, Ambala, Yamunanagar, Kurukshetra in Haryana and Amritsar, and Bathinda region in Punjab forebodes ominous warning - smog is coming.

"Air turning unhealthy ahead of time should not be a surprise as Diwali generally overlaps with straw burning season. It is likely to be as dreadful as previous years with an additional whammy of prolonged smog because the festival is early," warns city-based environmentalist Chhavi Methi.

Cosmetic Initiatives

Having faced the wrath of what became infamous as the Great Smog of 2016, the Delhi government announced a long list of advance measures, most of which either remained on paper or became a cropper.

In November last year, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government unsuccessfully sprayed 75,000 litres of water in ITO from Vikas Minar, the tallest building of the area. The 50 minutes of aerial spraying could not deter PM2.5-ultrafine pollutant, that can enter our lungs if inhaled for long, from escalating. The CPCB data remained static.

"It was a foolhardy measure because water is not sufficient to combat deadly PM2.5. It only gave temporary relief of few hours. Such steps are insufficient for widespread and rampant pollution. We also need to factor in other areas like wind speed, size of droplets and nature of pollutants," says Dr Kushalpal Shante, former head of geography department at Government College, Sector 11, Chandigarh.

The government had also test fired an anti-smog gun in December 2017 at Anand Vihar, where pollution level was in 'severe' zone with an AQI of 413. However, there is no report on the impact of this instrument, which is expected to diffuse air-borne pollutants and dust.

The Anti-Pollution Towers installed by the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) at ITO have also failed to go past the pilot basis. Set up in February this year, the exhaust fans inside the towers were designed such to suck in PM2.5 and PM10, throwing out clean air. The DPCC had also decided to mechanically sweep national highways and Ring Road at night to settle dust. Its status too hangs in balance.

As air quality further plummeted in 2017, the government curbed all construction activity in Delhi, briefly, after being rapped by the National Green Tribunal (NGT). "Holding meetings, writing letters, and shifting responsibility from one to the other for non-performance can hardly be made an excuse for meeting such a bad environmental emergency," NGT chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar had observed.

Face-Off Between AAP and Centre

The impending pollution has, in the meanwhile, heated up political battles. Mincing no words, the Delhi government has threatened to move court if state governments fail to alleviate stubble burning.

"In case effective steps to mitigate the menace of stubble burning are not initiated by the respective state governments, the Delhi government may be left with no other option but to knock the doors of appropriate courts of law to seek their intervention and seek directions for time-bound effective actions by the Centre and concerned state governments," Delhi Environment Minister Imran Hussain had said on October 8. He has reasoned that unchecked burning of straw is adversely affecting the ambient air quality of Delhi and the government is not willing to keep at stake its citizens' health. "Since the source of problem-stubble burning remains active, I am afraid we will be asphyxiating again in winters," Shante adds.