Author: cprindia

Watch the full

video of the discussion on ‘Aftermath of the Pulwama Terrorist Attack – Options for India’, moderated by Ambassador Shyam Saran, with opening remarks by Yamini Aiyar, featuring Ambassador Sharat Sabharwal, Commodore C Uday Bhaskar and Happymon Jacob, co-organised by India International Centre (IIC) and CPR.

In one of the worst terror strikes in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, around 44 CRPF personnel were killed and several others injured after a terrorist rammed an explosive-laden vehicle into a bus in the state’s Pulwama region on 14 February 2019. The Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) based in Pakistan claimed responsibility for the attack.

The attack provoked the Balakot air strike by the Indian Air Force, which led to further retaliation from across the border. The events of the last few weeks raise serious questions regarding the future of Indo-Pak relations and the geo-political environment. It also raises important questions on the security scenario and Kashmir and the policies adopted by New Delhi.

The panel discussion explored the plethora of options available to India in dealing with the implications of this attack both in the short-run as well as the long-run.

Yamini Aiyar is the President and Chief Executive, CPR. Ambassador Sharat Sabharwal is the Former High Commissioner of India to Pakistan. Commodore C Uday Bhaskar is the Director of Society for Policy Studies. Happymon Jacob is the Associate Professor of Disarmament Studies at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Ambassador Shyam Saran is Senior Fellow, CPR and Life Trustee, IIC.

The question and answer session that followed can be accessed here.

A curated media commentary by CPR faculty, analysing the Pulwama attack can be read here.

In the las

t few weeks, the government of India has made significant announcements on reforming agriculture, particularly the regulatory framework for managing agriculture markets in India. These changes have been described as pathbreaking, long-term changes that will significantly alter the terms of trade in favour of the farmer. What are these reforms, what do they mean in practice, and what impact are they likely to have on the everyday lives of our farmers and markets?

In this episode, Yamini Aiyar, President & Chief Executive of CPR, speaks with Dr Mekhala Krishnamurthy, Senior Fellow at CPR and Director of the new State Capacity Initiative at the centre. Krishnamurthy is also an Associate Professor at Ashoka University. She sheds light on the history of agriculture market reforms in India, the intricacies of the mandi system (wholesale vegetable markets), and where the current reforms fall short on benefitting farmers. She recommends that while they are a step in the right direction, the government must look at expanding and strengthening the mandi system in order to truly double farmers’ incomes.

‘Power plants as a source of air pollution in India’ as part of the Clearing the Air? Seminar Series. The panellists were Vinuta Gopal, co-founder and director at Asar Social Impact Advisors Pvt Ltd, environmental lawyer Ritwick Dutta, and Priyavrat Bhati, the Energy Programme director at the Centre for Science and Environment. The panel was moderated by Shibani Ghosh, Fellow, Centre for Policy Research.

We have identified some important points that came up during the panel discussion and presented them in the form of a Q&A below. Videos of the panel discussion can be accessed here.

Videos and background information of other events in the Series can be accessed here.

Q: What are the main emissions from coal-based power plants, and how much air pollution do these emissions account for? Where are thermal power plants predominantly located?

Vinuta Gopal (VG): The main emissions from coal-based power plants that contribute to air pollution include sulphates, nitrates, mercury, and secondary particulate matter (which is largely formed by SOX emissions). Coal, fly ash, and secondary particles from thermal power plants and industries in Delhi contribute 35% of PM2.5 in the winter and 41% of PM2.5 in the summer. Since Delhi has 13 thermal power plants with a capacity of over 11,000 MW within a 300-km radius, these emissions are often blown into the NCR by the northwesterly winds. Beyond Delhi, in the Indo-Gangetic belt, satellite imagery shows a direct increase in particulate matter around Delhi, which can be correlated with the presence and growth of coal-based power plants in the region. More than half of the current operational power plants are in 5 states: Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Gujarat. In addition, the Ministry of Power says that there are 47,800 MW of power plants under construction. About 40% of the existing power plants are privately owned.

Q: Can you tell us more about the 2015 emission standards for power plants?

