Pollution crisis

Delhi needs local solutions

After hovering between “poor” and “very poor” categories for nearly a month, the air quality in Delhi and its adjoining states in the National Capital Region (NCR) has deteriorated to the “severe” class, prompting the Commission for Air Quality Management to invoke emergency pollution-control measures under stage-III of the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP). These steps include ban on construction and demolition, closure of brick kilns and hot mix plants, and restriction on plying BS-III petrol and BS-IV diesel vehicles. The bouts of choking pollution and consequential disruptive curbs, which recur so often in this region, are not only deleterious