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The cinnamon tree blooms in October, with small yellow flowers blooming on the light green canopy. However, you will not notice its luxurious beauty on the road between Anpara and Shakti Nagar in the Sombardra district of Uttar Pradesh.
On this 20-kilometer section, the yellow and green of these trees are covered with foggy gray monochromatic colors. Touch a leaf and your finger will return a layer of black fly ash. Take a deep breath, your lungs are not floral, but full of sulfur.
However, Sonbhadra rarely appears in discussions of India's toxic air crisis. According to popular belief, the crisis is limited to the winter smog in the capital, New Delhi, and is entirely caused by farmers in Punjab and Haryana burning crop stalks.
Nothing is far from the truth. In mid-October, I traveled 2,000 kilometers from Punjab to Bihar, using low-cost air quality monitors. Long before the onset of winter, I found that the air pollution readings in the Indo-Ganga Plain were always high.
The highest level was recorded in Sonbhadra, the most southeastern corner of Uttar Pradesh, about 1,000 kilometers from Delhi. According to the World Health Organization's 2021 air quality guidelines, if the content of PM2.5 or particles with a diameter of 2.5 microns or less exceeds 15 per cubic meter, human health will be threatened. These particles can enter the lungs and cause diseases such as asthma, bronchitis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer. Similarly, the guidelines point out that PM10 levels higher than 45 will bring health risks.
In Sonbhadra, PM 2.5 readings often soar above 500 per cubic meter-33 times the safe level-PM10 readings over 600-13 times the safe level.
It is not surprising that the air in Sonbhadra is so heavily polluted. The first power plant of the National Thermal Power Group Corporation was established in this area. At present, the area has 6 coal mines and 12 self-contained and non-self-contained thermal power plants.
In order to build this energy capital, as people often say, the relocation of villages in this area is not once or twice, but three times. Air pollution kills soil fertility, makes people wheeze from asthma, and skin diseases make people itchy.
Gaimon Kanaujia, a 49-year-old elementary school teacher in Ampara, was affected by two migrations-the first time at the Renusagar Dam and the second time at the Ampara Thermal Power Plant. He pointed out that he was one of the people who had been protesting pollution all his life, but it had no effect. "They don't care whether we live or die," he said of the local authorities.
When I asked him about the National Clean Air Program of the Federal Ministry of Environment, he was very interested. He had never heard of it. "If there is an air pollution fund, we have priority," he said.
India has the most toxic air in the world, and the ambitious National Clean Air Plan (NCAP) was launched in January 2019 to solve this problem. According to the plan, the Ministry of Environment has issued approximately 3.75 billion rupees (US$50 million) to 114 of a total of 132 cities that do not meet the standards or whose air quality does not meet the national air quality standards.
In addition, the 15th Finance Committee issued 4417 rupees from a total of 1213.9 billion rupees as a grant to 42 cities with a population of more than 1 million local agencies for air pollution reduction activities by 2025 -' 26.
All in all, this is equivalent to a budget of up to Rs 12,514 crore.
But since it started more than two years ago, my travels have shown that the plan of the National Clean Air Plan is mainly on paper. Executing agencies-the National Pollution Control Commission and urban local agencies-usually do not have the capacity to take authorized actions; the action plans created are often impractical and copy-and-paste work; areas that have historically been polluted by coal mining and thermal power generation exist Blind spots, which helps the rest of the country to remain electrified.
For example, according to Scroll.in's response to the right to information request, Ampara, one of the 132 non-compliant cities, received only Rs 124 crore under the NCAP. Uttar Pradesh, which has 17 substandard cities, has received Rs 606.3 million in revenue in the past two fiscal years. As can be seen from the Rs 22.4 crore or about 60% of the budget of Rs 37.5 crore, these allocations are very small and are used to install continuous ambient air quality monitoring stations (CAAQMS) to monitor pollution and train officials to implement action plans in these cities . This leaves only about 1.5 billion rupees for actual pollution prevention and control measures, which is equivalent to only 13 billion rupees per city.
Anpara has not received any funds under the 15th Finance Committee appropriation, and these funds are currently limited to cities with a population of more than 1 million.
