More Deadly News On Diesel

But in India, so busy catching up with the West, no one is ready to listen, bemoan Anil Agarwal & Sunita Narain

From Indian politicians to industrialists, everybody is playing the game of catching up with the West from cars to computers. But when it comes to catching up with its public health and environmental management efforts, our industrial and political leaders have no interest. Few people realise that the Western economic model, because of its intensive use of materials and energy, is a highly toxic model. And western-style economic development means enormous and rapidly growing pollution.

Now that the Indian economy is beginning to grow beyond its pejorative Hindu rate of growth, its pollution is growing even more rapidly at the Chinese rate of growth. Having neglected to promote public transport, private transport is growing rapidly, clogging the roads and leading to more and more pollution in which more and more people have to spend more and more time.

 

And the automobile industry is happy to bung in highly polluting cars as long as the government does not put any obstacles in their path. Despite the fact that Indian cities are reeling under high levels of particulate matter, which the World Health Organisation says is most dangerous air pollutant and kills more people in the world than any other, Indian auto manufacturers are quite happy to sell diesel cars simply to take the benefit of cheap diesel even though diesel cars emit 10 to 100 times more particulate matter than petrol cars.

Since particulate matter is now widely considered to be a carcinogen