by The Economist
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| The World Health Organisation ranks Delhi as the world’s most polluted big city. Authorities have tried reducing the number of cars on the city’s roads to improve air quality.
Click here to subscribe to The Economist on YouTube: https://econ.st/2xvTKdy The greater Delhi area has a population around 25 million people and is home to 2.9 million cars and 7 million motorbikes and motorised rickshaws. Tandoors, open ovens, are another source of pollution. About 9,000 hotels and restaurants in Delhi use coal to cook food. The city’s level of respirable suspended particulate matter is twice that of Beijing. The city’s air includes a toxic mix of arsenic, black carbon, formaldehyde, nickle, sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide. An estimated 25-50,000 of Delhi’s citizens die younger every year because of air pollution. As India’s middle class has increased in size, so too has the number of car owners. The numbers of vehicles on India’s roads has tripled in the past decade. Successive Indian governments subsidised diesel fuel to woo farmers who use it to power water pumps and tractors. The number of diesel cars in India increased ten-fold between 2000 and 2013. The government of Narendra Modi scrapped diesel subsidies in 2014. Sales of diesel cars have already dropped. For the first two weeks of January 2016, city authorities carried out an experiment on Delhi’s roads – It restricted road use to odd or even-numbered licence plates on alternating days. Despite less traffic on the roads, the particulate matter count spiked for the first few days. This may have been due to higher levels of fog in January however public transport moved more efficiently – more people used buses. Air quality has become a pressing issue for ordinary Indians. Local and national leaders cannot afford to ignore it. Daily Watch: mind-stretching short films throughout the working week. For more from Economist Films visit: http://films.economist.com/ |
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