Deadlines to break

Deadlines to break

While answering questions on a live chat on a website (www.chat.india-today.com), Delhi transport minister Parvez Hashmi abdicated all responsibility of the state government to ensure the implementation of the Supreme Court cng order. "The commitment made to the honourable courts are being done by the manufacturers that they will be able to supply all the vehicles booked by March 31, 2001. The ministry of petroleum said that they will make cng available for these many vehicles. The role of the state government is to play the role of the nodal agency...." When the state government is so unwilling about the issue, it is hardly difficult to predict the fate of the deadline. Several question marks remain to be answered by various parties in the Delhi cng episode.

Busmakers: Both Ashok Leyland and telco claim they can manufacture 500 buses per month from April 2001. This means 6,000 buses by September 2001 -- less than half the total number of buses that run in Delhi. While Ashok Leyland claims it has orders for 2,051 buses, telco has bagged 4,600 orders. By October 2001, telco would be able to deliver only 3,000 of these buses at the rate of 500 buses per month. How does the company plan to deliver the remaining 1,000?

Conversion agencies: The only certified agency to convert old buses to run on cng is Nugas. The company seems to have taken on more than it can handle. Nugas has already taken orders to convert 4,200 buses. They can convert only two buses each day. This means they can convert a maximum of 360 buses by October 2001, that is, if they work on all 30 days in a month. G V Subbarao of Nugas 'hopes' that their capacity will increase to five buses per day, which would mean a total of 900 buses by October 2001.

Rare Technologies has taken conversion orders for 3,000 buses. They charge Rs 10,000 as booking amount. But, the State Transport Authority (sta) has refused to grant permission to the company as it doesn't have all the certificates. Sheetal Singh of the company says all tests that have to be conducted at the Indian Institute of Petroleum, Dehradun, have been successfully completed. Only the test for electromagnetic interference remains to be done at the Vehicle Research and Development Establishment in Ahmednagar, Maharashtra. Singh says this would take one day. Rare Technology is ready to give an undertaking to sta that it will not perform any conversions before getting all the certificates in place. sta isn't willing to honour this undertaking.
Is retrofitment an option? So far there are not many takers for retrofitment of old diesel buses with new cng engines. Ashok Leyland has received retrofitment orders for about 180 buses. Bus operators consider retrofitment to be an expensive option for old buses. The plight of autorickshaws is no better. Shrimankar is the only agency that retrofits old autos to run on cng . They have booked orders for 18,590 conversions as of April 1, 2001. The total cost of conversion is Rs 21,700, but the booking amount is only Rs 1,000. Most autorickshaw drivers have gone in for conversion instead of buying new ones. A lot of drivers don't know how they will meet the remaining cost. Ram Nath Misra owns a petrol-driven autorickshaw that is about one year old. He is paying instalments for the loan he took to purchase the vehicle. He has paid Rs 1,000 to convert it to cng . "I have made the booking just to avert the crisis. I do not know where the rest of the money will come from."

Jignesh Dhruve, director of Srimankar Gas Car Services Private Ltd, does not think that this will be a problem. "We have tied up with private agencies that are willing to give loans at 20 per cent rate of interest." The Delhi Finance Corporation has reportedly sanctioned loans for 350 conversions. Dhruve is unhappy about an 8 per cent sales tax that the government is charging on cng conversion kits. "The cylinders and other cng equipment does not draw sales tax so why the retrofitment kits?" he questions. If the kits are exempted from the tax, it would reduce the cost of conversion by Rs 1,400, a substantial amount for autorickshaw drivers.

The Delhi Transport Corporation (dtc) has already run into trouble over converting its buses as none of the five applicants to its tender meet the technical criteria. There are others who are negotiating an entirely a different kind of deal with dtc . Optaire (India) Private Ltd, affiliated with a British company, has offered to lease and operate a large fleet of specially designed urban buses. The company says its buses are very expensive and much beyond what the dtc or private bus operators can afford to pay, hence it would prefer to run them on lease. dtc doesn't need to make any capital investments. But this company is negotiating to bring in urban diesel buses as well. The company is willing to bring in cng buses, if so desired by the government, but wants a firm commitment from the government on gas supply. Even so, the company would need six months for trials in the uk , three months to get the prototype certified in India, and eight to nine months to build up capacities to roll out 200 buses per month. The Delhi government is apparently examining this proposal. Its main reservation is on the counter guarantee that they would need to give for a long-term lease of 10 years.

