Economic cost of pollution

It could affect productivity and long-term growth

India is incurring a staggering annual economic loss of around $37 billion, or nearly 1.4 per cent of its gross domestic product, due to its failure to restrain air pollution. Worse still, about 1.67 million lives are lost every year due to causes attributable directly or tacitly to contaminated air. This death tally is the highest in the world and exceeds the loss of life due to Covid-19. Such massive economic, health, and, hence, productivity deprivation could mar India’s aspiration for rapid economic growth. The report of the study published in The Lancet, the health journal, which makes these startling revelations, also projects a dismal future for the children and next generations if air pollution remains unaddressed or under-addressed. They would face a high risk of heart diseases, diabetes, and respiratory ailments on growing up. Even their intelligence quotient might be adversely affected. Yet, the combat against air pollution is not receiving the priority it merits.

The bulk of the fallout of foul air occurs, as can be readily guessed, in the heavily polluted northern states, with the National Capital Region (NCR) being the hub. The ambient air in this sprawling belt remains woefully polluted the year round, though the situation turns truly menacing in winter. This is the time when the pollutants, including the health-injurious particulate matter PM2.5 and PM10, tend to remain close to the ground and get mixed up with hanging moisture to form breath-choking smog. The smoke and other contaminants generated by the burning of crop stubble in the states adjoining the NCR in October-November, too, drift towards this region, further deteriorating the air quality. But local factors, such as dust, vehicular pollution, and waste burning, are the key polluters which need to be curbed.

However, since the pollution-triggered economic damage varies from state to state, India needs area-specific pollution control strategies. In that respect, the government’s recent move to set up an empowered Commission for Air Quality Management in Delhi and its nearby states and merging the Supreme Court-appointed Environment Pollution Control Authority (EPCA) and three other committees-cum-task forces in it, looked fairly sound. But, in reality, this commission, constituted on November 5 under an Ordinance promulgated in October, has failed to display the urgency needed to tackle this menace on a war-footing. The few routine orders issued by it till now, such as increasing water sprinkling, mechanised sweeping of roads, and strict enforcement of dust control measures at construction and demolition sites, have remained largely on paper.

Consequently, the ambient atmosphere of this region on most days in the recent past, except when strong winds disperse the pollutants, has remained in the “very poor” to “severe” categories of the air quality index. The kind of emergency measures that were needed to clean the air have not been forthcoming. Environment activists have, therefore, begun to wonder why establish such a large body with representation from every state to do something that the EPCA was anyhow doing under the graded responses action plan. The commission would be able to justify its relevance only if it can come up with some out-of-the-box ideas, and find the needed ways and means to strike at the sources of pollution. Merely repeating the actions that have been tried out without much success will not help.