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Can law solve India’s air pollution problem?

By amfnews Nov 5, 2019 #Featured
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1. Can law solve India’s air pollution problem?
  • Right to life? The Supreme Court held an emergency hearing on Delhi’s air pollution on Monday. It said that people are losing precious years of their lives due to pollution and pulled up the Centre and the Delhi government, saying “there is passing of buck” and that it “can’t happen in a civilised country.” “Can we survive in this atmosphere? This is not the way we can survive. No one is safe even inside homes; it is atrocious,” the court said.
  • The law: The Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981 is the main law meant to control air pollution. It provides for the creation and functioning of state and central pollution control boards which are supposed to measure pollution levels and check for violations of the law. The act, for instance, prohibits industries from emitting air pollutants in excess of the prescribed level and recommends penalties for violations. The boards can also approach a court for restraining anyone likely to cause air pollution.
  • The problem: While the boards can prescribe penalties, the power to levy them is with courts. They can recommend closure of units, but it is an extreme step that’s rarely recommended. The involvement of courts also means lengthy legal proceedings (82% of cases in courts in 2017 remained pending at the end of the year) and the extremely low conviction rate in pollution-related cases lowers the deterrent potential. Many of these boards do not have people with expertise to investigate cases letting even the few who are booked off the hook. Also, apart from two minor amendments in 1987 and 2010, the Air Act has remained unchanged making many of its key provisions and definitions outdated.
    Polluter doesn't pay
  • A target: In January this year, the government launched the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), a five-year action plan to curb air pollution, build a pan-India air quality monitoring network and improve awareness. The programme focuses on 102 polluted Indian cities and aims to reduce PM2.5 levels by 20-30% over the next five years.
  • But then: NCAP is not backed by a legal mandate, which will weaken the implementation of emission control measures at the ground level. The programme only targets urban areas for now but the source of pollution (like stubble burning) is often in rural areas and can transcend state boundaries. The composition of air pollutants also varies across cities and states, which means the studies, planning and implementation of pollution-control measures must also be local.
  • Courts then? In March this year, the Supreme Court admitted a plea (after initial reluctance as it pertained to the government’s policy decision) seeking faster adoption of electric vehicles to safeguard citizens’ fundamental rights to “breathe, health and a clean environment.” Though courts have taken up such cases from time to time, a long-term plan to combat pollution must be at the policy level.

By amfnews

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