Clearly, it is the extremely small numbers of the players in the market that is strangulating the entire conversion process. The answer should have been to create healthy competition by inviting more Indian and foreign players. But no advertisement was taken out in international newspapers. Rules were set in a way that companies could not follow them easily. Government processes need to be streamlined to get more agencies in the market -- and fast. As experts in the areas of transport and environmental management point out, the quintessential question is of finance -- a large amount of money is required to finance the conversion of Delhi's public transport to cng and the private operators do not have that kind of capital.

The Delhi government won't solve this problem by playing into the hands of the diesel lobby. Nor will all the political posturing -- making statements that have contempt of court written all over -- help. The Delhi government needs to get out of the confusion it has imposed upon itself. Saying that cng is an experimental technology won't help. It would do better to address issues of ensuring safety, emission norms, market conditions for conversion and fiscal incentives for private operators. Otherwise October 1, 2001 will be a repeat of April 1. Public opinion is appreciative of the merit of the Supreme COurt order. The Delhi government needs to be on the right side of this issue of public health.

CNG bus market

The Tata Engineering and Locomotive Company (telco), one of the two leading diesel bus manufacturers in India, is clearly not very happy with the cng solution. The company has been still looking for a chance to negotiate for diesel. Since April 1999, when the Supreme Court began to address the diesel versus cng issue for Delhi buses, telco used every opportunity to project diesel as a more viable option. On April 29, 1999, the court heard the Bhure Lal committee's suggestion of restricting the registration of diesel cars in Delhi. Fali Nariman, counsel for telco and a member of the Rajya Sabha, argued that if diesel pollutes, so does petrol, and that both should be restricted. He insinuated that the committee's recommendation smacked of a bias against diesel.

telco didn't give up even after the court refused to dilute its stand on cng . On January 31, 2001, the court clarified that Euro ii diesel taxis could ply in the Capital. The telco counsel was quick to take up on that and argue for Euro ii diesel buses. The plea wasn't entertained. When the matter began to look serious in March 2001, Nariman waived yet another study to contend that diesel emissions could be better than those from cng . These frantic efforts point clearly to a campaign of the diesel industry to promote diesel, even if this is at the cost of public health.

One might wonder: why is telco so opposed to cng ? One possible explanation to this is that the company is desperately trying to protect its shrinking share in the bus market -- at any cost. Though still the largest seller of buses in India, telco is losing its market share to its competitor Ashok Leyland, which is close to capturing half the market share (see table: TELCO's market blues ). The total sales of buses in the country declined by as much as 20 per cent between 1997 and 1998, and further by 5 per cent between 1998 and 1999. The year 2000 saw a marked rise in sales -- the total sales in January-September 2000 were more than the total sales in 1999 -- probably due to booking orders after the cng order in the capital. Again, there was hardly any difference between the sales figures of the two companies -- Ashok Leyland sold 11,471 and telco sold 11,889 buses in January-September 2000.

The court order of July 28, 1998, of augmenting the city bus fleet to 10,000 and moving them to cng offered a huge cng market on a platter to the two competitors. Ashok Leyland immediately saw a business opportunity. It is making a dent in the market of northern India that has traditionally been a telco stronghold. telco resisted the move towards cng and lost out on the beginners' advantage. Being a market leader at the last count, they have booked orders for about 4,600 cng buses as on April 5, 2001, according to their claim. Ashok Leyland claims to have booked 2,051.
Protecting the diesel car market Market observers say telco's reluctance in ceasing upon the cng market is due to the larger implication this would have for its share of the diesel car market, which telco entered only in 1999 with its model Indica. If it is established on environmental grounds that diesel is bad and should be discouraged, this would also affect the regulations for diesel passenger cars. telco realises that if a particular quality of diesel gets accepted as 'clean' fuel, this will keep the Indica going. It is probably because of these considerations that telco has been cautious on cng .

It is hardly surprising that telco's position on cng is cautious. Down To Earth sent a questionnaire to the two companies, asking them if they viewed cng as a key strategy to reduce air pollution and the risk it poses to public health. Ashok Leyland categorically said that it does. telco was more controlled in its response: "Our belief is that a holistic approach is required to reduce air pollution. Most advanced countries... seek to control vehicular emissions by advocating fuel balance aimed at reducing the harmful emissions from all fuels. Use of any one fuel alone would result in excessive emissions which are peculiar to that fuel."

