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If you live in the sprawling Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP) spread across northern India (as well as eastern Pakistan, southern Nepal and most of Bangladesh), you will live seven years less than people in other parts of the country.
That means if you are a resident of the states and Union territories of Bihar, Chandigarh, Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, your live will on average be shorter than your counterparts in the rest of India, as per a 2019 study by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC).
There are various reasons for this.
Smoke from crop fires is one of the main reasons, but not the only one. As per the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), influxes of dust from the Thar Desert to the west, motor vehicle emissions, industrial and construction activity, fireworks, and fires for heating and cooking, also produce particulate matter and other pollutants.
“Geography and weather can exacerbate the region’s poor air quality. Temperature inversions are common in November and December as cold air rolls off the Tibetan Plateau and mixes with smoky air from the Indo-Gangetic Plain. An inversion can function like a lid, with warm air trapping pollutants near the surface. The low-hanging haze becomes hemmed in between the Himalayas to the north and the Vindhya Range to the south,” according to NASA.
And that is not good news for those who live in this region. The IGP is home to 9 per cent of the global population. India occupies most of the IGP and forty per cent of its population lives on the Plain.
Air pollution soared 72 per cent from 1998 to 2016 in the IGP as per the University of Chicago study. The level didn’t meet the World Health Organization’s (WHO) guideline for fine particulate pollution, Down To Earth had reported in 2019.