TWO DECADES OF BREATHLESS DEVELOPMENT

The GDP in India has gone up two and a half times in the past twenty years -- and pollution from vehicles has gone up 8 times. Policies such as those which allow the proliferation of two-stroke and diesel vehicles are responsible, says CSE

According to a study conducted by the Centre for Science and Environment, while the GDP in India has gone up by two and a half times in the 1975-’95 period, industrial air pollution has gone up four times, and pollution from vehicles has gone up by a shocking 8 times.

These figures were released by CSE director Anil Agarwal at a public meeting on November1, the third anniversary of the CSE Right to Clean Air Campaign. The campaign was launched on November 1, 1996, after the release of the report, Slow Murder: The deadly story of vehicular pollution in India.

The campaign had immediate effect after it was launched in 1996, when the Supreme Court issued suo moto notice to the Delhi Transport Department following the release of Slow Murder, and asked them to come up with a comprehensive plan of action. Following the November 1, 1997 anniversary meeting, when CSE revealed that one person dies prematurely every hour due to air pollution in Indian cities, the then environment minister Saifuddin Soz reacted to the resulting media publicity by announcing a white paper.

However, the government has failed to come up with a well thought out short term strategy, Agarwal said. Instead, they have encouraged the proliferation of vehicles with diesel and two stroke engines, despite evidence that these two components of the vehicle population are the most polluting. The population of two-stroke vehicles grew from 40 percent of the vehicle population in 1975 to 70 percent of the vehicle population in 1995, while hydrocarbons, the main pollutant from two-stroke engines, went up 10 fold in the 1980-’94 period.

Similarly, diesel consumption has gone up 4 times in the 1980 - 1994 period, resulting in a 9 fold increase in suspended particulate matter. Criticising the government for selling poor quality diesel, Agarwal said that if Indian refineries are unable to improve diesel quality, the country should import diesel. "The diesel manufactured by the public sector Indian refineries is 250 times dirtier than the world’s best," Agarwal said.

He also asked the government to halt the trend towards dieselisation by banning the manufacture of luxury diesel cars. Diesel fumes are more dangerous than what was previously thought. About 90 percent of the particulate matter from diesel fumes are less than 1 micron (one micron is a millionth of metre), which reach the innermost recesses of the human respiratory system and are responsible for the high premature mortality related to air pollution. Scientists in Japan recently isolated a deadly compound in diesel fumes, which was found to be the strongest carcinogen known to mankind till now.

Agarwal called for a tax on manufacturers producing vehicles with polluting technology. He said manufacturers should be made to provide consumers with a life long emission warranty for their product, and also make the emission levels of new vehicles available to the buyer. Such systems were already in place in other parts of the world.

For more information, contact Anumita Roychowdhury or Shefali Verma at CSE, Tel.Nos. 6983394 or 6981110