Reluctant to convert
Both the manufacturers have decided not to convert old diesel engines to run on cng . They would rather retrofit new cng engines to old diesel buses. J N Amrolia, executive director of Ashok Leyland, says, "We have suggested replacement of the diesel engine by a new cng engine to derive the benefit of a factory-built and tested product, duly checked for power and emissions. Field conversions do not offer this advantage."

telco is also explicit on this. V Krishnan, vice president (corporate communication), says, "Our research and development wing does not recommend conversion of old 697 engines to cng as they belong to the older generation, which will entail substantial structural changes and modifications. The impact this will have on safety and reliability of these vehicles and availability of infrastructure for conversion are also issues that we have considered." telco is proposing retrofitment on the Tata Cummins Euro 16 BT engine to the Tata Cummins 6B cng engine. This would require considerable modifications on the frame, wiring harness, body and other aggregates. telco says retrofitment would cost about Rs 7.25 lakh per bus, apart from taxes. But Ashok Leyland quotes the price at Rs 6.4 lakh without taxes, and has received 180 retrofitment orders. For those opting for new buses, a new telco cng bus chassis will cost about Rs 10.29 lakh plus taxes and an Ashok Leyland bus would cost Rs 10.84 lakh inclusive of all taxes.

While telco and Ashok Leyland are reluctant to enter the conversion market, Telco's joint venture partner Cummins is likely to enter the conversion market on its own to do both conversion of old buses and retrofitment. Other detractors
Among those unhappy with the cng order are those who have been advocating high capacity, specially designed urban buses for Delhi. In 1997-98, when the Supreme Court passed the order on cng , the Delhi transport department was considering a proposal to get such buses manufactured by Volvo. Among the supporters of this project were Rajendra Gupta, the then transport minister of Delhi, and experts such as Dinesh Mohan of the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi. Mohan, who believes that high-capacity urban buses are an answer to Delhi's commuting blues, is unhappy because he thinks such buses cannot run on cng as they have low floors that do not allow for enough space for cng cylinders. But, clearly, technology is developing at a fast rate, as is evident from the proposal from Optaire (India) Private Limited, which has offered to lease out specially designed urban buses running on cng for the Delhi Transport Corporation. But Mohan complains that these might still not be high capacity urban buses.

But by moving to cng today, emissions from buses can be brought down to lower than those from Euro iv -compliant diesel vehicles. The emission levels of buses manufactured by the Ashok Leyland have already shown to be lower than Euro iv standards, even when engine technology is not as efficient as the advanced lean-burn technology. In fact, the International Association of Natural Gas Vehicles has shown how emission levels of the cng trucks with more advanced technology are much cleaner. Particulate emissions from cng vehicles are so negligible that these are not even regulated.

Manufactured Chaos

As governance formally surrendered the administration of Delhi to chaos on All Fools' Day, April 1, 2001, the fate of its citizens' health and public transport continued to hang in balance. Ministers and politicians had a field day blaming each other for the chaos and rioting that broke out on April 3. Public transport came to a grinding halt following the March 31 deadline to move all public transport to compressed natural gas (cng). On March 26, the Supreme Court refused to extend the deadline set over two years ago. It was clear that the city was not going to meet the deadline, although the first order to this effect from the court had come on July 28, 1998, in response to a public interest petition on air pollution in Delhi. The court did give a concession to those who had placed orders for their vehicles to be converted to cng or had placed orders to buy new cng vehicles. They could ply their vehicles till September 30, 2001 (see box: Key points of the March 26 ruling). Reports in the media pointed out that the Delhi government believes that it is logistically impossible to meet this deadline.

The Union government and the state government, along with their agencies, have done their very best to ensure that the Supreme Court order on cng isn't implemented. They first created the public transport crisis in Delhi and are now using it as an excuse to shield their incompetence -- giving the impression that Supreme Court is unreasonable in insisting upon the deadline being met. Moreover, government agencies have all of a sudden discovered that ultra-low sulphur diesel (ulsd) is better and cheaper 'clean fuel' alternative to cng (see box: Ultra-low sulphur myth ). This suggestion has come from the Tata Energy Research Institute (see 'The cng sabotage', Down To Earth , March 15, 2001). Even if this claim is taken to be true -- and there is no strong scientific evidence to do that, as of now -- the timing of this suggestion and its endorsement by both Delhi government and the Union government does raise suspicion. It further shows how insincere they have been about implementing the court order.

