Kejriwal Can’t Even The Odds
Delhi needs a scientific approach to fighting pollution; a CM getting excited by foreign ideas without thinking the ramifications through does not help
Sociologist Dipankar Gupta has rightly slammed the Delhi government’s eccentric decision to allow cars with odd and even number plates on odd and even dates respectively to ply in the city. But one must appreciate the constraint that the Euro VI emission standard cannot be applied forthwith; the petrochemical and automobile industries must be given some years to revamp their factories to meet the modern pollution control standard. Therefore, here are some arrangements that will work until we are geared up to implement the pollution standard:
- Ask different sectors of the market (shops as well as offices) to open and close at different hours, say 8 am – 4 pm, 10 am – 6 pm, 12 pm – 8 pm, based on a feasibility study conducted on the nature of the businesses.
- Do not allow use of cars near major places of worship. God does not need your car, and He may well appreciate the fact that you underwent some hardship to reach Him.
Note that shopping centres, especially those that are not yet housed in malls with large parking spaces at the basement, and areas adjoining temples, mosques, gurudwaras etc are the most congested places in Delhi. Residents of places like Karol Bagh and Lajpat Nagar and commuters who pass through these locations will heave a sigh of relief if both of the vehicular restrictions mentioned above are imposed.
A ban on cars and bikes’ ownership or use is an infringement by the government on your fundamental right to movement across the territory of India and your individual right to property (which includes owning a car), but people may grin and bear with your rules if they come in the form of reasonable restrictions such as above, not when it affects their livelihood. The exemption given to VVIPs (members of the political executive) makes it worse; it means I cannot drive the car that I bought off my money, while a politician can move around in his, which he bought off my (taxpayers’) money, not his own!
The odd-even registration number plate restriction is also an assault by the Delhi government on citizens’ livelihood. When I came to Delhi from Calcutta (now Kolkata) in 1994, the basic difference in the behavioural pattern of passengers that I noticed was in the directions of their movement. In Calcutta, when I would wait at a stand in the southern part of the city for a bus to my office in Salt Lake, I would see buses moving in that direction all packed up, while those coming back from the other end of the city were near empty. The opposite scenario emerged every evening. In contrast, buses in the national capital were (and are) never as crowded as those in West Bengal’s capital — where passengers are forced to hang precariously from the bus door — but none runs empty either. This is an indicator of the vibrancy of Delhi’s economy.
The national capital is a money-minded city unlike the one inhabited largely by laidback Bengalis and a minuscule Marwari population, wherein even the latter do not move around for their business daily and as frequently as the Punjabis of Delhi do. Leaving the top-notch jobs aside, all second-, third-, fourth-level jobs witness tremendous job dissatisfaction. But, instead of complaining, Delhiites have addressed their income woes in two ways—
- Many work for two employers simultaneously, which is unethical, given the contract in one’s appointment letter [But never mind! The issue in hand is passenger behaviour, not employment ethics]. When I was a banker in the private sector, I knew of government sector counterparts who would leave the banks unattended after the visiting hours, make some additional bucks 2 pm – 5 pm, and finally rush back to their main office for the sign out.
- All these people that you see criss-crossing the city in their motorcycles and small cars would resign their jobs in 5-10 years, and set up their small shops with the idea: ‘If I can generate so much of money for my employer, why shouldn’t I make myself rich instead?’ So, agencies, sub-agencies, brokering houses and direct sales associates spring up in hundreds, launched by these people, every year.
Because of the two types of industry above, Delhiites do not have a fixed time to reach office. Many do not have a fixed office either. A car pool is the last thing that can work for them; for, one’s neighbours do not share his/her destination and work hours.
Furthermore, since the start-ups are hard pressed for capital, their offices are located generally in basements of residential areas, often with rear-side entry. Ergo, Delhi’s Connaught Place is not Kolkata’s Esplanade where most offices are concentrated. The whole of the national capital city is de facto a work destination.
Given this scenario, not allowing a person to use his car for half the days of the month is a direct assault on his livelihood. Delhi’s inhabitants are not typically represented by Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Transport Minister Gopal Rai and Health Minister Satyendra Kumar Jain, who enjoy the luxury of travelling a short distance from their Civil Lines bungalows to the Vidhan Sabha or the Secretariat.
The section of the media that celebrated the trio’s car pooling has betrayed callous regard for the way much of Delhi moves. The praise is all the more glaring because journalists are supposed to know how a reporter works. How do you interview different people, mostly VIPs, in odd destinations at odder hours when you are debarred from using your personal vehicle for half the month? And how do sub-editors, doing desk jobs in print media return home at 2 am? Which common car can drop one in Najafgarh, another in Mehrauli and the third in Shahdara?