VG: Draft power plant-specific emission standards were released in June 2015 by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) and were finally notified in December 2015. The standards cover particulate matter, SOX, NOX, mercury and water use. The standards were differentiated, so thermal power plants installed before 2003, after 2003, and power plants installed after January 2017 were all given different standards. There were also distinctions in standards based on the size and capacity of the power plants (less or more than 500 MW). Largely, this was due to space constraints – the smaller plants would not have had the space to put in flue-gas desulphurisation (FGD) technology. The standards were to come into force in two years. However, the standards were ultimately not complied with. The matter is now before the Supreme Court.
There are also other rules around the longevity of power plants. According to the Central Electricity Authority (CEA), power plants should be renovated or retired after 25 years, and after 35 years, the plant should not be running. Indian power plants on the 25-year-mark will approach 29 GW by 2025. Indian power plants on the 35-year-mark will approach 50 GW by 2025. Interestingly, in the recently released National Electricity Policy plan, the CEA says that 23,000 MW should be retired by 2022. They are also saying that this retirement will not pose a threat to the power supply.

Q: Why are emission standards necessary for coal-based power plants?

VG: Thermal power plants are point-sources of pollution, so we can actively control their emissions. This is why emissions standards are important. The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) says that the 2015 emission standards could have resulted in significant progress, including a 48% decrease in NOX and SOX, a 40% reduction in PM, and a 60% reduction in mercury. This would have been important, since coal-based power plants generate about 75% of India’s electricity.

While talking about air pollution, we often refer to the peak problem – the period around October-November when pollution becomes a serious issue. However, we rarely talk about the baseload problem.

The thick blue line is actual PM10 emissions. The blue line below that is the national ambient air quality standard. Public debate around air pollution spikes in response to peak, episodic problems – such as Diwali smog, and stubble burning in October – but what we often fail to address is that throughout the year, we are inhaling poisonous air. This ‘baseload’ problem is ignored. Power plants contribute to the baseload. Without addressing power plants, you cannot address the baseload pollution.

Q: What was the process of designing the 2015 emission standards?

Priyavrat Bhati (PB): In December 2014, the CPCB started commissioning studies on air pollution due to international pressure, but the focus was on greenhouse gas emissions rather than pollution. The CPCB started to collect broad information on technology, including the boilers in place, technical controls over NOX emissions, and what methods existed to control particulate matter, including electrostatic precipitators (ESPs). They also had a series of expert consultations with manufacturers and retired officials to calculate broad levels of SOX and NOX emissions based on expert opinions on power supply. This was important, because there was a lack of data around NOX and SOX emissions and pollution at the time; Indian power plants were only tracking particulate matter, so SOX/NOX emissions were unknown. They complemented this research by studying regulatory mechanism across the world. What did not happen, unfortunately, was a detailed consultation or conversation with the power sector or the electricity boards. I believe that this was because at the time, the Ministry of Power was not in favor of emissions standards. The MoEFCC chose to issue draft emission standards in June 2015 and then receive detailed feedback from the Ministry of Power afterwards.

Q: Currently, are power plants doing anything to comply with the standards? Is the government attempting to comply in time for 2022?

PB: At the granular level, we do not know what plants are doing to comply with the standards, because we do not have data on emissions and the technical capacity of each plant. We have spoken to plants who are supposed to comply and they are surprised to be informed about the standards, and we have seen power plants that are not planning to put anything into place. That is how serious the disconnect is. It is a fundamental problem with the Central Electricity Authority. Having said that, there are power plants, including those of NTPC, that have been making strides. There is some action – it is just that there is no consistent, overarching plan or strategy, and something needs to be done about it.

Ritwick Dutta (RD): With the air pollution level so high, a power plant led by Tehri Hydro Development Corporation was allowed in Khurja, about 70 km from Delhi last year when they reported the average PM2.5 level at 62 micrograms. If you look at the document, the summer pollution levels are higher than the winter ones. But there were no questions from MoEFCC.

Q: How did the judiciary get involved in the issue?

RD: My involvement in this case began in February 2016, when a young researcher approached me with the view that there was no will to implement the 2015 standards. In May, we filed precautionary litigation in the National Green Tribunal (NGT), communicating the idea that these standards would not be enforced in two years. We wrote to the NGT as follows: if the government wants power plants in India to comply within two years, they must put systems in place, and report on these standards to the court. The litigation began, and the MoEFCC began submitting reports. What was interesting was that during the proceedings, the MoEFCC said – on affidavit – that in December 2017, they would initiate criminal action against non-compliant power plants. Throughout this process, the CPCB also had a consistent stance that everything was in place to ensure compliance. However, when asked, the MoEFCC said that there was no mechanism to ensure compliance, and that power plants were supposed to inform it of non-compliance, after which the Ministry would issue a notice. Beyond that, there was no mechanism. The CPCB has never prosecuted anyone till date, and the MoEFCC maintains that it is the CPCB’s job to follow up on such matters. On two occasions, the NGT was forced to issue warrants of arrest against MoEFCC officials, because they would not disclose anything about compliance. In October 2017, the Ministry filed an affidavit noting that power companies were currently in the planning stage for the issuance of a tender, clearly behind schedule. In November 2017, Senior Advocate Harish Salve moved an application in the Supreme Court, asking the Court to direct compliance with standards.