The result of this attitude is being borne by the citizens, especially people from the lower middle class and poorer sections of the society, who depend on public transport. Violence erupted with angry commuters setting buses on fire and threw stones at them -- less than one-fourth of the 12,000 buses were left on the street. It was a state of emergency. Thousands were left stranded on the streets, jostling to find a foothold on jam-packed buses. The media was flooded with images of people travelling on the roofs of buses and crowding around bus stops. There were reports that a group of four bus operators from Ludhiana in Punjab were plying their cng buses in the capital.

On April 6, six people were injured in northeastern Delhi when a spurious cng cylinder exploded at a refuelling station. The car had another cylinder, which was not spurious -- it did not explode even after getting flung away. At least two newspapers, The Indian Express and The Hindu , reported that the owners of the Ambassador car had gone missing. When police tried to trace the owners, it came out that the person in whose name the car was registered had shifted residence 10 years ago. "Car using wrong cng cylinder explodes"; "Foul play suspected, occupants of car were at safe distance and fled"; "Anti- cng lobby does a war dance" -- these were the headlines in The Indian Express on the morning of April 7. The point that a spurious cylinder was responsible for the accident and not cng technology as a whole was not lost upon the media. A similar incident happened in Mumbai about one month ago. The Mumbai administration responded immediately by tightening regulations to provide gas only to those with authorised cylinders. Delhi obviously didn't learn the lesson from Mumbai.

The government's incompetence also hit Delhi's transporters badly -- even those who are willing to comply with the court order. Red tape prevented a lot of transporters who wanted to comply with the court directions and place orders for cng vehicles or for conversion of old vehicles to cng . Racing against time, they had to first place orders with the conversion companies, take the booking order to the court to file their affidavits, and then rush to the State Transport Authority to obtain the certificate to ply their vehicles till September 30. The process was typically bureaucratic and involved several bribes to touts, a fact that the media highlighted. Another issue that came to the fore in the midst of all the turmoil is that the Delhi Transport Corporation's global tender for conversion of its buses to cng is in a shambles (see box: DTC: Return to tender ).

The situation diffused a little only on April 4, when the court allowed the Delhi Government time till April 14 to issue provisional permits to bus and auto operators to enable them to ply their non- cng vehicles. But the Delhi government had already decided on April 3, in defiance of the court, to allow all buses possessing cng conversion booking receipts and photocopies of affidavits filed in the court to ply without the mandatory special permits. Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit declared that her government was ready to "face punishment for contempt of court" but would not allow citizens to suffer (see interview: "We do not know which way to go" ).

Drama in court
"The Delhi government is making an attempt to hoodwink the public by making statements like they would face contempt for the cause of the commuters," said A S Anand, chief justice of India, on April 4. The Supreme Court bench said it was distressed by media reports about the Delhi government's attitude and found it wholly objectionable. Severely reprimanding the Delhi government, the bench directed P S Bhatnagar, chief secretary to the Delhi government, to file an affidavit on statements made by Dikshit and Delhi transport minister Parvez Hashmi. Media reports quoted lawyers to say the matter was becoming a constitutional crisis. Kirit N Raval, additional solicitor general, refused to represent the Delhi government in court: "I will no longer appear for a government which has decided to act contrary to the orders of the highest court of the land," he said. However, he maintained that he would continue to represent the Union government, which is no less responsible for Delhi's transport crisis, if not more.

It was almost certain that the Delhi government would not be able to meet the September 30 deadline. The court directed the principal secretary to the transport department to compile a list of organisations and companies that have taken orders to convert the public transport vehicles to cng and ascertain the time frame within which they would meet the demand. The state government was severely criticised for failing to issue permits in time to enable transporters to run their vehicles: "If the Supreme Court could work till midnight to cope with the work pressure while affidavits were being filed, why can't the Delhi government rise to the occasion?" the court asked.

Then, there was the issue of the private bus operators who own a bulk of Delhi's bus fleet. Their lawyers had argued on March 23 that the court order need not be implemented as their buses already meet norms laid down in the Central Motor Vehicles Rules. The court dismissed this argument: "No law can be upheld before a fundamental right (right to life) in Article 21. The Environmental Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority (epca , also called the Bhure Lal Committee) was formulated under the Environment Protection Act, which can be above all laws." On February 16, the three-judge bench was angry that hardly any private operators had converted their buses to run on cng. The verdict was that the Delhi government has to start registering only cng buses, converted or new. It gave a fortnight's time to private bus operators to place firm orders for conversion or new cng buses, and said that it would hear the case again on February 27. It is clear that the operators had enough time to act (see box: Living on borrowed time).

