​Copy-Paste Policies Underscore What's Choking India's Clean Air Programme

For a nation home to cities with the world’s worst air, a serious road map to curb toxic fumes is a start. Yet, like everything else, the response has been mostly bureaucratic. Uttar Pradesh is a case in point.

India’s most-populous state is home to 15 cities with alarming air quality, much worse than the national standards. All barring Varanasi have seen their air quality deteriorate. But besides Meerut, the long- and short-term measures in their action plans read the same, word by word. Documents uploaded on the pollution control board's website suggest that officials seem to have simply copy-pasted text.

Uttar Pradesh isn’t alone. The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air has spotted near-identical plans for several cities. While goals may be similar, this indifference underscores the challenges faced by India’s three-year-old National Clean Air Programme.

India launched NCAP in January 2019 targeting a 20-30% reduction in particulate matter 2.5 and PM10 levels by 2024 in 102 cities—later expanded to 132 cities—taking 2017 as the base year. Yet, beyond submitting city-specific action plans, there is little progress on ground.

Urban local bodies tasked with implementing the programme lack the capacity to enforce mandates, while slow progress on air quality monitoring and absence of cohesive mitigation strategies hamper the national effort.

Pollutant levels across all cities remain above the permissible limits, shows an analysis of air quality data by NCAP Tracker. And it deteriorated for cities like Mumbai and Chennai.

"This is an implementation issue," said Sunil Dahiya, analyst, and co-author of CREA's report. "There's a lack of will to tackle air pollution from both administrations and polluters. Even reducing PM2.5 particles by 20-30% will not give us clean air because our permissible limits are much higher than WHO-prescribed standards."

NCAP places the onus of action on city administrations but they are ill-equipped. None of the cities under NCAP have yet conducted studies to measure the carrying capacity—ability to accumulate and disperse emissions while maintaining breathable air quality. Most municipal bodies find it hard to take action on polluters that operate outside city limits.

Polash Mukerjee of NRDC India, which is working with administrations of Ahmedabad and Pune on air quality, laid the blame on lack of expertise.

"I've spoken to quite a few implementation and supervisory committees of cities ... they are unfamiliar with the subject. They say, 'this is something that we do not have expertise in'," Mukerjee, lead for air and climate resilience at NRDC, said. "We need to first augment and strengthen this local capacity of manpower to make it work."

According to Tanushree Ganguly, lead for air quality research at CEEW India, municipal corporations don't know where to start. "It's very important for local officials to be able to understand the science and be able to translate that into actionable intelligence."

Lethargy at civic bodies also means funds allocated to them under NCAP remain underutilised. As a result, the central government has not augmented the programme's annual budget.

According to NCAP Tracker, that analysed data from the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, only 35.5% of the Rs 375.4 crore released under NCAP had been used by the states as of March 31, 2021.

These are not the only funds allocated to cities to tackle air pollution. The 15th Finance Commission has set a corpus of Rs 12,139 crore to be granted to urban local bodies in 42 cities with a population of over a million to help control air pollution till 2025-26.

Missing Air Quality Monitors

To improve air quality, cities first need to know how bad it is. But without sufficient air quality monitors, lawmakers will be unable to grasp the true extent of pollution.

At present, India has 818 manual stations and 309 continuous ambient air quality monitoring systems that offer real-time data. Deployment is skewed towards large, urban sprawls. For instance, Delhi and Maharashtra together have about 80 CAAQMS stations, while Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand have none. Jammu & Kashmir, Odisha, Nagaland and Tamil Nadu have one each.

And more than 70% of manual monitoring systems, according to a 2020 CSE report, measure air quality on less than 104 days—the minimum requirement under India's standards.

According to a National Green Tribunal order in 2019, India required 800 CAAQMS and 1,250 manual monitoring stations in addition to the existing ones.

The NCAP aimed to install 1,500 manual and 150 continuous ambient air quality monitoring systems, that offer real time data, by 2024. However, only 73 new manual monitors had been added as of August.

Sachchida Nand Tripathi, professor at IIT-Kanpur and member of the steering and monitoring committees of NCAP, said manual monitoring stations offer data with low frequency and a lag. "They really have little use in active air quality management," he said. "The CAAQMS offer useful high-frequency data but each one of them is very expensive and needs to be imported."

The government will have to find emerging technologies that can complement air quality data monitoring.

Lack Of Regulatory Tools

Some policy experts suggest strict compliance with NCAP targets.

"NCAP reads like a whitepaper," Mukerjee said. "It does not have the regulatory compliance tools where it can push cities into meeting the targets."

Dahiya, in his report, recommends notifying NCAP under the Environmental Protection Act, 1986, or the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981, to make them legally binding for all stakeholders. At the moment NCAP cannot take punitive action for not meeting targets.

"Clean air would require coming up with clear emission caps and targets for pollutants," Dahiya said. "It's time we improve NCAP by applying an emission-linked approach."

Greater transparency of data would be one easy way to achieve that, Dahiya said. The government should provide real-time data on progress of the various indicators to enhance accountability, he said.

'Piecemeal' Policies

It's not that India has no other policies that help contain air pollution.

The country's push for electric vehicles and increasing share of renewable energy to meet its climate pledges will inadvertently help in cutting emissions. Besides, the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana to provide clean cooking gas to rural households helps in curbing indoor air pollution. The government is also promoting the use of biomass in coal-fired power plants to reduce stubble-burning.

But these operate in isolation. There's no umbrella policy that encapsulates action on air pollution. NCAP remains the only programme that focuses on air quality.

"There are things the government is doing that will improve air quality. But they are piecemeal," Mukerjee said. "What is needed is something that ties all this down. That is what NCAP was supposed to do."

Ganguly said that policy synergy is key. "You can't have an exclusive air pollution policy and then you don't account for air pollution in other government policies. The intersections of separate policies need to be thought of holistically."

Still, NCAP is a positive step.

"Right now, the focus is on the capacity building but limited progress in rolling out mitigation measures," Ganguly said. "To make a real call on whether NCAP has made an impact, we'll need to give it a couple more years."

Tripathi, too, said that NCAP has not made the kind of progress that was expected. "It's only a three-year-old baby... A lot of work is required, but it is not that we are not moving in that direction."