India’s natural resources are crying out for intensive-care attention
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. When the Supreme Court of India intervened in 1998 to address the growing problem of vehicular air pollution in Delhi—which subsequently expanded to other cities—by ensuring access to CNG as a fuel, it provided much needed relief to urban India.
However, this relief was short-lived as the causal factors of air pollution are many and complex. In November 2016, Delhi witnessed what is now referred to as the Great Delhi Smog with speculative comparisons to London’s Great Smog of 1952 and interpretations of possible spikes in death rates.
In response to this unprecedented smog event, and its implications for human health and mortality, the government introduced GRAP—its Graded Response Action Plan—in January 2017, outlining various response measures to mitigate air pollution, depending on its severity. While this mitigative response itself has evolved over time to enable a more pro-active and pollutant- inclusive approach to pollution management, it is undeniable that average pollution levels have not shown any significant improvement.
The Supreme Court was right when, on 28 September 2024, it pulled up the institutional mechanism established by the government to deal with the challenge—the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM)—on its efficiency and effectiveness. The Air Quality Index (AQI) in November 2023 was 373, as compared to an AQI of 372 in November 2016.
Undoubtedly, there were a few marginally better years in between, but those were largely due to ‘divine interventions’—the weather gods being kind. The apex court is also right in highlighting the fact that the directions and actions taken to address the problem of air pollution only have a temporary impact on violators.
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