National clean air programme continues to remain hazy

In the last three years, popular campaigns and court action has made sure that the state of India’s air is being acknowledged as a serious crisis. Citizens’ groups have ensured that politicians don’t play football with the issue. There have been few big wins. Decision-makers can no longer deny the problem without receiving a serious backlash from the public. The Supreme Court and the National Green Tribunal (NGT) have asked tough questions of the executive whilst pushing them towards faster, unambiguous actions. In March, the Delhi government unveiled its ‘green budget’ indicating various schemes and programmes to control air pollution.

On April 17, the environment ministry drafted the country’s first National Clean Air Action Programme (NCAP). The push for this also came from the apex court, to whom the ministry assured in early March that a plan will be revealed in four weeks time. The plan sets itself three lofty objectives: augmenting air quality monitoring mechanisms, disseminating this information so that there can be greater public participation and creating a ‘feasible’ action plan at a national level. The 62-page document has 13 pages dedicated to a set of priorities for tackling air pollution over the next two years. Citizens have time till May 17 to respond.

So far, there have been two dominant critiques of the NCAP. The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) and Greenpeace have stressed that the plan is advisory in nature, lacking clear targets and interim outcomes. The second is its emphasis on cities rather than a regional or landscape approach to tackling air pollution i.e. focusing on the Indo Gangetic Plains as a whole, rather than specific cities like Varanasi or Patna.

A failed framework

The NCAP claims to ‘plug the gaps’ of existing government initiatives. But it does so without presenting what these gaps actually are. The document assumes that there are no structural problems in the way air pollution has been handled till date. Instead the NCAP assumes that more of the same framework of ‘prevention, control and abetment’ is the answer. It proposes more technology, more scientific data and more inspection for this.

Since the 1980s, the control of pollution in the country has relied on this framework. They were put in place at a time when excessive pollution could have become a problem. The assumption was that its control through standard setting and licensing would help restrict impacts, even as industrial activity increases. In such a model, the onus is on to polluters to abide by standards and the regulators to punish offenders. This has simply not worked. Four decades on, we have a crisis. 

The NCAP completely misses the reasons for this failure. Environment regulation has faced serious resistance from sectors who have consistently wanted to step out of the regulatory net. Pollution mitigation technologies are not used by industries or power plants on the pretext of them being expensive. Finally, air pollution is a social problem created by an induced demand for a lifestyle that is both consumptive and extractive. The NCAP does not concern itself with these problems.

A long scientific project

The NCAP turns this important opportunity to change the direction in which we are moving into a very long scientific project, which will tie us up in more knots. The document proposes the creation of a wider scientific baseline to pin down the sectoral contribution on pollution by particular sectors. It proposes a network of scientific institutions to carry out studies in specific cities. Any concrete steps are to be taken only after that. These studies are not unwarranted. But there is need for immediate remedial measures. 

Industry, real estate, power plants, vehicles are the top known contributors. The NCAP does not push for their ethical and legal responsibility irrespective of what their share is. More studies run the danger of each sector passing the buck on to others being the principle perpetrator of the problem.

In the end, the NCAP falls acutely short of being an ambitious plan to address air pollution. Not only does it not have any specific outcomes against which it can be assessed regularly, it lacks a positive vision to bring us clean air. It focuses on a negative approach to “control pollution” using frameworks that have failed to deliver since the 1980s. 

The NCAP only addresses the lowest benchmarks by paying attention to the issue of measuring air quality more accurately. This might have been acceptable if the problem was not so acute. A clean air plan should make a positive call for ‘clean environment and pollution free air’ as ‘mandated in our Constitution’ and upheld in the opening lines of the NCAP.

The authors are with the CPR Namati Environment Justice Programme. Views expressed are personal