Q: Was the Supreme Court able to direct compliance with the standards? Why were the standards postponed to 2022?

RD: On December 12, 2017, the MoEFCC moved the Supreme Court to extend the compliance timeline of the 2015 notification by five years. However, the emissions standards were not directed or ordered by the Court, so asking the Court for an extension was puzzling! By going through the Supreme Court, the MoEFCC ensured that any dilution of the standards could not be questioned or corrected by lower courts. Also, in the legal proceedings and in the written paperwork submitted by the MoEFCC, there was no mention of the ongoing NGT case, even though this case was an appeal against the NGT’s order.
There was another disturbing development around this time. Normally, emission standards are notified by the MoEFCC, and the law says that only the Central Government is authorised to issue notifications. On December 9, 2017, the Additional Secretary in the MoEFCC wrote to the CPCB asking them to issue a notification, even though, under law, the CPCB has no real power to issue notifications. On December 11, 2017, one day before court proceedings, the CPCB issued a direction to all power plants, changing the deadline for compliance from December 2017 to 2022. This was done by an Additional Secretary by the name of AK Mehta, who came in for one day as chairman of the CPCB. In Court, the next day, the MoEFCC said that they wanted ‘prior approval’ before they extended the deadline. To our knowledge, the power plants were already informed by an illegal order issued by the CPCB! Our fear is that the government will do the same thing in 2022.

Q: What can be done to ensure compliance – should we rely on the courts? Should we be shutting down plants?

VG: The CEA has said that 26 GW of power should be shut down by 2022. To some extent, there is a move to acknowledge that not all plants should take these standards on. Some would be better off shutting down.

PB: The central government does not control many of the power plants that need to be shut down – those are owned by the states. The states do not have a plan either to shut things down. There is no legal requirement to shut down plants, but maybe compliance could hasten the process.

RD: This is not a simple environmental issue. The timeline and standards cannot be addressed at a minute level by the Supreme Court. Taking this to the NGT to ensure monthly reports and compliance would be much easier. At this point, realistically, 2022 is the deadline. The most critical issue is whether we can collectively decide on incremental deadlines for the next 6-10 months. Instead of waiting for 2022, we should create interim milestones to be achieved. The sad part here is that all the violators have escaped, despite repeated statements that compliance was on track. In that sense, the larger fight is one for accountability and transparency.

Q. What can we change about the process of implementing these standards?

PB: It is clear as daylight that our regulatory processes are not efficient. Frankly speaking, we need to enhance the capacities of these organisations. In the CPCB, there is only one person handling the regulatory work. They do not have the capacity to do everything that they need to do. That’s the current governance situation. One of the board members on the NTPC is a Joint Secretary with the Ministry, so you have the same people on both sides (the regulatory side and the executive side). You are negotiating with yourself.

Also, in a democracy, a broader stakeholder participation process is necessary for environmental laws. In this case, the back and forth between the stakeholders and the slow process of buy-in would have helped. However, that did not happen. Hence, this became a top-down approach. One can argue that the air pollution debate is currently being driven from the top. Although there should have been a mass movement around air quality while we were notifying the standards, that did not happen. So now, the second-best thing is an appreciation for emissions standards and policies, with advocacy and support from civil society.

VG: The public debate has largely been about Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR). However, it’s clear that every citizen in India has the right to clean air and good health. Power plants are supposed to be making their stack emissions public, and not enough has been done to make those emissions known publicly. There is some work for civil society to do there.

For the past few months the National Capital Region has been experiencing hazardous air quality. In this Q&A session with Dr Sarath Guttikunda, we try to understand the various sources of air pollution in Indian cities, particularly in Delhi, and why PM 2.5 has to be the focus of policy measures. We also ask him about the episodic concern for air pollution in India and the country’s capacity to monitor ambient air quality.

