All smoke and mirrors

NEW DELHI: It’s a bit macabre that the peaking of poor air quality in New Delhi should coincide, as it does every year, with the festive season. The gods have nothing to do with it though; it’s entirely a thing done by man unto himself. It’s an annual visitation now, as foreseeable as night follows day. So nothing excuses the hapless response of the administration, both central and state, to it yet again. While we are seeing a flurry of activity, much of it is just wild thrashing about in the gloomy air, containing little that promises clarity in future.

In the run-up to Deepavali, newspapers awarded the title of the worst polluted city to New Delhi, applying the unfortunate Holocaust-era metaphor of gas chambers to the city. On Sunday morning, the air quality index (AQI) was over 450 at all monitoring stations, at least eight times higher than the safe level. Throughout last week, readings were in the ‘severe plus’ category in a majority of localities, at some places above what the instrumentation can read. The PM 2.5 readings — for particulate matter fine enough to pass into the blood stream — are 80 times the levels deemed permissible by the World Health Organization.

Citizens cope as best they can, with air purifiers, N95 masks, keeping kids indoors, etc. Doctors are reporting a spurt in Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma cases. The well-heeled are moving to hill stations to escape the gloom. For its part, the central administration has activated its Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) to tackle the contingency, but stopped short of escalating to GRAP 4, the highest level of emergency action. As of now, the Delhi government is doing what it can: schools have been told to conduct only higher classes; streets are being mist-sprayed; non-essential construction work stopped; vehicles not compliant with emission norms are barred from entering Delhi, and garbage burning is prohibited.

However, this is no more than nibbling at the edge of the problem. Graded or otherwise, the response remains reactive rather than pre-emptive. Thanks to better monitoring and data from the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, we are in a position now to predict air quality and wind speed trends better. So there is every basis to advance the triggers for GRAP actions to kick in. It would have helped a lot if mandates on work-from-home, construction and commercial motor transport went out earlier, thereby reducing the pollutants those sectors add to the air well before the situation got worse.

Similarly, it is high time the leadership made at least some of its remedial actions mandatory rather than suggestive. With the air quality index above 500, there is a justification to impose a work-from-home rule on private enterprise as well as public. There is also the need to mandate work spaces to operate air-purifiers round the year. Such measures won’t be popular, but then a government with a brute majority is expected to rule by leadership and resolute action. With the AQI soaring, we learn that the two smog towers installed at great cost and much fanfare two years ago have been found to be ineffective and are now defunct anyway. Mismanagement like that will dent the citizen’s confidence on the administration’s ability to counter the challenge facing the national capital right now.