by CAQM forms Sub-Group F to review Sub-Group D’s analysis of Sub-Group B’s findings on air pollution, expects interim report within 18 months
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
NEW DELHI, INDIA — The Commission for Air Quality Management in NCR and Adjoining Areas announced Tuesday the formation of Sub-Group F, a new expert committee tasked with reviewing the findings of Sub-Group D, which was formed in 2022 to analyse Sub-Group B’s 2020 recommendations on controlling Delhi’s particulate matter crisis, which had themselves been formed to review the Supreme Court’s 2019 directions on the matter, as the capital’s AQI reached 387, a level classified as “severe” at which health advisories recommend staying indoors, a recommendation that an estimated 8.3 million daily wage workers in the NCR cannot follow because staying indoors does not pay rent.
The Committee History
Sub-Group B, which produced the recommendations now being reviewed by Sub-Group D and thence by Sub-Group F, had itself been formed to review the recommendations of the Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority, known as EPCA, which was dissolved in 2021 and replaced by CAQM, which has produced Sub-Groups A through F since its formation, each of which has produced recommendations that have been reviewed, substantially agreed with, partially implemented, and significantly underfunded, producing an iterative governance structure that the Hindustan Times described as “a committee about committees reviewing committees” and CAQM described as “a robust multi-stakeholder deliberative framework.”
Sub-Group F’s mandate, according to the CAQM notification, is to “examine the implementation status of Sub-Group D’s recommendations, identify barriers to implementation, propose actionable strategies for overcoming identified barriers, and recommend a monitoring framework for tracking implementation of proposed strategies,” a mandate that three environmental lawyers noted was “the same mandate as Sub-Groups B, D, and the EPCA before them, expressed in slightly different language.”
The AQI and Its Effects
Delhi’s AQI of 387, recorded Tuesday morning, follows a pattern that air quality monitors have documented for eleven consecutive years: pre-monsoon levels build through October and November as agricultural stubble burning in Punjab and Haryana coincides with declining wind speeds and a temperature inversion that traps pollutants over the capital. The pattern is well understood, well-documented, and well-committee’d. Stubble burning has been legally prohibited since 2015. It continues at approximately the same rate as before prohibition, because the prohibition did not provide affected farmers with economically viable alternatives, which Sub-Group B recommended in 2020 and Sub-Group D reconfirmed in 2023 and Sub-Group F will presumably confirm again in 2026.
At a school in Rohini that had cancelled outdoor activities for the fourth consecutive day, principal Meena Sharma told this publication that she had been cancelling outdoor activities in November for seven years. She said she had stopped trying to explain to students why the air was dangerous because “explaining something that happens every year and is not fixed is demoralising after a while.” She said she did not know what a sub-group was. She said she wished whoever was in the sub-groups well and that she hoped they could breathe properly, because she had noticed that people who could breathe properly had more energy for solving problems than people who could not.
What Sub-Group F Will Do
Sub-Group F has a mandate to submit its interim report within eighteen months, at which point CAQM will review it and determine whether a Sub-Group G is warranted or whether implementation can proceed directly from F’s recommendations, a determination that observers note will be made in a city whose AQI is likely to be between 250 and 450 when the determination is made, which is approximately the same range it has been during every previous determination. The AQI is 387 today. It will be lower in spring. It will be higher next November. Sub-Group F will be meeting regularly between now and its interim report. The meetings will be indoors. The air inside government buildings in Delhi is filtered. The air outside, which is where the 8.3 million daily wage workers are, is 387.
Sub-Group F’s membership has been announced and includes seven scientists, four policy experts, two urban planners, one representative from the transport sector, one representative from the agricultural ministry (stubble burning being a primary seasonal contributor), and one representative from the Central Pollution Control Board who attended Sub-Group B’s meetings, served on Sub-Group D, and who described his participation in Sub-Group F as “a continuation of work I have been doing since 2019, which has produced comprehensive reports that I am proud of and outcomes that I think about at night.” The CAQM thanked him for his continued service. He said he would do his best. He always does his best. The air quality in November will be what it will be. The reports are thorough. The political economy of stubble burning remains unchanged. The farmers who burn stubble do so because the alternative costs money they do not have. The Sub-Group F’s mandate does not include direct agricultural subsidy recommendations, which would require Ministry of Agriculture involvement, which would require a formal inter-ministerial coordination request, which would need to be submitted, processed, approved, and acted on before the next monsoon retreat, which is October. The process takes longer than October. This is known. The Sub-Group meets monthly. The monthly meetings are well-attended. The air in November will be 387, or similar. This, too, is known.
Breathing the story at The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine.
Also in committee at The Onion | The Shovel | NewsThump
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/delhi-air-quality-hazardous-committee-study-previous-committee-recommendations/
