Even critics of the Delhi government's decision to ration road space for the first 15 days of this year acknowledge that, contrary to expectation, it was implemented without too many problems. It is an unusual sight, in India, to see a new and burdensome regulation being largely followed willingly in the manner that this one was by citizens of and visitors to the capital.
On two criteria, therefore - raising awareness of the problem of air pollution, and creating a certain amount of civic solidarity with regard to that problem - the experiment can already be declared something of a success. Beyond that, however, the answers are not that clear. Certainly, it served to decongest the roads, which in itself was a significant gain. But air quality in a city, especially one like Delhi in winter, depends on a number of factors. Vehicular pollution is only one of them. The weather, wind speed, the burning of organic material, construction dust and industrial emissions - all these are additional compounding factors that contribute to dangerous levels of particulate matter in the air.
There has been a great deal of discussion as to whether the measure has been a success in terms of its stated objective: reducing air pollution on some of the most smoggy days of the year in Delhi. But most of this discussion was frankly premature. It is now time to take some of the heat out of the debate -- to depoliticise it, in fact, and allow its evaluation as any other policy experiment. This requires examining the data for air quality, building a coherent model of pollution, and econometric examination of the data against alternative models to see if there was a statistically significant effect. Eyeballing the data and coming to a conclusion one way or the other is a completely inadequate way to frame public policy. To isolate the effect of the experiment, econometric analysis will have to consider various questions.
For example, were these January days less or more windy than comparable days on which road rationing did not occur? Are air quality sampling stations located close to traffic intersections, and does that bias their sampling upwards or downwards? These claims cannot be answered by assertion, but by a careful examination of the facts, which will take some time. Lessons from this experiment must also be examined by other urban centres in India - already, some in Mumbai are considering the usefulness of such a regulation there, purely as a decongestion measure.
The odd-even experiment also revealed the gaps in Delhi's public transport system. The number of auto-rickshaws on the road was revealed to be somewhat insufficient. The Delhi Metro needs to examine if it could run its trains faster, with greater frequency, for longer, and with more carriages in order to take care of growing demand. The bus service was not overburdened mainly because school buses were pressed into service for general passenger transit - this was possible because schools were on vacation. Clearly, more buses are needed. All these need to be points of action for the Delhi government. The municipal bodies in Delhi and the Centre, which also have some powers in the National Capital Region, must work with the state government to fix these gaps.
Civic solidarity in the face of a public health emergency is a fragile thing, and it is to the credit of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, his government and party that they worked to build it up effectively. However, now that awareness has been raised, all stakeholders must now pull together to reduce pressure on the roads and on Delhi's air. The question must be asked: what can companies based in Delhi contribute to this effort? Good corporate citizenship would require them, too, to endeavour to make some innovative changes. For example, Delhi is in the fortunate position of having multiple hubs. There is no reason why workplaces in each of those different hubs should not collectively and voluntarily consider having different times of operation, in order to enable their employees to more easily use public transport in off-peak periods, and to reduce congestion and the allied pollution. Collective action should not be left to the government, especially given the scale of the public health problem that Delhi faces.