Meanwhile, the court's anger at the Delhi government also sprang out of the excuses that it was offering. In its status report presented to the court one month before the deadline, the Delhi government asked the court for a three-year extension of the deadline or to allow diesel buses that meet Euro ii emission norms. On February 16, Justice Anand had asked the Delhi government lawyer about the government's intent: "Does the Delhi government share the perception of the court that air pollution is our enemy? If so, how does the government propose to discharge its obligations towards the people?"

Government response
The contradictory positions adopted by the Delhi government showed its lack of commitment to meet the promise it has made to the court. On March 3, 2001, the government had submitted: "In the context of the technological inputs available as of today, cng appears to be the most environment-friendly fuel. Therefore, the government of Delhi accepts the provisions that cng is the fuel of the future." But speaking to reporters later, Sheila Dikshit did a volte-face: " cng is an untried and untested technology. There are other clean fuels. cng is not the only alternative. Its safety is questionable. cng was successful in autos and taxis but not in buses because of the load factor." She admitted that her government was not confident of meeting the September 30, 2001 deadline.

She also said that the Delhi government is planning to file a special leave petition with the Supreme Court, pleading that the September 30 deadline for cng conversion is logistically impossible to meet. The petition will also talk about a study that the Delhi Government is preparing to conduct on cng compared to other 'green' fuels like ulsd . The Hindu reported that an internal report prepared by the Delhi government says that cng buses pose a safety hazard not only to the passengers but also to other road users. Delhi's transport department, environment department and the Delhi Transport Corporation have prepared the report. Another report in the media quoted former transport minister of Delhi, Rajendra Gupta, as saying that both cng and ulsd cause emissions of suspended particulate matter (spm , the main pollutant in Delhi's air). Gupta safely forgot to add that only diesel particles are classified as carcinogenic, as they are coated with polyaromatic hydrocarbons (pahs). Two of the strongest carcinogens known to humankind come from diesel exhaust emissions. No study from anywhere has found such dangers in cng emissions.

While Dikshit has been persistent in her errors of omission, she has now embarked on a mission to make errors of commission. She told the media that she had sought an appointment with the prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, on April 4 to discuss the crisis. The prime minister didn't oblige, and Dikshit went to town blaming him for not being sensitive to Delhi's woes, yet another political stunt.

While the Delhi government was in the thick of things -- getting most of the blame for non-implementation of the order -- the Union ministry has managed to skirt its share of the blame. The Union ministry of surface transport (most) and ministry of petroleum and natural gas (mpng) are equally to blame for sabotaging the court order, if not more. Yet most media criticism has been directed at the Delhi government.

Ram Naik of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Union minister for petroleum and natural gas, was too busy blaming the Congress party government in Delhi. With great self-righteousness, he declared that the transport crisis was a result of the Delhi government not acting in time. A report in The Asian Age quoted Naik as saying that the long queues in front of cng filling stations were due to the fact that the Delhi government had made no effort to inform autorickshaw drivers about the location of the filling stations!

This has let the Union government off the hook, an aspect that has entirely missed public attention. Instead, the Delhi government is following the Union government in tom-toming ulsd . The Asian Age quoted a transport department official on April 8 as saying that "Hashmi along with the Union petroleum minister Ram Naik would put forth the idea of using low-sulphur diesel through the Bhure Lal committee which has been asked by the Supreme Court to submit its report within a month." Union minister for environment and forests, TRBaalu, hasn't made any positive intervention in a matter that has come to a head because the Supreme Court is heeding the environmental imperative. This silence has translated into a blank cheque for narrow-minded business interests that freely resort to misinformation on crucial issues.

Difficult issues
One sticky issue has to do with tourist and transit buses that ply outside Delhi and would not have access to cng outside the city. The court has referred this matter to the Bhure Lal Committee, which has to examine the possibility of getting diesel with sulphur content as low as 0.001 per cent. According to world standard, best diesel has sulphur content as low as 0.001 per cent. The committee has been asked to file a feasibility report on the issue within a month. Even if this sticky issue is sorted out, one crucial issue is the ability of the market to meet the demand of cng vehicles. This takes us into an entirely different area of market dynamics.