Last week, the Dilli wallah showed that he is scared. Scared of the pollution that resides over the city. Scared that a potential disaster is lurking round the corner. He ( and in these days of politically correct gender sensitivity I use this as a generic expression and include the women in it) also knows that there is no one who would be helping him if there could be some problem like the Chennai floods in the recent weeks or the Mumbai floods some years ago. In short, he has to help himself.
Let us face it. For the 25 million residents of the National Capital Region, pollution is not an issue to be discussed at futuristic seminars. They live with it day in and day out. The air they breathe really makes them sick. Doctors freely suggest that the elderly and kids should stay indoors as much as possible. More so when anybody does fall sick with an infection, this is the advice that usually comes and also pays. So, when chief minister Arvind Kejriwal came up with the odd-even formula to take off 100,000 cars off the road every day, he was actually preaching to the converted. You hardly enjoy the time on any road, and for most of us car users the three-hour commute is like a punishment. Traffic snarls and call drops– welcome to the world of a travelling Delhiwallah.
Still, there was no dearth of naysayers and doubting Thomases. After all, there is no way to know the mind of the Dilliwallah. Within months of giving all the seven Lok Sabha seats to the BJP, the chap turned around and gave 67 of the 70 assembly seats to the Aam Aadmi Party. You mean who switches loyalties like that- from Modi to Kejriwal within less than a year? But then respect the guys. This is what democracy teaches us, and this time the Dilliwallah once again stood the test of citizenship. Without any fuss, more than a lakh car owners took their vehicles off the road, and in the process they showed that they are willing to make their own contribution to making the environment better. Let us not forget that it is neither an easy nor a cheap decision to make. Everyone has to go to considerable lengths to make this adjustment.
But making this adjustment is not enough for breathing clean air in the NCR. Of the vehicular pollution, 30 percent comes from the two wheelers, and the rationale for exempting women drivers from the ambit of the formula also is not very well understood.
The ultimate resolution of the problem is not in rationing the use of the private vehicles but in improving the infrastructural facilities and the technical quality of the automobiles. It is traffic jams that make people spend more than the required time on the roads in their vehicles and thus leads to more pollution. You cut down the travel time from Delhi to Gurgaon and the level of pollution automatically comes down. Besides, experts point out that the fuel quality and the vehicles used in India are at least 5-8 years behind the global standards and this has a consequent impact on the pollution levels. We have to move to a low sulfur content regime, and be ready to pay the price.
However, the best thing about the odd/even formula is that from merely talking about things, we have moved to a stage where something has been actually done to attack a critical issue. It does not matter that this is not a permanent solution, and also not a very effective one at that.
For once the state government has taken a decision and all others irrespective of their reservations have contributed to it being experimented. Now whether it works or not, and what should be its fate would not be a matter of mere conjecture. There would be hard data to make an assessment, and then take the necessary steps. The early trends for the first day were encouraging as the PM-2.5 (particulate matter) index recorded a fall.
It goes without saying that both the transport sector and the protection of environment face very serious challenges, and though there is hardly any dearth of creative ideas about resolving every issue that bedevils these two areas, the implementation always leaves a lot to be desired. It is also significant in this context, that the usual state versus centre conflict is comparatively less rigid. There are bureaucratic tangles no doubt, but the desire to have safe road journeys, and a clean environment is now a shared concern. So, the best practices are easily adapted by both the sides. The cooperation between the AAP govt and the Delhi Police on the odd-even formula is the most luminous example of this behaviour.
Delhi is not the first city in the world to have taken this odd-even route to fight vehicular pollution and congestion. Beijing did it in 2008 at the time of the Olympics. But the pollution levels are back to the same highs. So, the real test lies elsewhere. It is in the ability to come up with a technically feasible and cost effective multi-pronged solution that meets the commuting needs of the millions of citizens without compromising on comfort, speed and ecological balance.
In the early 2000, the CNG revolution that changed the ecology of the Delhi transport bus and autorickshaws was hailed as a green revolution. Now CNG remains a clean fuel, but neither the number of buses, nor the ways of the autorickshaw owners come anywhere near the expectations of the millions of Dilliwallahs. Everyone wants a car of his own. The number keeps growing at the rate of 1500 per day. Hence he is scared. The polluted air scares him.
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