AIR QUALITY STILL ‘SEVERE’
NEW DELHI: As Delhi’s air quality continues to be “severe” category on Tuesday, Environmental experts have said concrete step needs to be taken to curb stubble burning, keeping in mind the condition of farmers. The national Capital’s AQI started dipping from Monday and reached “severe” category by Tuesday evening. Environment Ministry’s weather monitoring agency has also predicted that the quality may deteriorate further in the coming days.
However, the quality came down further with areas such as Anand Vihar (450), Bawana (458), Dwarka sector – 8 (453), ITO (437), Wazirpur (454), Sirifort (426), Okhla (434) reaching severe category. Centre government’s System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting And Research (SAFAR), in its daily forecast predicted, “No sudden recovery is expected under this condition at least for the next two days and AQI is likely to deteriorate further towards severe plus category.”
Meanwhile, SAFAR has predicted a decreasing trend in stubble fire counts, however with the change in direction of wind, the quality in Delhi has gone down. Speaking on the seriousness of tackling the stubble burning environmentalist Vikrant Tongad said a concrete step needs to be taken, keeping in view that the farmers also don’t suffer in the whole scuffle.
“Farmers should be given a direct incentive per quintal, if one has to stop crop burning. At the moment, our problem is that we are giving subsidy on machinery, but that can’t control stubble burning and is not the ultimate approach” said Tongad. He added that direct subsidy to the farmers will help in bringing down stubble burning. SAFAR in its report has said that the sky is likely to be partly cloudy for the next two days under the influence of approaching western disturbance but no precipitation is expected. The condition may slightly improve by November 15.
Meanwhile, Tuesday brought bad news for residents of Gurugram on the air quality. The blow of northwesterly winds in recent days had ensured that the air quality improved to the levels that it reached the moderate category.
However, repeated deterioration of air from thereon and the stalling of blow of winds resulted in the air of the city plummeting to severe levels. According to the data by CPCB the air quality index in Gurugram hovered from 400-420 micrograms per cubic meter which comes in the severe category. The only silver lining came from the fact that the situation may improve postNovember 14.