Waiting to Exhale

AN AIR QUALITY Life Index published annually by the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute has just come out and it tells us nothing that any Indian will be surprised about. The World Health Organization has a minimum standard for what is considered air good to breathe and India is off by miles. What the index uniquely spells out is the difference it would make assuming the air here met the stan­dard—Indians would live 5.3 years more. People in Delhi, the consistent topper of the nation in this field, would see lives extended by 11.9 years. There are many other bleak pictures includ­ing that, forget WHO standards which no Indian enjoys, 67.4 per cent of the population live in places where the air is poorer than the standards India sets for itself.

How bad is a decrease of 5.3 years in life span as a result of air pollution? Substantive, if you consider that heart disease only reduces it by 4.5 years. The north and its vast BIMARU plains suffer more, with more than half-a-billion people losing eight years of their lives. The cherry of this unpalatable icing is that it is all getting worse by the year. The report says: “Particulate pollu­tion has increased over time. From 1998 to 2021, average annual particulate pollution increased by 67.7 percent, further reducing average life expec­tancy by 2.3 years. From 2013 to 2021, 59.1 percent of the world’s increase in pollution has come from India.”

The last part is something that can be decisively measured. Machines can re­cord the particulates in the air and then it is just a matter of putting it on a table. The correlation between that and the number of years less an Indian would live is however an entirely different matter. It is based on two studies done in China, and then by extrapolating those numbers to the world. You can bet with fair certainty that if by a miracle tomor­row there is suddenly zero air pollution in Delhi, it is not going to extend lives by exactly 11.9 years because numerous other factors are also at work. Underpin­ning any such pollution statistic is the idea that removing it is the only way to go. But that doesn’t take into account what has to be given up were such a policy to be undertaken.

Air pollution is integral to indus­trialisation. You might not want smoke-spewing trucks on the roads but who is going to carry all the cargo that is necessary for a country’s survival and growth? Anything that involves reduction of air pollution will come at a price. People will just have to pay more and while the rich will be able to afford it, the poor will be hurt the most. What is common to countries that have the purest air is that they are rich. If a country wants better air, the solu­tion is to become as wealthy as soon as possible. But that means a radical increase in pollution while the process is on, which is what China and India are witnessing. There is no getting out of this Catch-22.

About The Author

Madhavankutty Pillai

Madhavankutty Pillai has no specialisations whatsoever. He is among the last of the generalists. And also Open chief of bureau, Mumbai  

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