Dear readers,

Air pollution is not the great equaliser it was once projected to be. Not everyone suffers the same way and not all areas in a city show similar levels on highly polluted days. As winter spreads its cold tentacles across India, air pollution and smog mark our days, the Air Quality Index is closely tracked, governments shut down schools, and hospitals see an influx of patients with respiratory and other ailments. Air pollution exacts a heavy price; according to a study in The Lancet, 16 million people died in India in the past decade due to long-term exposure to PM2.5 pollutants. In this edition, Question of Cities asks if smaller cities beyond Delhi and Mumbai are getting the attention they need, how pollution varies within big cities, how it affects women differently than men, and what an evaluation of the National Clean Air Programme tells us.

Conversations and policies on air pollution are mostly centred on Delhi and Mumbai but other, smaller, cities and towns have been facing toxic air too. These are, at best, footnotes in national conversations on air pollution. Authorities here go in for quick-fix measures such as dust management, paving roads, using water sprinklers even as less than one percent of the budget is spent on controlling toxic emissions from industry and construction, writes QoC Associate Editor Shobha Surin. A staggering 295 million people live in only the 131 non-attainment smaller cities that have been identified. This threatens to turn air pollution into a pan-India urban crisis. Read it here.

Manoranjan Ghosh, assistant professor at Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts, SIU, Pune, writes that the ambitious National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), in its framework and practice, missed the idea of people’s participation or ‘atmospheric citizenship’. Despite people’s awareness and lived experience of air pollution, their democratic participation in addressing the issue remains minimal. The NCAP does not encourage people’s direct or indirect involvement in mitigation. A mere 11 percent expenditure on infrastructure improvement and city-level plans failing to address caste and class inequities in pollution mitigation are among its shortcomings. Read it here.

Like other aspects of cities, air pollution too affects women and men differently. Besides the usual respiratory ailments associated with poor quality air, women’s reproductive health, mental health, even anaemia levels show adverse impacts, particularly in women who work outdoors like street sweepers, vendors, gig workers. They carry a double load with indoor air pollution adding to the poor-quality air outside. Multimedia journalist Jashvitha Dhagey brings voices from the ground in Delhi, backed by studies, to affirm the gendered impacts along class and caste lines which need to be recognised and addressed in policy and action. Read it here.

Despite the focus on the Air Quality Index, it’s an average that shows only the central or typical value and does not accurately represent air quality in different areas of cities, argues architect-illustrator Nikeita Saraf. Within a city, some areas have cleaner air than the city’s AQI while others have much higher pollution levels. City-level action plans to fight air pollution flatten the peaks and may not sufficiently address the inter-city disparities. Authorities need to devise mitigation plans based on the micro-climate in different areas, addressing local factors, to make a real difference, she says. Read it here.

Through most of November, Lahore and Multan, among other places in Pakistan, suffered record-breaking air pollution with the Air Quality Index in the 1000s, writes Zofeen T Ebrahim, veteran journalist from Pakistan and a QoC-CANSA Fellow. Nearly 1.8 million people sought medical treatment for respiratory problems in smog-affected districts. Although the government shut down factories and mills, banned barbecues and stubble burning, closed schools and did cloud seeding, these cannot substitute long-term sustainable plans. It was also when most of north India showed similarly high AQI levels and Delhi saw similar anti-pollution measures. Climate is now an element in Indo-Pak relations. Read it here.

In our regular section News Digest, read interesting news stories and essays on cities and climate change.

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Thank you,
Smruti
December 13, 2024