GOVTS WAKING UP TO DELHI’S AIR POLLUTION

It is heartening that the Narendra Modi government has woken up to the need to take decisive action to tackle the horrendous problem of air pollution in Delhi, though belatedly. Leaving it to the Delhi government of Arvind Kejriwal and to the stubble burning states of Punjab and Haryana which were playing havoc with the environment amounted to gross disregard of duty by the Centre. It just wasn’t Kejriwal’s cup of tea and the Centre should have known this well and proper. Kejriwal and New Delhi were indulging in a game of one-upmanship, each trying to show the other down while the capital city gasped for breath. The AAP chief had swept the last Assembly elections blaming all and sundry for the problems of Delhi. With the next elections due shortly, the electorate was bound to ask for his report card which would show huge lapses.

Even now, with the Prime Minister’s office stepping in with a host of firefighting measures, there can be no guarantee that there would be a dramatic improvement in the Air Quality Index which measured an alarming 494 on Sunday in the national capital. Merely calling a review meeting on air pollution for Delhi and its surrounding areas cannot be itself a solution. Strong pro-active follow-up steps would need to be taken to stem the rot. It is some relief that the Cabinet Secretary would be monitoring the situation with the states of Delhi, Punjab and Haryana on a daily basis. The chief secretaries of the three states in turn have also been told to monitor the situation in various districts. But more than anything else, the basic attitude has to change both on the part of Delhi, of the Centre and of Punjab and Haryana.

The Aam Aadmi Party that rules Delhi has claimed that the Centre had postponed three review meetings in September and October last, showing how the issue was treated with characteristic disdain and indifference. The Centre’s claim that the Principal Secretary had presided over a review meeting on October 24 and that the Cabinet Secretary too had met stake holders earlier on October 4 on the issue sound like lame excuses. The fact is that the Delhi deterioration in air quality shows that there were no firefighting measures in the crucial period that helped improve the situation even marginally. Meetings indeed mean nothing if there is no follow-up worth the name. Stubble burning in Punjab and Haryana exacerbated the problem greatly with not even a public appeal to the two states from the Union Environment Minister. If the right message is to go down, Environment Minister Prakash Javdekar must be called to account besides a whole range of bureaucrats and politicians. The Prime Minister must indeed wield the stick to set new standards of accountability in governance.

Now, the Punjab and Haryana governments have been asked to send enforcement teams across districts to ensure that stubble burning is stopped. But one fails to see why this was not done earlier when the air was thickening with pollution. The State governments abdicated their responsibility fearing that that would annoy their farm vote banks. Here’s one more case of how vote bank politics has played truant with national interest and general public good. The dust raised by construction activity is also a major cause of air pollution. The authorities have now woken up to the need to impose heavy penalties at construction sites that are emitting dust in Delhi and its neighbourhood. The enforcement teams will patrol the seven major industrial clusters in the National Capital Region as well as key traffic corridors. Whether all these reforms will be implemented as a matter of routine or they will taper off on first signs of improvement is a moot point. But there is no denying that the effort has to be sustained and regular. We can hardly talk of countries shifting their base of manufacturing and/or marketing from China to India en masse if there is no sustainability in nurturing the environment and ensuring clean and healthy air to breathe. Some lessons need to be learnt and it is apt that the Supreme Court has also decided to monitor the progress of work.