India's city Gwalior stands on 2nd position in the most polluted city in terms of particulate matter in the world, after Iran's Zabol.Not only this, if you carefully see the list, you shall realise it India has the most number of cities in this list, accounting to Delhi, Jaipur, Allahabad and others. Even though the condition of Indian cities is becoming terrible day by day in terms of pollution, the country seems slow to implicate stricter norms to regulate the causes of pollution properly. In comparison, tour neighbour, China is taking faster measures so as not to climb up the ladder of most polluted cities any further.
In January'17 Beijing (China's capital) set out to replace all the old vehicles that cause pollution, and till April'17, it cleared off 1,80,000 vehicles from the road. Keeping the 'red alert' of December'2016 in view, the Environment Minister Chen Jining is taking big and rapid steps to deal with the situation. He claimed that 30% of the particulate matter is emitted by old vehicles in the traffic and the major smog is created by 5.7 mn vehicles running on roads.
The clearance of 1,80,000 units might bring about a relief in the recorded 95 micrograms of PM in the air at present, while the normal PM is mere 10 micrograms. They expect to reduce it to 65 micrograms till the end of this year, by clearing 3,00,000 old vehicles. In October-November last year, the same situation came about in Delhi, when the schools were shut down and a heavy smog result post-Diwali celebrations.
Our chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal tried some measures previously like the odd-even rule, but nothing seems to be as fruitful in providing the much deserved clean air to breathe in. It is very important to take an example of China, which is behind us in the context of polluting cities, but still is ahead of us in taking the conditions seriously. The only step that might tackle the situation can be that there has been a complete ban on BS III based vehicles from the face of Indian transportation system. But we need to become more technologically advanced and change accepting to achieve the goal.