Dr Guttikunda is the founder/director UrbanEmissions.Info (UEinfo, India), a NASA Earth and Space Science Fellow; and a TED fellow.

What are the main sources of air pollutants?

Of the pollutants, PM 2.5 exceeds the standards the most, followed by PM 10, NO2, CO, and Ozone. The only pollutant to comply the national standards is SO2. Sources of each of these pollutants vary, in terms of percent contributions from various sources.

However, the main sources contributing to air pollution are well identified and this list is common for all Indian cities – vehicle exhaust, heavy industry including power generation, small scale industries including brick kilns, resuspended dust on the roads due to vehicle movement and construction activities, open waste burning, combustion of various fuels for cooking, lighting, and heating, in-situ power generation via diesel generator sets. Additionally, seasonal influences from dust storms, forest fires, open field fires during harvest season, and sea salt near coastal areas. In Indian cities, a major part of air pollution is sourced, all year around, from burning of diesel, petrol, gas, coal, biomass, and waste and resuspended dust.

Based on the material available from source apportionment studies, we summarized the nature of air pollution and sources in India, in this 2014 publication – Nature of air pollution, emission sources, and management in Indian cities.

For Delhi, based on the information available and our modelling studies, we assess, to ambient PM2.5 pollution, the contributions of

Vehicle exhaust is up to 30%
Biomass burning is up to 20%
Soil and road dust is up to 20%
Industries is up to 15%
Open waste burning is up to 15%
Diesel generators is up to 10%
Power plants is up to 5%
Outside the urban airshed is up to 30%
More details on studies included in this assessment available at What’s Polluting Delhi’s Air?

How are these sources identified and studied?

Attributing source contributions is an involved process, with a lot of data needs, an understanding of the primary sources in the city, information of ambient pollution levels, geography, and meteorology, and a lot of computational capacity to analyse the information in both real time and hind cast. A summary of these approaches involved in this process are detailed in our primer on source apportionment.

When there are many different types of air pollutants, why do we focus on PM 2.5? Why is it particularly dangerous?

A chemically charged pollutant, PM has contributions from all the primary emissions.

Black carbon and organic carbon, as primary emissions are part of PM 2.5
SO2 undergoes chemical reactions to form sulphate aerosols, which is part of PM 2.5
NOx-CO-VOC combine and react in many ways to chemically transform to form nitrate and secondary organic aerosols, which are part of PM2.5
NOx-CO-VOC also combine and react in many ways to form and consume ozone (depending on the mixture of the gases), which also contributes to health impacts and also participates in the formation of nitrates and secondary organic aerosols, which are part of PM 2.5
So, if we target PM 2.5, the one pollutant we are mainly concerned about in India, we are invariably targeting all the other pollutants as well. Therefore, any control mechanism aimed to reducing direct PM 2.5 emissions also reduces other pollutants (since sources to all these pollutants are common), except for resuspended dust.

The particle size, less than 2.5 micro-meter, is small enough to enter our lungs and blood stream, and stay there for a long time. There are more studies linking PM 2.5 to various health risks than any of the other pollutants.

Are Delhi’s pollution levels unsafe?

Annual average PM 2.5 levels in Delhi is 150 mg/m3. India’s national ambient air quality standard for PM 2.5 is 40 and World Health Organization’s annual guideline is 10. It is very clear that Delhi’s pollution levels are in the unsafe category.

While the pollution levels in Delhi have been in the same “very poor” range for the past five years, from the news coverage of the issue in the last two years, it is evident that the public interest in the topic is at its peak this year. Only concern is that the interest in the topic from the media and from the public seems to peak only when the pollution levels are in the “emergency” range.

We hear about air pollution particularly in winter months, and after events such as crop burning or Diwali. Are these the only times we should be concerned?

Meteorology over the Indo-Gangetic plains is complicated and it plays a strong role in the observed seasonal cycle of air pollution in the cities in this region – with the winter time highs (due to high inversion) and the summer time lows (due to rains).

While meteorology plays its part, there is also an increase in the total emissions during the winter months, which further exaggerates the problem. These additional emissions are primarily from the burning of wood, coal, and waste for space heating as the temperatures drop. While the need for space heating is there for most part of the winter season, there are also episodic spikes from bursting of crackers during Diwali, which lasts for 2-3 days as well as crop residue burning, which lasts for 2-3 weeks.

