Indian factories and cities unload pollutants and untreated organic material into our rivers, lakes and ponds. This makes their water unfit for drinking or bathing or both, depending on the extent of pollution. More than 320 out of 521 rivers monitored for water quality by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) in 2016 were found to be polluted (whose water is not fit for drinking). A 2015 CPCB report found that the number of polluted rivers in India increased from 121 to 275, and to 351 in 2018.
In 2019, as per the World Air Quality Report, India had the highest population-weighted annual average particulate matter (PM)2.5 exposure in the world at 83.2 micrograms per cubic metre (µg/m3) of air. The World Health Organization’s (WHO) safe limit for weighted annual average PM2.5 exposure is only 10 µg/m3. India was in the least healthy category of exposure, between 75 and 85 µg/m3. Over the period 2010–19, the country had seen the third-highest increase in exposure after Nigeria and Bangladesh at 6.5 µg/m3 over this period. India’s general quality of air suggests a state of emergency.
India’s air, water and environment are all severely polluted. Modi 2.0 needed to address the pollution problem as an emergency.
Control of the pollution scheme did not make much difference
The Control of Pollution scheme has been operational since 2018. The main objectives of the scheme are to monitor air quality across the country and take appropriate mitigation measures, besides monitoring water quality and noise levels.
There are four components of the scheme:
financial Assistance for Abatement of Pollution (AAP) to the weaker state pollution control boards/ pollution control committees (SPCBs/PCCs) and to the central pollution control board (CPCB),
Managing the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP),
Measuring quality through the Environmental Monitoring Network Programme (EMNP), and
Conducting related research and outreach programmes.
Actual expenditure under the CoP scheme was Rs 599.91 crore in 2022– 23 and pegged at Rs 848 crore in 2023–24 RE. The expenditure under the programme has gradually increased from Rs 409 crore in 2019–20. The funds under the scheme are essentially released to the CPCB, which, in turn, passes on most of it to the state pollution control boards.
The funds under the AAP component are spent on pollution abatement activities, including pollution assessment – source monitoring, monitoring of ambient air, water and noise, conducting technical studies and the like. This component functions more as maintenance of the system created to monitor quality.
The NCAP component, initiated in January 2019, supports a more focused intervention. The objective was to improve air quality in 131 select cities by reducing the PM10 concentration over the baseline 2017 by 20–30 per cent by 2024 (later revised to 40 per cent by 2025–26 relative to base year 2019–20). A total of 885 stations have been made operational to monitor air quality in these 131 cities. The MoEFCC Annual Report 2023–24 reports that city-level action plans had been prepared for all the cities. Further, ninety cities showed improvement in air quality in 2022–23 compared to base 2017 and fifteen cities conformed to national ambient air quality standards compared with six cities in 2017. Unfortunately, the extent of improvement in these ninety cities, even after the programme had run for more than four years, was not specified. Admittedly, in the forty-one remaining cities, the air quality deteriorated or stayed stagnant.
Environment Ministry kept diluting/postponing standards for thermal power plants
The MoEFCC notified eighty-one standards across industries, including for major polluting industries, such as thermal power plants, sugar industry, cement industry and fertilizer industry, among others. The implementation of standards, however, was not that satisfactory.
A case in point is the notification of stringent emissions limits issued for sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter, mercury and water usage in coal-based thermal power plants. The standards were first notified in 2015 and were to be complied with by 2017. In 2017, the power plants were granted a five-year extension (till December 2022) to meet the deadlines in a phased manner. Eleven plants in Delhi-NCR were to comply with the norms by 2019.
The MoEFCC kept diluting the standards after extending the deadline to 2019/2022. In June 2018, the water norms for units installed after January 2017 were diluted from 2.5 m3/MWh to 3 m3/MWh. In May 2019, the nitrogen oxide (NOx) norms for units installed in 2004–16 were diluted from 300 mg/ Nm3 to 450 mg/Nm3. In March 2021, the MoEFCC issued a notification specifying new deadlines for compliance, with the norms based on the location of the coal thermal power plants. In September 2022, the MoEFCC further extended the sulphur oxide (SOx) standards deadline to 2024.
There was only limited progress in making the thermal coal plants comply with the environmental standards, diluted notably in the nine years ending March 2024.
Commission on Air Quality made little difference to Delhi’s air pollution
The government, in a bid to deal with the rising air pollution in Delhi-NCR, first brought an ordinance on 29 October 2020 – the Commission for Air Quality Management in National Capital Region and Adjoining Areas Ordinance 2020 – to put in place an oversight body which would have functions, including laying down parameters of air quality and environmental pollutants, to inspect premises violating the law and ordering closure of non-abiding industries/plants.
After a little flip-flop in which the Commission was denotified, a statutory commission was constituted on 23 April 2021 through the Commission for Air Quality Management in NCR and Adjoining Areas Act, 2021. The adjoining areas where the act is in force include Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, and adjoining areas of the NCR region and Delhi, where any source of pollution is located and is causing an adverse impact on air quality in the National Capital Region (NCR).
As per a press release issued by the government in 2023, the Commission for Air Quality Management in NCR and Adjoining Areas (CAQM) did undertake “considerable action” for the prevention and control of air pollution in Delhi-NCR and adjoining areas, which resulted in “general improvements in the AQI level” of the NCT Delhi.
The press release further informed that the commission adopted an airshedlike approach and issued a comprehensive policy to curb air pollution in the NCR in July 2022. The policy has sector-wise action plans for the prevention and control of air pollution in the region by various sectors contributing to air pollution. The commission also issued seventy-eight directions and eleven advisories, besides many executive orders to various agencies concerned in the NCR, including the state governments of Punjab, NCTD and various bodies of the central and the state governments in the region.
Separately, a Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) was formulated and notified by the MoEFCC in January 2017 on the recommendation of CPCB for Delhi-NCR to tackle the issue of a sudden rise in air pollution levels. A comprehensive review of actions listed under GRAP was carried out by CPCB in 2020. Based on these inputs, the revised GRAP was published by the CAQM and further action was taken for its implementation.
While the government claimed improvement in air quality, the winter of 2023–24 witnessed the worst air pollution in Delhi and NCR. The “End of Winter Report 2023–24: Spread and scale of air pollution crisis in India’ issued by the Centre for Science and Environmental Analysis, noted that the ‘toxic air pollution came back to trouble the public yet again this winter”.
The air quality began to worsen much earlier than usual due to low rains in September–October and was made even worse due to low wind speed throughout the season. The report concluded that North and East India remained the most polluted regions of the country. The “air quality in North India was significantly worse this winter compared to the previous winter”. There was no improvement in the quality of air in Delhi, the seat of the Modi government, during 2019–24.
Excerpted with permission from The Ten Trillion Dream Dented: The State of the Indian Economy and Reforms in Modi 2.0 (2019-2024), Subhash Chandra Garg, Penguin Indian.
