Delhi air pollution

“We don’t know what your commission is doing. People in Delhi are not satisfied with your work. We are also not satisfied”. These remarks were made by a Supreme Court Bench headed by Chief Justice of India S A Bobde on December 17th. That was six weeks after the ordinance on “Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) in National Capital Region and Adjoining Areas Ordinance 2020” was promulgated on October 29th. The super commission subsumed practically every other law and agency dealing with air pollution in this region. Solicitor General Tushar Mehta responded to the judges’ scathing comments saying the…

Given the current scenario of increasing pollution in Indian cities, it’s quite likely that we shall soon have to breathe from canisters of clean air to avoid chronic respiratory issues. What we’ve been noticing in Delhi is clearly a man-made catastrophe. PM 2.5 levels are at an all-time high and almost 10 times those seen in Beijing. Citizens are seriously considering options to escape the toxic and unacceptably high levels of air pollution in Delhi. But as things stand, not everyone is lucky enough to be able to do so, the burden falling disproportionately on the poor. What is most…

The first ten days of November 2017 has seen a furious and unprecedented level of dialogue and mainstream-media conversation around the topic of air quality, specifically in and about the city of New Delhi. While the situation in the national capital is indeed dire, a large part of that conversation has been aided by citizens, journalists and community activism groups having access to scientifically validated real-time, hourly-updated data of the air quality levels in their neighborhoods and surrounding areas. The conversation around air quality levels for several years primarily involved scientists and researchers from leading Indian institutes and a few…