Polluted Air

Polluted Air

While the rest of the country has been closely following Delhi’s struggle with polluted air, the action is shifting eastwards. Kolkata is now the most polluted city in India — this should serve a warning to other city administrations not to take things easy. While geographical and other factors lend a different character to every city’s efforts to combat pollution, there are common patterns, and of course, the damage polluted air can do to people everywhere is the same. We are not just talking about noxious gases of carbon, nitrogen or sulphur here. The deadlier killers are the fine particles that float unseen, passing right through pollution masks and filters to lodge in the bronchi and lungs to trigger respiratory diseases, or worse, lung cancer. Such suspended particulate matter (SPM) with diameters smaller than 2.5 micrometer can settle as layers of plaque in the arteries, increasing the likelihood of paralytic strokes and cardiovascular problems. SPM can wreak havoc on key organs like the kidneys, the reproductive system as well as the brain; in case of children, it can cause low IQ levels, doctors warn. In a study by World Health Organization (WHO) for year 2016, India lost 101,788 children aged below five due to air pollution. The warning to Kolkata was served in May this year when WHO data showed the city’s air quality deteriorating fastest among Indian cities from 2015 to 2016. Presently, the city’s air quality index (AQI) is in the ‘very poor’ range of 301 to 400. From available reports over past several years, Kolkata’s worsening air quality has been ascribed to factors including lack of sufficient open spaces and ‘green lungs’ in the city, public vehicles like buses running primarily on diesel, large numbers of auto-rickshaws running on noxious diesel-kerosene-LPG mixture, wide use of banned non-cooking coal for cooking purposes, and power plants running on coal. The absence of any initiative by Kolkata administration to combat air pollution has been criticised by environmentalists, who have pointed to CNG-run vehicles in Delhi and restrictions like odd and even numbered vehicles allowed to ply on different days. But Delhi’s ‘odd-even’ experiment has been abandoned this year, even as its air quality index fluctuates between ‘poor’ (201 to 300) and ‘very poor’.

As per government data, the transportation sector has been the biggest contributor to particulate matter in Delhi; on average, 11 lakh vehicles enter the capital city, of which two-fifth are from outside and can bypass Delhi once the under-construction highways are completed. This apart, construction activities, emissions from industries and thermal power plants, and stubble burning in crop-fields of neighbouring States are also major factors choking Delhi. A concerned Supreme Court has already prohibited the plying of 15-year-old petrol and 10-year-old diesel vehicles in the national capital region. The situation is so bad that doctors are talking about every Delhite having become a veritable smoker, passively inhaling smoke equivalent to 15-20 cigarettes per day. “The world has turned the corner on tobacco. Now it must do the same for the ‘new tobacco’ — the toxic air that billions breathe every day,” so warns WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. In various world air pollution rankings, Delhi consistently figures as the most polluted city, followed by several Indian cities in Top 10 or 20 lists; no wonder, India has overtaken China as the country worst affected by air pollution. Yet administrations in city after city in the country are loath to take up round-the-year campaigns to improve air quality. The idea seems to be to wait for the rains to come and wash down the pollutants. But not just seasonal tourists, even residents may turn their backs to polluted cities, as is said to be happening in some degree in Delhi. As for Guwahati, city planners cannot afford to be complacent. Unless concrete steps are taken to do something about its clogged roads, haphazard construction activities and earth cutting in the hills, the capital city of Assam and gateway to the Northeast may soon be gasping for breathable air.

Naming Defaulters

The Central government and the Reserve Bank are on loggerheads over the amount of reserve RBI should be holding — should it be as much as 26.5 percent of RBI assets currently, as compared to the global median of 16 percent in other central banks? But when it comes to coyness about naming wilful defaulters, both the government and RBI are on the same page. So much so, that the Central Vigilance Commissioner has now asked the Prime Minister’s Office, the Finance Ministry and the RBI to make public the letter of former RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan on bad loans. CIC Sridhar Acharyulu has also issued show-cause notice to RBI Governor Urjit Patel for ‘dishonouring’ a Supreme Court order to disclose the wilful defaulters’ list. However, Rajan has clarified that his missive to the PMO in 2015 was about bank fraudsters, not wilful defaulters. While bank fraudsters have been regularly fleeing the country (23 in past 4 years, alleges the Opposition), wilful defaulters too have been treated with kid gloves by successive governments on the plea that naming them publicly will ‘hurt business confidence’ (what about investors needing to know whether to put their money on such defaulters’ enterprises?). As to whether exposing details of loan default is breach of contract between the bank and its borrower, the apex court has already clarified that the RBI is not in any such fiduciary relationship with any bank. The positions of both the government and the RBI are thus untenable on wilful bank defaulters.

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