Essay on Air Pollution in India : Industrialization and urbanization have resulted in a profound deterioration of India's air quality. Of the 3 million premature deaths in the world that occur each year due to outdoor and indoor air pollution, the highest numbers are assessed to occur in India. According to the World Health organization the capital city of New Delhi is one of the top ten most polluted cities in the world. Surveys indicate that in New Delhi the incidence of respiratory diseases due to air pollution is about 12 times the national average.
Essay on Air Pollution in India
Industrialization and urbanization have resulted in a profound
deterioration of India's air quality. Of the 3 million premature deaths in the
world that occur each year due to outdoor and indoor air pollution, the highest
numbers are assessed to occur in India.
According to the World Health
organization the capital city of New Delhi is one of the top ten most polluted
cities in the world. Surveys indicate that in New Delhi the incidence of
respiratory diseases due to air pollution is about 12 times the national average.
According to another study,
while India's gross domestic product has increased 2.5 times over the past two
decades; vehicular pollution has increased eight times, while pollution from
industries has quadrupled. Sources of air pollution, India's most severe
environmental problem, come in several forms, including vehicular emissions and
untreated industrial smoke. Apart from rapid industrialization, urbanization
has resulted in the emergence of industrial centers without a corresponding
growth in civic amenities and pollution control mechanisms.
Regulatory reforms aimed at
improving the air pollution problem in cities such as New Delhi have been quite
difficult to implement, however. For example India's Supreme Court recently
lifted a ruling that it imposed two years ago which required all public
transport vehicles in New Delhi to switch to compressed natural gas (CNG)
engines by April 1, 2001.
This ruling, however, led to
the disappearance of some 15,000 taxis and 10,000 buses from the city, creating
public protests, riots, and widespread "commuter chaos", the court
was similarly unsuccessful in 2000, when it attempted to ban all public
vehicles that were more than 15 years old and ordered the introduction of
unleaded gasoline and CNG.
India's high concentration of
pollution is not due to a lack of effort in building a sound environmental
legal regime, but rather to a lack of enforcement at the local level. Efforts
are currently underway to change this as new specifications are being adopted
for auto emissions, which currently account for approximately 70% of it
pollution.
In the absence of coordinated
government efforts, including stricter enforcement, this figure is likely to
rise in the coming years due the sheer increase in vehicle ownership.
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