The graph presents a summary of monitoring data from Delhi for a period of 45 days from 19th October 2017. While the peaks during Diwali festivities and the crop residue burning emissions reaching Delhi (compounded with meteorological effects due to slow moving winds) are around 800 mg/m3, the running average for the period of 45 days is the most worrisome. Anytime, we normalize the problem looking at the high episodes that occur for 2-3 days or 2-3 weeks in a year, we are neglecting the fact that air pollution is in the very poor to severe conditions for a large part of the season and the year.

An interesting perspective from two colleagues:

Source: twitter
Do we have adequate information on air pollution in India? What do we need to improve the quality of this information?

An excerpt from an article recently published in ‘The Wire’ – It’s About Time We Got Smarter About Monitoring Our Air Pollution (9th September, 2017):

The quality of air in India is bad and is becoming a serious public health issue with huge repercussions to our quality of life and economy. We know this through anecdotal evidence and through the little data on monitoring that trickles down to the public. This limited information is not enough – to formulate policy, to understand seasonal and diurnal variations, to tease out patterns or to calibrate forecasting models. It is the right of any citizen to have access to information on the quality of air she is breathing – monitoring data that is real-time, reliable and accessible to any citizen.

While the results of the GBD study do fill in this lacuna of information, it is not a substitute for real-time information. These results are obtained through a modelling exercise that combines satellite feeds, emission inventories and historical monitoring data to then estimate ground-based concentrations. Note that satellites neither measure one location nor take ground measurements at all times (orbital satellites create a snapshot of the entire planet every one or two days). These snapshots are interpreted using the global chemical transport models to better represent the vertical mix of these measurements (known as aerosol optical depth). Like any modelling exercise, this data also comes with uncertainty. While this process is very useful in establishing annual trends, these systems are not a substitute for daily on-ground monitoring.

What we need are ground measurements using reference methods approved by the environment ministry. This ensures that the monitoring information is reliable and conforms to the government’s standards. Low-cost sensors do provide some information but because many of them are not recognised by the government or are not calibrated accurately, the data they generate cannot be used for policymaking.”

In India, we estimate that we require around 4,000 continuous monitoring stations to spatially and temporally represent the air pollution problem – 2,800 in the urban areas and 1,200 in the rural areas. Currently, data when available comes from around 600+ manual stations and less than 100 continuous monitoring stations.

Among all the cities and states, most number of continuous monitoring stations are present in Delhi, which means there is more information coming from Delhi, there are more studies by national and international institutions on Delhi, and there is more media and public focus on the issue of Delhi. It is very important to understand that air pollution is a regional problem. We need to focus on regions in the country, where people are exposed to unsafe levels of pollution, and there are no monitors to determine how much that is.

Dr Guttikunda recently presented at the first seminar in the Clearing the Air Seminar Series, organised by the Initiative on Climate, Energy and Environment (ICEE) on 4 December 2017 at the Centre for Policy Research (CPR). The full video of this seminar and the subsequent discussion can be found here.

India’s air quality presents a major public health crisis. In this series we showed that, first, most Indians face air quality year around that is multiple times higher than safe levels. Second, the health risks are pervasive and deep, affect healthy and vulnerable people, and are particularly harmful for our children. Third, air pollution is hard to solve because it is a multi-headed problem; industry, transport, biomass/waste burning and dust all contributing significantly, and each has its own political, regulatory and technical challenges. In this final article, we conclude that current efforts to solve air pollution are highly inadequate and suggest a way forward.

The current air quality regulatory architecture is built around the Environment (Protection) Act 1986, the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act 1981, and rules and notifications issued under each. The central and state pollution control boards are responsible for monitoring and enforcing emission regulations. A National Clean Air Plan is still in the works, and some cities and regions have begun working on their own plans and policies.

The national conversation has mostly been shaped by the regulatory architecture of Delhi and the National Capital Region, which has received disproportionate attention. This includes a Comprehensive Action Plan (CAP) and a complementary Graded Response Action Plan to trigger emergency actions when pollution levels cross particular thresholds. Many of these actions are driven by the Supreme Court’s orders. The court regularly intervenes to promote implementation, often in response to reports by the Environmental Protection (Prevention and Control) Authority, which was established by the court 20 years ago. Given its role as a template nationally, Delhi provides a useful test case to assess effectiveness of pollution control measures. So how has Delhi fared?

