Wake up and smell the air

Our health is not on anybody’s agenda. Or, we just don’t seem to make the connections between the growing burden of disease and the deteriorating condition of our environment. We don’t really believe the science, which tells us each passing day how toxins affect our bodies, leading to high rates of both morbidity and mortality.

Smog has to be cleared

Losing after winning is the worst feeling possible. This is how I feel looking out of my window at a thick pall of black smog engulfing my city. It was this time of the year, exactly 15 years ago, when Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) began its right-to-clean-air campaign. The air in Delhi was so foul one could hardly breathe. That was a time when air pollution was an unknown curse.

Pollution: the great leveller

A harried parent called a few weeks ago. She wanted to know if the pollution levels in Delhi were bad and if so how bad. The answer was simple and obvious. But why do you need to know? Her daughter’s prestigious school (which I will leave unnamed) had sent a circular to parents, saying they are planning to shift to air-conditioned buses because they were worried about air pollution.

Diesel: when bad policy makes for toxic hell

Just consider. Every time petrol prices are raised, oil companies end up losing more money. Simply because the price differential between petrol and diesel increases further, and people gravitate towards diesel vehicles. More the use of diesel, more the oil companies bleed. Worse, we all bleed because diesel vehicles add to toxic pollution in our cities, which, in turn, adds to ill health and treatment costs.

The challenge of the chulha

About 24 years ago, I was in a house in a small village some distance from Udaipur town in Rajasthan. A government functionary was explaining how an improved chulha (cookstove) worked-- they had installed it in the kitchen. At that time, India was waking up to forests being devastated. It was believed then (wrongly, as it turned out) the key reason was poor people cutting trees to cook food. It was also being understood smoke from chulhas was carcinogenic and that women were worst hit by this pollution. The answer was to design improved chulhas--for better combustion and with a chimney.

We don't smell the air

I smelled the air of Bangalore last week. It was foul. I remembered how in the late 1990s, when Delhi's air was dark and dirty, we had run an advertisement in the newspapers "Roll down the window of your bullet-proof car, Mr Prime Minister, the security threat is not the gun it is the air of Delhi." Since then Delhi introduced compressed natural gas, it increased the number of buses, it got better quality fuel. With all this, the air got less dirty and less toxic. But now with each passing day, the city adds just below 1,000 new private vehicles.

Making space for emissions

What does the ubiquitous auto-rickshaw and the plush aeroplane have in common, other than getting us from one place to another? The auto-rickshaw, as India's largest manufacturer Rahul Bajaj will tell you, is the symbol of democratic mobility -- it provides transport for large numbers of people at what he says is affordable costs. But these vehicles are technology poor, and extremely polluting.

A joke we've played on ourselves

The charade over the oil price hike has been played out. On the one hand, the government pleads helplessness given the spiralling oil prices globally, on the other hand, the opposition -- right and left -- frets and fumes about increased price of diesel and petrol. They want the government to cut taxes and ask the public sector oil companies to take a further hit in their profits. In this interesting partnership of the right and the left parties, the overriding interests are that of middle-class Indians, couched in the name of the poor.

A little green thought

What should be the price of natural gas in India? Till now, gas was pumped by the public sector company, the Oil and Natural Gas Commission and piped and sold by another public sector concern, the Gas Authority of India Limited. The government administered the price. But with private players entering the fray, there is a demand for a price hike and for deregulation. Already, liquefied natural gas (lng) -- natural gas cooled to minus 160 c for easy transportation and then re-gassed for use -- is reaching Indian shores from Qatar.

Cars, more cars

I recently visited Bangalore, Chennai and Mumbai. The singular impression I have of all these cities, and of others I occasionally visit -- of course the one I live in, Delhi -- is one of noise, pollution, plastic, garbage and filth. But most of all what hits you is cities overrun by vehicles; cars, more cars. Every city is now bumper to bumper. Even Bangalore, the sanctuary city, is a car-mess.