These places are the most polluted places in the world, but the lack of funding also shows that India’s approach to solving this problem is fundamentally flawed: as the NCAP plan shows, it tries to solve this problem at the city level. In fact, it is poisonous. Air has no boundaries.
To a large extent, air pollution in cities, especially in the Indo-Ganga Plain, depends on what happens outside them. For example, the meteorological conditions of the entire Indo-Ganga Plain are similar, basically a single unit of pollutant particles floating. Scientists call it a gas field.
This air field recorded the highest levels of PM2.5 in the country because the Himalayas in the north prevented these particles from moving out of the plains. In winter, when the local surface temperature is lower than the above temperature, the air stops mixing and becomes stagnant, putting the entire region from Punjab to West Bengal under a thick layer of stagnant pollution. In addition, the loose alluvial topsoil of the Indo-Ganga Plain is easily displaced by wind and vehicles, thereby increasing the PM10 content in the air in the area.
However, although scientific research has determined the importance of these gas fields in understanding and solving pollution, current policy measures still focus on the political boundaries of cities and states.
Sarath Guttikunda, founder of Urban Emissions, a non-governmental scientific organization that studies air pollution, stated that the areas within the air basin “have similar climates, biodiversity, and pollution sources. Therefore, the Indo-Ganga Plain, the Western Ghats, and the Central Plains, including Parts of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh have different airspaces."
He explained that policymakers need to address pollution in every air basin in each state. But "there is no interstate coordination mechanism yet."
India has a long history of air pollution control legislation. The Calcutta and Howrah Smoke Hazard Act of 1863 is one of the oldest such legislation in the world to regulate the smoke emitted by the chimneys of the Calcutta Paper Mill.
Since then, there have been other similar legislations, such as the Gujarat Smog Nuisance Act in 1963 against the state, and the Central Air Pollution Prevention and Control Act in 1981 to curb air pollution across the country, and the establishment of a governance structure to do so. To this point.
In 2009, the Central Pollution Control Commission notified the National Ambient Air Quality Standards, which stipulated acceptable levels of various air pollutants. The annual average value of PM2.5 is 40 micrograms/cubic meter, and the daily average value is 60 micrograms/cubic meter; the annual average value of PM10 is 60 micrograms/cubic meter, and the daily average value is 100 micrograms/cubic meter.
All these laws and policies should provide a solid foundation for state and national governments to combat air pollution-but they have had little effect.
The failure of these policies has long been seen in places such as Sombatala, but it was not until the winter of 2016 that the capital began to be shrouded in the thickest smog in recent memory that the media became interested. Since then, it has devoted more attention to this issue, at least in Delhi, and the research surrounding it has revealed a truly grim situation.
According to the global burden of disease report of The Lancet, about 1.67 million people died from toxic air in India in 2019. According to the report, due to the loss of output caused by premature death and air pollution, 1.4% of India's GDP in 2019, or 2.6 billion rupees, caused economic losses.
However, as recently as February 2017, the late Anil Madhav Dave, then minister of the trade union's environment, told Rajya Sabha that there is no direct link between air pollution and health. "The impact of air pollution on health is a synergistic manifestation of multiple factors, including personal eating habits, occupational habits, socioeconomic status, medical history, immunity, genetics, etc.," he said.
Later that year, in the winter, Harsh Vardhan, Dave's successor, told the media that there was no need to panic because "there is no death certificate that lists the cause of death as pollution."
But the government cannot ignore this issue and the dialogue surrounding it forever. "They deny it, but scientific data really cannot be ignored," said an entrepreneur who works in the field of air pollution, who requested anonymity. "Most importantly, the funding of charities in the field of air pollution has increased from 5 million U.S. dollars globally in 2015 to 44.7 million U.S. dollars in 2020," which is bound to promote more research on the crisis.
Since 2019, the bureaucracy has filled a lot of paper with action plans. There are two plans under NCAP. The first is a city-level action plan for each of the 132 non-compliant cities. Each city is supplemented by a more practical micro-plan. For example, although the Kanpur City Action Plan states that the city will install sprinklers and use mechanical sweepers to reduce road dust, Kanpur’s micro-plan has identified hot spots where this activity should be carried out. All of these plans are developed under a 122-page NCAP general guidance document.
