Dear Editor,
The poor quality of air works in a way to dampen all the efforts to give healthy and long life to the countrymen. Air Quality Life Index report, recently released by the Energy Policy Institute of the University of Chicago, shows that poor air alone reduces the life expectancy of citizens by five years. If we talk about the capital Delhi and NCR, then air pollution is taking away ten years of people’s life here. However, this is nothing new or surprising if seen. We have been hearing about the ill-effects of air pollution for a long time. Every national or international report on pollution underlines the fact that the level of pollution in the air of Delhi has increased to a great extent and that the air is becoming toxic in all the big and small cities of the country. In this report also, India has been described as the second most polluted country in the world, while Delhi is the first most polluted city. It has also been told that the damage caused by smoking is not as much because of the poor quality of the air. Millions of people die every year in the country from causes related to air pollution. And given the condition of air pollution, about 51 crore people living in North India i.e. about 40 per cent of the country’s population will be forced to offer it for 7.6 years of their life. However, the good thing about the report is that it has not only told about the magnitude of the situation, it has also taken into account the efforts to improve it. It specifically mentions Government’s National Clean Air Program (NCAP), which aims to bring down the level of particulate matter in the air by 20 to 30 percent from 2017 levels by 2024. The report said that if it succeeds in bringing it down by 25 per cent, then life expectancy will increase by 1.4 years nationally and by 2.6 years in Delhi. But it is a matter of intention. Reality is different. A report in January this year states that despite the NCAP, there has been no significant success in reducing pollution levels in Delhi’s air in the last three years. Factors such as economic growth, industrialization and huge increase in fuel consumption are behind the increase in air pollution levels in the last two decades. Obviously, it is not easy to control them, but the problem of air pollution cannot be ignored anymore. There has to be a way to clear the air with the least possible damage.
Vijay Garg