It is important to start by recognising the positives. The list of actions proposed in documents such as the CAP, and those directed by the judiciary, are useful, and if implemented, would make a difference. Some of these actions have already been implemented, such as shutting down the Badarpur power plant. Some very significant policy changes have been put in place, such as banning petcoke and setting a date for clean Bharat VI fuel standards. Air quality monitoring has improved, particularly in Delhi, and the formulation of an air quality index has helped public awareness.

However, it is hard to avoid a sense that the existing and planned pollution control approach as a whole is failing the citizens of Delhi-NCR. First, the CAP is organised around an unprioritised laundry list of no less than 93 different actions under 12 heads, each assigned to a relevant agency. While this list is indeed comprehensive, it is not strategic in identifying the most important actions, setting realistic timelines, and ensuring accountability. Indeed, for many actions the deadlines – ranging from ‘immediate’ to three months – have already passed with little apparent consequence to the relevant agency for inaction.

Second, many of the actions ignore or assume implementation and enforcement challenges. For example, one action demands “strict enforcement of air pollution control measures in all industries,” including unauthorised ones. Yet, there is no consideration of the technical challenge of monitoring dispersed industries, enforcing the law when the very existence of many industries is illegal, and the political blowback due to political connections or job loss. Without addressing these underlying issues, enforcement agencies are placed in an untenable situation. Using the CAP to suggest that pollution control regulations are all in place, and that ‘only’ enforcement challenges remain is disingenuous. Pollution regulation has to be re-designed with an eye to credible enforcement, while also considering other institutional and regulatory challenges.

Third, not all actions are amenable to an administrative solution. Some, such as closing the Badarpur power plant, are stroke-of-the-pen solutions. But for many actions, some combination of regulatory, administrative, political, technical and behavioural solutions are needed. For example, addressing industrial emissions requires enhancing monitoring ability and institutional capacity, and legal and regulatory changes. Crop burning has proved resistant to an administratively provided technical solution – subsidising “happy seeders”.

Finally, there is no effort to communicate to the public the rationality of the plan and lay out markers of progress. For citizens to accept financial or convenience costs and agree to change behaviour requires conviction that the plan fairly distributes costs, and will be effective in driving toward results.

Again, this is not to suggest there has been no progress. But it is to argue that India’s citizens deserve better than moderate, ad hoc and episodic progress, that risks getting overwhelmed by rising emissions. There is little to be gained by generating yet another wish-list of actions. What, then, is to be done? Air pollution control has to be built around a virtuous cycle of growing citizen pressure for political action, demonstrated success, and strategic long-term action built around robust regulatory institutions.
First, air quality has to be driven up the political agenda by highlighting the true costs of air pollution to health, quality of life and economic output. At a recent public hearing in Delhi, the AAP representative pleaded helplessness pointing to pollution sources outside Delhi, the BJP airily dismissed pollution as the price of economic aspirations, and the Congress failed to show up. In the forthcoming elections, public action groups and citizens could demand that all parties outline clearly their actions on air quality in their election manifestos. The political class should no more be able to loosely argue that unhealthy air is the cost of ‘progress’.

Second, because public pressure can turn into frustration or fatalism if it is not productively channeled, we need a limited number of concrete, achievable, and significant actions suitable for each jurisdiction. Critically, these should be defined for each major source, to signal progress is being made on each front. For example, in Delhi, buying and operating sufficient public buses while simultaneously inducing a large-scale behavioural shift toward public transport would curtail a rapidly growing pollution source. Early wins that include public action alone will not solve the problem, because air quality is not determined by any single source. But they do address key sources, and help bring the public in as active stakeholders and not just passive recipients of distant administrative action.

Third, and most important, a strategic re-think of our regulatory and policy framework is required, keeping in mind the particular characteristics of each source. For industrial pollution, physically monitoring and chasing individual industries throughout a region is infeasible; regulators should instead rely more on remote monitoring of credible data and clever enforcement. For crop burning, delving beyond a technological quick fix to consider upstream measures is required, like incentivising a shift in cropping patterns based on understanding farmers’ concerns. Given the dispersed nature of pollution sources, developing an ‘airshed’ based regulatory architecture that transcends cities is important.

India is waking up to the costs of air pollution. But we have only taken initial, reactive measures toward addressing the challenge. We now need to move to systematic actions built on the foundations of political pressure, public engagement and strategic institutional action.