The city also has a hierarchical response action plan, which aims to provide people with direct air pollution relief in the event of a sharp deterioration in air quality through short-term actions such as prohibiting construction activities, brick kilns, and restricting the entry of heavy vehicles. Enter the city.
Although these plans appear detailed and detailed on paper, on the ground, whether in Punjab, Uttar Pradesh or Bihar, I find that they are either impractical or impossible to implement. This partly stems from a basic contradiction in their approach-these plans are designed to be implemented when the pollution exceeds a certain threshold, but the city does not accurately measure the pollution level.
On the warm night of October 9th, I took a northbound train from Delhi through the rice fields that were about to be harvested in Haryana and arrived at Ludhiana, the largest industrial city in Punjab. After arriving there, the air quality monitor showed that the PM10 and PM2.5 levels were 250 and 275, respectively. These levels were recorded from the window of my hotel room in old Ludhiana near the train station at around 8pm.
At the same time, the city’s only CAAQMS recorded PM2.5 levels around 56 and PM10 levels around 127. Even after calibration (the value of the low-cost sensor is reduced by about 20-30%), the city's monitor readings are significantly lower.
The reason for this difference is not difficult to find: the monitor is placed at the Punjab Agricultural University, which is one of the greenest spaces in Ludhiana. “People from all over Ludhiana come here for a walk,” said Gangneesh Singh Khurana, an industrialist and RTI activist in Ludhiana who accompanied me to the scene. "People are even going to pay to make a monthly pass. This is where they decide to put the monitor."
RTI’s response to Khurana dates back to 2015, when the Ludhiana government initially planned to install the monitor, indicating that the government believed that placing it in a more polluted area would cause inaccurate readings.
"How absurd is this?" Kurana asked. "When the city is suffocated, this monitor, surrounded by trees and away from the congestion of the city, will always provide readings that do not represent pollution in Ludhiana."
All monitoring stations owned and operated by foreign companies in India have not been audited. "There is no third-party audit for these CAAQMS," Khurana said.
RTI’s response to Scroll.in stated that Ludhiana had allocated Rs 4 crore for four other air pollution monitors, but Gulshan Rai, the chief environmental engineer of the Punjab Pollution Control Commission Regional Office, told me that this idea had been abandoned. "In oral discussions with the central government, we were told to abandon the idea of installing CAAQMS and instead install four manual stations," he said.
CAAQMS displays real-time air quality and stores data from them in servers open to the public every 15 minutes. In contrast, manual stations only record data twice a week, or 104 times a year. "We were told that CAAQMS is very expensive, costing about Rs 1 crore, so we should install a manual monitor, and the cost is only half of that," Rai said.
SN Tripathi is a professor at the Kanpur Indian Institute of Technology and a member of the National Knowledge Network Guidance and Supervision Committee. The National Knowledge Network is an advisory body for the Ministry of Environment established under NCAP. He explained that the government is trying to establish a hybrid monitoring network.
"The city will have a CAAQMS and these will be supplemented by manual monitoring stations and low-cost sensor monitors," he said. Although there are standards for the technical specifications of CAAQMS, no such standards are currently available for low-cost sensors. "We are conducting research on various low-cost sensors, and the research will be released soon," Tripathi said. "I hope the government can consider this research and propose guidelines for standardizing low-cost sensors."
Many cities’ action plans were formulated without source allocation studies or emission inventories, which also hindered India’s fight against pollution.
Source allocation studies are usually conducted using air pollution data for two seasons to identify and evaluate the contribution of polluting cities. At the same time, the emission inventory is a compilation of the amount of pollution discharged into the air basin by each polluter (such as thermal power plants or garbage fires). Although air quality monitors can determine poor air quality in a particular location, source allocation studies and emission inventories can provide important information about who is polluting the area and are therefore important tools for decision makers to combat air pollution.
Without these analyses, there is still considerable uncertainty in estimating the pollution emissions from different sectors such as transportation, industry, agriculture, and households, as well as from different sources such as roads and wind and dust. This makes it difficult to determine which sectors and sources are prioritized through supervision.
