World's Worst Pollution! | India v/s Europe Analysis by Dhruv Rathee

Dhruv Rathee Video Hello Freinds, (Dhruv Rathee) Kanpur, Faridabad, Varanasi, Gaya, Patna, Delhi, Lucknow, Agra, Muzaffarpur, Srinagar, and Gurgaon, These 10 cities have a very big achievement. They are top 10 cities in India. You Know Why? Inthe realm of Air Pollution. They are not just the top 10 polluted cities in India, but the world. That means in the entire world, the most polluted cities ate these cities. This shows how significant and pressing is the issue of air pollution in India. But even then you seldom see our Government and politicians talking about air pollution. Not only that, you hardly see our media talking about air pollution. In comparison to the other parts of the world like London, Britain's parliament members asked the assemblies to declare London's level of air pollution as a national health emergency. And friends do you know the level of pollution in London? If we look at the PM 2.5 method, which is the way to measure the air pollution of a region. In London, it is 20 micrograms per cubic meter which is '2 times' more than the limit. And if we compare this with India to our 10 most polluted cities. Each of those cities has more than 110 micrograms per cubic meter. Can you even imagine? Britain's parliament members want to declare London's level of air pollution as a national health emergency when the air pollution reach 20. But in our cities, it is crossed 110 and our members of parliament are completely quiet about this issue. It is very clear that air pollution is a big crisis in our country and nobody is talking about it in India. So I'm going to talk about it in this video. To properly understand the air pollution in India, it is important to understand, China's air pollution. Because at one point, China also used to have the world's most polluted cities. But today have managed to improve a lot. But to talk about air pollution, we all should go to an open air place. In the meantime, you should look at some charts, these compare China and India, In 2005, 2009, and 2015. They have used satellite data to do so. You can see the difference between these two from 20015 to 2015. Did you see the graphs? Did you see how China reduced its air pollution from 2009 to 2015? Statistically, according to Chinese data between 2012 to 2017, In just 5 years they reduced their air pollution by 30%. So, what has China done? This was possible due to China's national clean air programme, which included a national level plan to reduce the air pollution. This programme had a time-bound and specific plan. For example, the environmentally disastrous coal industry, In the next 5 years, was targeted to reduce its air pollution by 30%. It was a time-bound plan with highly specified target stating 'what' and 'how much'. That was the reason China successfully reduced its air pollution levels. On the other hand in India, we had an air pollution crisis since 2005. But our government didn't even recognize air pollution as a national problem. They didn't accept that air pollution is a problem! and so took no action on it. Any steps that were taken in the last 10 years was in Delhi which were really small, scattered, unplanned, unconnected steps, with no time limit or specific targets. In the last few years, one attempt was made to introduce a time-bound plan. In 2015, the government asked all coal-based power plants would have to follow a new emission standard plan and they would be given two years to comply with and implement this new rule. Fast forward to 2017, and friends you wouldn't believe but not even one coal power plant adopted this new standard. But nobody listened to the government. And now the government along with coal-based industries have extended the deadline to 5 more years. On 17 April 2018, this was the first time, our government admitted that air pollution was a problem! Our environment ministry prepared a draft report of National Clean Air Programme (NCAP). In which they state the steps that will take in the next few years to reduce air pollution. This is an achievement in itself, at least they acknowledge this problem! Now let's move on seeing, the good and bad both improvements which are needed in this NCAP draft. The environment ministry is accepting people suggestion's in the draft till 17th may 2018. So if you have any suggestions, you can email them. I have again consulted an environmental activist and asked them to assess the draft. The good thing is it focuses on the air quality monitoring system. In a lot of our cities, we didn't have monitoring systems that measure the air pollution in the environment. Another good thing is, it focuses on forecasting system. So that our fight against air pollution is precautionary rather than being reactionary. This means that rather than waiting for the environment to be polluted to take steps and reduced pollution. These systems will tell us that in coming days that when the air pollution is going to increase. They have also talked about, the low-cost monitoring systems will be set-up in our cities including a significant focus on indoor air quality, the pollution of our kitchen and homes. Now, the problem with NCAP, The biggest problem is that our government haven't made any time-bound plans. While that first draft has such plans but the latest has no such mentions. So there is no specific target of an industry or a region. Most of its focus is to monitor the air quality. Pollution from the industry, coal power plant is ignored completely. The programme focuses on the 100 cities in the nation and despite being national clean air program, it adds the responsibility of cleaning the air on the state government. And despite focusing on cities, it ignores Patna, Gaya and Muzaffarpur, the cities which are in the most polluted cities in the world. And these major points are missing in the policy, I think it can only work if these points are addressed.