by Annual Winter Ritual Confirms City’s Commitment to Visible Action in Preference to Structural Solutions
Delhi AQI: The Number Goes Up, the Scheme Comes Out
Delhi’s Air Quality Index crossed the four hundred mark on Monday, entering the ‘Severe’ category in which, according to SAFAR guidelines, healthy individuals begin to experience discomfort and those with existing respiratory conditions experience serious health effects. The Delhi government responded by announcing the Odd-Even vehicle rationing scheme for the following two weeks, under which private cars with odd-numbered licence plates may drive on odd dates and even-numbered plates on even dates, with exemptions for vehicles carrying women driving alone, CNG and electric vehicles, emergency vehicles, vehicles carrying school children, and a list of official categories that covers approximately sixty-seven percent of the vehicles on Delhi’s roads according to a study by the Centre for Science and Environment that the government has noted but not specifically incorporated into its assessment of the scheme’s effectiveness.
The Odd-Even scheme has been implemented seven times since 2016. Studies of its effectiveness, including those commissioned by the Delhi government, have found it reduces particulate matter by between two and four percent in the areas where it is implemented, a reduction that pollution experts describe as ‘measurable but insufficient to produce meaningful health outcomes given that vehicle exhaust contributes approximately twenty-eight percent of Delhi’s PM2.5 in winter, with crop burning, construction dust, and industrial emissions accounting for the remainder and being unaddressed by the scheme.’
Residents Respond
‘I support anything they do,’ said Rohini resident Aakash Sharma, thirty-nine, speaking through a KN-95 mask while walking his daughter to school. ‘I support Odd-Even. I support the water cannon trucks. I support the school closure days. I support all of it. I also support addressing crop burning in Punjab and Haryana and industrial emissions in NCR and the power plants in Haryana. Those things would help more. The Odd-Even I can do. I have a CNG car so I’m exempt. But I support it for others.’
Delhi pollution data at Hindustan Times. Comedy: The Daily Mash.
SOURCE: http://prat.UK
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