The studies done so far have very different estimates of pollution emissions from different sectors. A recent report by the Think Tank Energy, Environment and Water Commission pointed out that according to different emission inventories made by international organizations and international organizations, the contribution of domestic sources to India's PM2.5 pollution load is estimated to vary from 27% to 50%. Indian institutions such as IIT Bombay and TERI.
There are many reasons for this huge difference. On the one hand, different lists use different definitions for each sector—for example, some include diesel generators in the household sector, while others include the agricultural sector. They also use different emission factors-to measure the emissions per unit of fuel used by specific technologies in specific sectors. In 2011, CPCB standardized a set of emission factors, but these did not cover all the technologies and fuels used today.
According to NCAP, a national emission inventory will be created by 2020, but this has not yet happened.
In addition, the calculation of pollution level mainly relies on CAAQMS, focusing only on the presence and size of particles, not the composition of these particles. Hazardous chemicals such as dioxins, furans, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons can have serious and different effects on health, but they are now collectively referred to as particulate matter. Therefore, the health risks directly related to the toxicity of the chemicals that make up particulate matter are ignored, and these chemicals can be identified by chemical characterization.
For example, a PM10 level of 150 is unanimously considered to be worse than a PM10 level of 100, even if the air contains dioxins, the latter is more harmful to health, while the former contains dust.
"We have low-cost sensor monitors that can also record the chemical characteristics of particles," Tripathi said. "But this chemical characterization will be the next step. First, we must build these particulate matter monitoring networks."
Ozone is another pollutant that is ignored by this kind of particle fixation. Although the ozone levels of all substandard cities are currently within the standard range, the study found that in Delhi, during the blockade, although the PM level decreased, the ozone level increased.
"What matters is overall air quality, not just PM levels," said Dhirendra Singh, CEO and founder of Airshed Planning Professionals Private Limited, a Kanpur-based company that provides technical services on air pollution .
"We should learn from these recent studies conducted in China and other parts of the world, and develop a sustainable air pollution control plan for particulate matter and gas."
In the absence of stocks, many of the city’s pollution control plans are based on estimated or even outdated figures. Although there are new studies, most plans have not been updated to include them.
For example, the Ludhiana Action Plan states that about 16% of the city’s pollution is caused by biomass and waste incineration (including straw incineration). The main contributors to the city’s pollution load are industry (35%) and road dust ( 28%). These figures were derived from a source allocation study conducted in 2012.
But a recent study published by Urban Emissions in 2017 showed that after industry, Ludhiana’s second largest source of pollution is the transportation sector, not road dust. More importantly, about 41% of the city's pollution originates outside its borders. Among them, brick kilns accounted for 14%, and straw burning accounted for 10%.
Gulshan Rai, the chief environmental engineer of the Ludhiana Regional Office of the Punjab Pollution Control Commission, said: "The plan does not provide for the disposal of these brick kilns outside the city limits, but we will monitor them as part of our daily duties.". Rai leads a seven-person team that must monitor approximately 10,000 industries in Ludhiana. Fighting air pollution is now an additional task.
In addition, the city’s action plan classified waste incineration and biomass incineration pollution into one category, so it did not give the issue the focus of attention.
This is reflected in the lack of solutions to these problems in the action plan. The only mention of straw burning in the plan is to reiterate the existing framework for monitoring and penalizing farmers who burn straw. For assistance, farmers can only rely on a plan to provide subsidized equipment to help them deal with stubble. The plan was implemented in 2017, and its main focus is not even regional pollution in Punjab, but the main goal is to reduce pollution in Delhi. Since 2018, the Punjab Provincial Government has spent about 10.45 billion rupees on subsidies for agricultural equipment that can remove stubble.
One day in early October, I met 30-something Raspinder Singh in the village of Sherpur Kalan, about 50 kilometers from Ludhiana. He was just starting to burn stubble at that time. Several smoldering black patches can be seen in the golden mature rice fields. As pollution increases, Raspinder has more and more problems.
"I have a skin disease, and when the pollution levels here soared, the itching became very serious," he said. His grandfather also had trouble breathing. Although Ras Bender and his family, who own 40 acres of land, have stopped burning stubble, many small farmers have no way to adopt alternative methods of burning stubble.
Kalandip Singh, who owns 4 acres of land and grows potatoes during the rabbi season, believes that the government has not addressed the fact that managing stubble without burning is a huge economic burden for farmers.
