ENVIRONMENT-INDIA: Diesel Ban Will Clean Air, But Paralyse Capital

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Mar 20 2001 (IPS) - Come April, the 15 million residents of the Indian capital will breathe easier, thanks to a stern Supreme Court order banning all diesel-powered buses and taxis from the roads. But there are apprehensions that this ban would paralyse activity in the national capital.

On Tuesday, a three-man bench of India’s apex court firmly and finally rejected appeals from Delhi’s local government for more time to implement its July 1998 order requiring all commercial vehicles to switch to cleaner compressed natural gas (CNGArial).

Concerted lobbying from leading environmental groups against alarmingly high levels of vehicular pollutants in New Delhi have contributed to the court deciding to play a key role in ensuring clean air for residents.

“We cannot put the health of the public to risk. Shut your shops,” the court said, whose ban order dismissed appeals from a powerful lobby of manufacturers of diesel vehicles..

The court also issued “strong caution to all concerned” that failure to abide by its directions would invite contempt proceedings.

When diesel manufacturers suggested during hearings in 1999 that environmental groups could be acting on behalf of petrol engine manufacturers, the court promptly ordered stiff “Euro II” emission norms on all new petrol cars sold in and around New Delhi from April 2000.

According to estimates by the traffic police, there are some four million powered vehicles of all shapes, sizes and descriptions plying the capital’s roads and most of them would fail to match up to stricter Euro II standards.

With 10,000 buses due to go off the roads next month and with no rapid transit system, New Delhi’s six million office goers can expect to have a tough time getting to and returning from work.

The only concession the court was prepared to concede is the hearing on Mar. 23 of a special appeal to exempt school buses from its order. Meantime, it has warned government counsel that it is serious about the Mar.31 deadline.

The Tata Energy Research Institute (TERI) estimates that under current conditions, the suspended particulate matter (SPM) load in India’s air would rise to 52 million tonnes by 2047.

.. Harmful particulate matter in New Delhi’s air, believed to come mostly from diesel exhaust, far exceeds the standards set by the World Health Organisation (WHO). The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), an environmental NGO, says these high particulate levels are responsible for the deaths of 10,000 people in the capital each year.

Lending weight to the court’s orders is the opinion of a group of doctors led by the highly respected V. Ramalingaswami, who carries the title of national research professor. “We urge the government stop this dieselisation — commercial profit and public good have to be mutually compatible and reinforcing,” he said.

Ramalingswami is among those who believe that heavy government subsidies on diesel, in the name of helping farmers who use diesel sets, has only encouraged private car manufacturers to produce diesel versions of even luxury models.

But fearful of antagonising the manufacturers and users of diesel engines, the Delhi government, led by state Chief Minister Sheila Dixit, has tried every strategy to wriggle its way out of implementing the drastic court order. So far, it has managed to get together just 150 buses run by CNG against the requirement of 10,000.

Recently, it got released studies conducted by the Harvard Centre for Risk Assessment in the United States, which held that CNG exhaust could be even more dangerous than diesel because it contains even finer suspended particles.

This move by the Delhi government raised howls of protest from environmental groups. “This is nothing but a disinformation campaign. Delhi government officials are using biased pro-industry U.S. studies to justify inaction in implementing the court’s orders and avoid contempt proceedings,” said Anumita Roychowdhury, an expert with the CSE.

According to Roychowdhury, the Harvard study was funded by Navistar International, a leading trucking company in the U.S. with a vested interest in diesel engines. “But even the Harvard study said that CNG actually produces fewer ultra-fine particles than diesel,” she observed.

Still, “there is no way in which the court directive that all buses in Delhi run on CNG from April 1 can be met,” said Mohinder Singh, a former secretary in the Union Transport Ministry. Singh believes that the court may relent at the Mar. 23 hearing and allow an extension of time for compliance with its order.

But that did not seem likely, going by the determined tone of the judges at Tuesday’s hearing. There, government counsel argued that even if the government is unable to implement conversion from diesel to CNG , the ordinary citizen who depends on buses should not be penalised.

Environmental scientists are now gearing up to measure the sharp drop in pollutant level that they expect when the diesel-fueled vehicles go off the road on Apr. 1. “This is too good an opportunity to miss,” said Dilip Biswas, director of the federal government’s Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB)

“Delhi is meant not only for those who travel by cars but also by those who use buses — the whole city will come to a standstill,” government counsel Kirti Raval said in remarks that sounded like a populist appeal to the court to relent.

But the judges retorted: “This is like the story of a person who kills his father and his mother and then comes to the court, and says have pity on me as I am an orphan.”