India’s junior health minister Prataprao Jadhav’s admission in Parliament that the Union government does not have the data on the deaths and diseases occurring due to air pollution should leave the country gasping in disbelief.
Delhi, the national capital, alone has ranked at the top of the list of the world’s most polluted capitals for years now, and more than half of the world’s top 20 most polluted cities happen to be in India, and the medical fraternity across the country has provided anecdotal evidence that the abysmal quality of air has taken its toll on people’s health.
In short, air pollution has been decidedly a health crisis for a few years. That the government has not recorded and stored data does not make it less of a crisis; in fact, it shows absolute apathy.
In Delhi, the Air Quality Index has hovered between ‘poor’ and ‘hazardous’ for most of November and December so far—between 300 and 400 on the scale. This is more than 20 times the limit recommended by the World Health Organisation.
The crisis did not emerge overnight; it has been brewing for more than a decade and getting worse every year. In response, governments at the national and state levels, as well as local administrations, have been putting in place specific and seasonal measures, mainly to reduce emissions by converting to cleaner fuels and implementing the National Clean Air Programme.
If the measurement of pollution, which itself has turned controversial as Indian systems are not set to record AQI beyond 500 while the international measures are twice that, has been done, then there is no plausible explanation for the lack of data on its impact on people's health and the economy.
However, if it means business, the government can rely on a tonne of scientific research and studies, reviewed and published by internationally reputed journals like The Lancet and the WHO, that show the stark truth.
The US' National Institute of Health, based on India’s National Family and Health Survey‐5 (2019–2021), showed a “strong positive association between ambient and household air pollution with mortality risk” and recommended that policymakers can hope to reduce the disease burden and mortality by tackling anthropogenic PM2.5 emissions.
A study in the Lancet Planetary Health found that long-term exposure to air pollution increased deaths by 1.5 million per year in India, if India met the WHO’s recommendations for safe exposure. Whichever way this is sliced, there is, indeed, data available.
Besides, the government can mandate that all hospitals and clinic collect data on respiratory and other ailments and share them with the authorities, if it intends to address air pollution as health crisis. To admit lack of data is to cut a sorry figure even as poor air makes Indians sick.