"If I don't burn the stubble, then after harvesting with a combine harvester, I must use a rotary tiller to remove the stubble, then use the MB plow to turn the soil, leave the land for 10 days, and then use the rotary tiller again to remove any remaining stubble," He said.
"All this not only takes time, but as diesel prices soar, the cost per acre is about 3,000 to 4,000 rupees. Why should I pay that money?"
Some experts believe that if farmers are compensated for their work, they will use methods other than incineration to remove the residue. According to an unnamed member of the Punjab Pollution Control Commission, “In the entire Punjab province, this will not exceed Rs 2,000 crore to Rs 2,500 crore.” However, he added, “Although it provides Hundreds of millions of dollars in relief, but the cost of supporting farmers seems too great for them."
On the evening of October 15th, just before the statue of Ravanas caught fire to commemorate Dussehra, my air quality monitor in front of my hotel in Kanpur recorded PM2.5 and PM10 levels of 220 and 233, respectively.
As the construction of the subway line progresses, along the section of the road next to the construction activity, traffic jams, low-cost sensors recorded PM 2.5 and PM 10 levels of 266 and 332, respectively.
However, according to the requirements of the action plan, there is no green cloth on these structures under construction to prevent construction dust from entering the atmosphere. Although the city’s action plan envisages electric buses on the road, I have not seen it.
A few kilometers away is IIT Kanpur, which is an important part of the NCAP National Knowledge Network. Although the levels of particulate matter in the green and huge IIT campus are far below standard levels—my monitors record PM 2.5 at 43 and PM10 at 56—but other parts of the city continue to breathe polluted air.
Kanpur Municipal Corporation's Project Cell for air pollution has received a grant of Rs 750 million from the 15th Finance Committee for the 2021-22 fiscal year. But an official working with Project Cell complained: “We are working with 50% of our employees. We also lack technical expertise in dealing with air pollution.”
The municipal executive committee composed of company members, the Kanpur Regional Office of the Uttar Pradesh Pollution Control Commission and IIT Kanpur meets every two weeks to discuss air pollution measures and improve the company's technical capabilities. "IIT Kanpur and Pollution Control Commission officials are responsible for capacity building," the official said. He added that the technical information shared with the company includes "how to clean the road correctly so that dust does not spread."
Like Uttar Pradesh, in Bihar, the agencies responsible for the prevention and control of air pollution are also understaffed.
Ashok Ghosh, chairman of the National Pollution Control Commission, said that the staff capacity of the National Pollution Control Commission is 60%. He also volunteers to serve as a scientist at Mahavir Cancer Sansthan in Patna, a company for vulnerable groups. Cancer hospital opened. "We are recruiting more people," he said.
As the capital, Patna is better than other cities. This is also the only city where I see electric buses driving on the road. The city has installed CAAQMS at six locations. The other two substandard cities in Bihar, Muzaffarpur and Gaya, have three each, and there are no electric buses. “We are installing at least one CAAQMS in 22 of the 38 districts in Bihar and launching electric buses in Muzaffarpur and Gaya,” Ghosh said.
Vivek Tejaswi, deputy director of the Asian Development Institute, a development think tank based in Patna, stated that the central fund aims to "fill the gaps in the governance structure of the city's local agencies and the National Pollution Control Commission."
“The headcount in all these departments is between 50% and 60%. The focus here is not to hire more people, but to increase productivity,” he said. "How can a person who has been overburdened with work improve his abilities?"
This has led to a situation of shoddy work. Uttar Pradesh is the most populous state in India, with 17 substandard cities, the highest of all states. The Energy, Environment and Water Commission’s study of all action plans under the national NCAP found that 16 cities in Uttar Pradesh “have the same plans, and each city has the same 56 actions for transportation, road dust, vehicles, waste Burning, industry, construction and demolition."
But these plans are rarely implemented, even in large cities like Patna. “The actions taken to shut down industries and halt construction activities, many of which are supported by influential people, will put pressure on officials, so these measures will never be taken. No one wants to stretch their necks,” one said. The former Bihar Pollution Control Commission official who requested anonymity said.
