It took the “peasouper” fog of December 1952, which had caused several deaths, for London to clean up its air. Delhi, on its part, needed a combination of widespread pulmonary diseases and an activist Supreme Court to acknowledge that it had become a vast gas chamber. Other metros, too, have had to bring out their brooms. But, as an Express report has just pointed out, even these feeble efforts are not being replicated in several other cities in the country. They merrily continue to foul up their air — some have pollution six times the permitted level — with nary a thought for the morrow. Pollution, let us remember, does not only lower the quality of life for all, it creates chronic health conditions and shortens life spans. Wisdom suggests that these cities imbibed the experiences of the metros and taken corrective measures before things reached a point of no return. But no. The Central Pollution Control Board has identified at least eight major urban hell-holes in terms of pollution, which include Dehra Dun and Thiruvananthapuram, once considered among the country’s most salubrious settlements. As we said, the trick really is to learn from the metros, and indeed other cities of the world. Delhi, today, has the world’s largest fleet of buses running on Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) and its air is noticeably cleaner despite its ever-increasing vehicular pollution. All this would not have happened if the Supreme Court had not brandished the whip — by putting a moratorium on the old vehicles allowed to ply in the city, insisting on Euro II norms for all new vehicles, and ensuring that buses ran only on CNG rather than the dirty diesel of yore. While industrial pollution may be a significant factor in a newly-emerging industrial centre like Solapur, in most cities where “critical levels” of respirable suspended particulate matter have been reached, it is vehicular pollution that is posing the danger. Tackling this would require a combination of technological measures, a regulatory framework and better urban planning. While administrators should crack down severely on widespread practices like the adulteration of fuel with kerosene, they should ensure that traffic is managed better through disciplined parking, synchronised traffic lights, the encouragement of public transport, and so on. While they ensure the infrastructure required to dispense less polluting fuels are in place and that motorists are made to use them, they also need to look at the way the city is landscaped and greened. Most of all, politicians, bureaucrats and citizens have to realise that a clean city is no longer a luxury we can ill afford. It is a basic.
