The University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute, in its Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) report for 2024, said that the most polluted region of India, the northern plains, lose 5.4 years of life expectancy due to air pollution. 

Politicians and bureaucrats have been blamed for the inadequate policy response — and rightly so — but the bigger problem may lie in the wrong diagnosis. Most of the blame has been apportioned to vehicular emissions, but this doesn’t seem to be very accurate.

There are 473 vehicles per thousand inhabitants in Delhi, whereas Brussels has 570 cars per thousand. Yet, Brussels is the cleanest city in the world, according to IQAir, a Swiss air quality technology company. Rome, the second cleanest city, had 675 vehicles for a thousand people in Italy in 2021.

In general, the Air Quality Index (AQI) is far higher in poor countries than in richer ones. We cannot wait for India to become developed ‘Viksit Bharat’ to breathe easy. It would be instructive to go beyond lazy analysis and fashionable activism, which invariably leads to phony solutions like smog towers (nobody knows what happened to them), the odd-even mechanism, and now artificial rain.

A 2013 study by the Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur found that road dust contributed maximum, 56 per cent, to PM10 emissions, followed by industry (10 per cent) and vehicles (9 per cent) in Delhi. Road dust was also the top contributor to PM2.5 emissions (38 per cent), followed by vehicles (20 per cent), domestic fuel burning (12 per cent) and industry (11 per cent).

Another IIT-Kanpur study in July 2021, also found non-vehicular sources of pollution. It said that in summers 52 per cent of Delhi’s PM2.5 concentration was because of dust. 

In March last year, another authoritative study by a large number of reputed institutions on the subject found that in winters the real reason was biomass burning. The US Energy Information Administration defines biomass as “renewable organic material that comes from plants and animals”. It includes wood and wood processing wastes, agricultural crops and waste materials, biogenic materials in municipal solid waste, and animal manure and human sewage.

The study, led by IIT-Kanpur, was carried out by 19 scholars and experts from the Physical Research Laboratory, IIT Delhi, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) Switzerland, and University Helsinki, Finland. Researchers Suneeti Mishra and Sachchida Nand Tripathi, both from the Department of Civil Engineering, IIT-Kanpur, co-authored the paper.

The study was published in the Nature Geoscience, in which the scholars “observe[d] intense and frequent nocturnal particle growth events during haze development in Delhi from measurements of aerosols and gases during January-February at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi... We estimate that this process is responsible for 70 per cent of the total particle-number concentration during haze”.

Further, “the condensation of primary organic vapours from biomass burning is the leading cause of the observed growth”. It added “As uncontrolled biomass burning for residential heating and cooking is rife in the Indo-Gangetic plain, we expect this growth mechanism to be a source of ultrafine particles, affecting the health of 5 per cent of the world’s population and impacting the regional climate.”

That is, 40 crore people are seriously suffering because of biomass burning which, as we noticed, is not restricted to stubble burning. 

One reason is that 41 per cent of Indians still use wood, cow dung, or other biomass as cooking fuel, emitting about 340 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the environment every year, according to a report by the independent thinktank Centre for Science and Environment. This, it added, is around 13 per cent of India’s greenhouse gas emissions. Particulate concentrations get out and hurt even those who use clean fuel for cooking. 

Then there is also the issue of lighting fires to keep warm, especially on winter nights. A lot of people from the economically weaker sections burn wood, cardboards, papers, even plastics to keep warm. Last year, the local authorities in the national capital tried to discourage this practice, but it continues in not just Delhi but also in adjoining areas. 

While the authorities should be stricter in implementing a ban on burning biomass, they should also provide the poor with some alternatives like electric heaters. They must also ensure that the garbage is not burnt, especially in winters.

The use of water sprinklers on roads is common these days, but we must remember that it is just a palliative, a short-term measure. The real solution is to ensure that dust does not arise in the first place. The authorities should check soil erosion; efforts must be made to augment vegetation.

The common feature of all efforts to check pollution is that they are all local. The local and state authorities in Delhi-NCR have to address this issue. They would do well to focus on the containment of biomass burning and dust generation without losing the drive to bring down vehicular emissions. 

(The writer is a freelance journalist. Views are personal)