Ghosh pointed out that for the hierarchical plan to work, “it requires a lot of micro-information and technical expertise. We are acquiring this expertise and will start implementing the plan soon.”
Although the city’s action plan talked about curbing pollution caused by brick kilns, it did not mention pollution caused by sand mining and transportation. Tejaswi said: "If you look at this plan, its focus is on easy-to-handle things that are easy to handle." "Activities like sand mining are dominated by influential players and it is difficult to reach them. Similarly, these plans are also There is no mention of improving industrial emission reduction technologies."
The absurdity in the urban action plan is nowhere comparable to Ampara.
The District Office of the Uttar Pradesh Pollution Control Commission has four officials who must supervise 2,000 industries in Sombathra and Mirzapur, spread over an area of 11,300 square kilometers. For this, they share a rented Mahindra Bolero.
In Anpara, this is a Nagar Panchayat, a classification between villages and urban areas, and three officials have become members of the air quality monitoring team. But panchayat does not have any funds to carry out any pollution reduction activities.
There is a clear disconnect between what the city’s microplanning suggests and the local reality. For example, although few people paint houses here, the city’s micro-plan talks about setting up multi-storey parking lots.
An official of the Uttar Pradesh Pollution Control Commission, who asked not to be named, said: "You read Ampara’s plan and it feels like you are talking about London or Tokyo."
"There is no road there. The plan talks about mechanical sweepers and sprinklers. These plans are made by people who have been here in the future. They copied plans from other places," the official said.
In Ampara, the action plan recognizes thermal power plants in the area as the main source of pollution. However, since 2015, the EU Environment Ministry has been trying to postpone the implementation of stricter emission standards for thermal power plants. The Ministry has notified particulate matter, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide standards in 2015, and thermal power generators must comply with these standards by 2017. But since then, the Ministry has made three amendments to the notice-the most recent one was on April 1st of this year-to postpone the compliance deadline. Now, by 2025, all factories must comply with the new regulations.
At the same time, people suffer. “Of all people who come to Ampara’s Primary Care Center, approximately 50% suffer from air pollution-related diseases, and another 40% suffer from diseases caused by high levels of chloride, fluoride and mercury in the water ," said Ajeet Singh, a doctor at the Ampara Primary Care Center. Although there is no specific study to determine the cause, Singh believes that "thermal power plants are the reason behind this."
Scroll.in asked officials in Ampara, Ludhiana and Kanpur, as well as the environment minister of the central government, about deficiencies in the government's approach to pollution. As of press time, no response has been received.
Anpara also highlighted the fundamental flaws at the core of the National Clean Air Plan. It is located within the New Glory heavily polluted area notified by the Central Pollution Commission in 2013, but the Ampara Action Plan only focuses on the city.
When I visited Shakti Nagar, which is 20 kilometers away from Ampara, one side is bordered by the Khadia coal mine operated by Northern Coalfields Limited, and the other side is the Singrauli super thermal power plant. Almost all the other houses have people suffering from respiratory diseases or skin diseases. . Mine dust and coal fly ash from thermal power plants cover everything. In the afternoon, my monitor started to record that both PM10 and PM2.5 were above 400 levels because people burned coal to cook.
"I got a gas cylinder under the Ujwala program, but now the price of gasoline is over 1,000 rupees and I can't afford it," said Ashok Kumar. His father died after battling asthma 20 years later, just like his mother As early as a few years. "My son collects the coal that fell from the truck that carried him, enough to make food without spending any money."
The Chilkadand village adjacent to Shakti Nagar has been relocated many times. The village has no government land or private agricultural land-its residents rely entirely on the work of coal mines or power plants. “We did not receive MGNREGA funding because there is no government land available for work and all land belongs to NTPC or NCL,” said Sarpanch of Chilkad and Panchayat. "People don't have enough food here, which makes them easy to get sick."
He added that if the government is really serious about reducing pollution, it should make special plans for places like Chilkadand, which have paid the price for keeping India’s lights bright. "More than Rs 10,000 crore was used to deal with air pollution, but they got nothing!" he said. "Even if they give us a small portion, we will use clean fuel to cook, can afford proper medical care, and live a better life."
This article was originally published on Scroll.in. This report was completed with the support of the "Report for the World" initiative of The GroundTruth Project.
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