The Government of Delhi should, therefore, seriously think of alternatives, a few of which have been suggested in the beginning of this article. Having done that, however, the level of pollution will show only a marginal dip, as vehicular pollution constitutes a mere 18 per cent of the total pollutants the city of Delhi is subjected to. Indeed, even in the moderately populated streets on 1 January, the air quality reported from different locations of the city by the India Today channel read “risky”, “hazardous” and “dangerous”.
It made no scientific sense to put curbs on cars that contribute a mere 20 per cent of the 18 per cent of pollutants when two-wheelers’ contribution of 33 per cent is ignored. It may well make a political sense to keep these votaries of AAP in good humour.
To be serious about tackling pollution, Swarajya suggests the following measures:
1. Dust management: It is difficult to breathe in large parts of outer and rural Delhi where vehicles are visibly less in number: the stretch between Wazirabad and Burari, for example. It’s because of dust, which triggers off allergic reactions and respiratory problems in many.
—High-Efficiency Particulate Arrestance (HEPA) must be incorporated first after studying the models in the West (especially in semi-deserts and grasslands) and then tropicalising it for Indian conditions.
—Different kinds of air filters must be tested to settle for those that can meet the Delhi challenge.
—Out of fibrogenic kinds, free crystalline silica (FCS) or asbestos, the first is a bigger challenge for Delhi. To make it simple for the reader, let me say sand rather than silica. Advanced industrial ventilation systems must be incorporated in areas crowded by factories. Wet dust must be suppressed using liquids, leaving little dust airborne. Employ water sprays to deal with the dust that still remains in air. Thankfully, the Central government is working on the third technique, but it would prove inadequate without the first two measures in place.
—Dilution ventilation and isolation otherwise are emergency measures that employers will be forced to take when our work places become totally unlivable.
2. Restrictions in construction activities: Here are about a dozen employable methods to tackle the pollutants generated by this segment of the economy. Beginning from a low base, India can in fact register a higher degree of improvement in the scenario than the US.
3. Waste management: The segregation of bio-degradable and non-bio-degradable waste that had begun wonderfully in Delhi during the 1990s lost direction in a decade. The kind of government advertisements required for awareness that we saw in that period are no longer seen on television or in newspapers even as the capital city now hosts lakhs of more migrants who missed the 90s’ campaign.
—Besides resuming the education on what must go into the green bin and what must go in the blue, located along the roads, the regulation on plastic, which has come a cropper, must be revised. Let’s face it. Since a polythene carry bag is convenient, a rule on the microns of thickness of a bag will not solve the problem; what you gain by reducing pollution per unit bag is lost by the volume of pollutant bags generated.
—Electronic waste management is only on paper (on the Delhi Department of Environment website to be precise). E-waste collection kits and a network of collection centres will not work unless non-use of the kit meets with heavy penalty.
For all the criticism the former BJP and Congress governments of Delhi had been subjected to by the AAP, they must be appreciated for two systemic measures that inconvenienced no citizen: the conversion from leaded to unleaded petrol by the BJP and turning public transport fuel to CNG by the Congress. While Kejriwal’s wild accusation of “sab miley huey hain, ji” (meaning, the BJP and Congress are hand-in-glove in all acts of corruption) endeared to the crowd at his election campaigns, he has proved to be blessed with far less foresight and scientific temper than his political rivals.
In fact, having read his book Swaraj (co-authored by Anna Hazare), I had told fellow activists that this man’s outlook on fighting corruption was terribly municipal in approach; it lacked a broad perspective (vision for a nation or a province thereof). Within that municipal approach, he gets excited about foreign ideas without studying the implications. Like we had a Prof Dinesh Mohan importing the idea of the Bus Rapid Transit system from Bogotá, Colombia, which ultimately had to be scrapped in Delhi, Kejriwal’s road space rationing formula is bound to fail as it has been observed in every freak city where it was tried: Bogotá, Mexico City, San José, Santiago, São Paulo… you name it!
Foreigners also tried things other than the ‘odd’ formula. Every knee-jerk reaction either pushed people to corrupt acts like getting fake number plates, or created a rich-poor divide, or gave the authority an additional tool of extortion, or forced the administration into second thoughts and, most importantly, it resulted in no measurable amelioration in the quality of air.
Why our IITians turn out to be Tughlaqs in administration and politics is, of course, the subject matter of a different article I might write in the future.