Navroz K Dubash is Professor at Centre for Policy Research. Shibani Ghosh is a Fellow at Centre for Policy Research. Santosh Harish is a Fellow at Centre for Policy Research.

This article is the fourth article in a four-part series on India’s air pollution. The original article, which was published in the Hindustan Times on December 22, 2018, can be found here. For more information on CPR’s work on air pollution, visit the Clearing the Air? project page.

In this Series:

Understanding the Curse of Air Pollution (1/4)

Public Health in India a Casualty of Air Pollution (2/4)

Delhi Has a Complex Air Pollution Problem (3/4)

Air pollution: India’s waking up, but there’s a long way to go (4/4)

 

The land acquisition law in India has undergone many changes over more than a century and continues to be highly contentious. Watch the full video (above) of the Land Rights Initiative team at CPR sharing findings from a systematic study of all cases on land acquisition decided by the Supreme Court of India from 1950 to 2015.

A first-ever comprehensive national study of its kind, the findings address various metrics, such as public purpose, procedure, compensation, invocation of urgency clause etc., and contain useful insights for eliminating disputes over land acquisition in India.

The Scaling City Institutions for India:Sanitation (SCI-FI: Sanitation) initiative at the Centre for Policy Research organised a seminar (full video above) where Chloé Leclère explored the fundamental question of sanitation as an ‘economic good’ in India through a theoretical review of literature and several datasets.

Identifying three major characteristics of sanitation in India, Leclère focused on questions pertaining to the need of sanitation, what it produces, and the process that relates a biologic imperative and the environment circumscribe a multi-dimensional scape.

Chloé Leclère is a PhD Scholar in Economics at the Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon in France. Her research focuses on sanitation policies in India and explores the specificities related to evaluation of social programmes.

The open discussion that followed can be accessed here. More information and resources can be found at the event page.

This is the 12th in the series of the Community of Research and Practice (CORP) seminars planned by the Scaling City Institutions for India: Sanitation (SCI-FI: Sanitation) initiative.

Ghatbarra village, located in Sarguja district of the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh is home to Gondtribals, recognized under the Schedule V of the Constitution of India. Their home lies in HasdeoArand forest area, considered to be one of the last remaining contiguous patches of forests outside the legally recognized Protected Area (PAs) in Central India. The Gram Sabha (village assembly) of Ghatbarra and nineteen other villages has communicated their position to constitutionally oppose coal mining in the area back in 2015. Today, with a Supreme Court matter dealing with the validity of the ‘forest clearance’ affecting the village and the High Court case on the cancellation of forest rights pending decision, Ghatbarra is set to become a case in point in the near future.

In January 2016, the district level authorities revoked the Community Forest Rights (CFR) granted to this village as per due process of law. The reason cited was that the exercise of these rights was coming in the way of coal mining operations in the area. Even as the final decision on a petition challenging this revocation is pending in the Bilaspur High Court, this paper seeks to examine two legal questions that arise out of the case. First, is the cancellation of conferred forest rights legally permissible as per the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (FRA, 2006)? Second, can the use of forestland for mining be approved under the Forest Conservation Act (FCA), 1980, without recognizing or compensating for the pre-existing rights of the tribal communities living in and dependent on the forests?

Watch the full video of the workshop (above), which sheds light on the process of waste collection and recycling in Hanoi, Vietnam. With the process of metropolisation and the growth in population in Hanoi, the volume of waste is increasing rapidly. Waste collecting (buying/picking) and selling scrap recyclable material have become important informal businesses among peri-urban villagers.

The presentation combines several perspectives (longitudinal, spatial, social and political) to offer new perspectives to understand the various aspects of the urban processes in Vietnam: the top-down policy of the state and the municipal authority and the bottom-up one through everyday urban practices of migrants and inhabitants of the burgeoning urban villages. The presentation highlights the different actors in charge of waste-management, the way they operate, and the main challenges of the sector.

Marie Lan Nguyen Leroy is the Project Manager at Paris Region Expertise – Center for urban studies, Hanoi. Thai Hoa Nguyen is a member of the JEAI RECYCURBS VIET, a joint research team between the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development and Hanoi Architectural University. Nguyen Thai Huyen is Lecturer, Education, Deputy Head, Division of Landscape-Architecture responsibility in Hanoi Architectural University, 2011.

The question and answer session that followed can be accessed here. Find all available videos of previous workshops here.