I started tracking the Air Quality Index (AQI) in Delhi from the day odd-even plan was proposed by the Delhi Government. As usual, like everything else in India, this programme have become a show of political one-upmanship, where your wish for success of the plan is based on the political party that you support. This, I think is the second biggest tragedy of today but let me just focus on the first! How bad the situation in Delhi can be understood by noticing current AQI with respect to warning given by health agencies in India, which is illustrated in figure below:
Until today, I was hopeful that this may just be the solution but as I analyse the Particulate Matter (PM) concentration across Delhi my disappointment grows graver. As I see it, if the trend continues this failure is not of the government or the odd-even plan but of the city of Delhi to gauge the seriousness of this situation and come up with much more comprehensive action plan.
All data has been taken from website managed by System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting And Research (SAFAR). The website provides data for pollutants like PM2.5, PM10, CO, NO2 and Ozone on a given day. As CO, NO2 and Ozone are not the major concern in Delhi, the focus of this data collection has only been on PM2.5 & PM10.
I couldn't find a comprehensive study on latest source of pollution. However, newspapers have been citing studies conducted by Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur but I doubt the applicability of this data on present situation which seem to have worsened in last three years. I couldn't even find a comprehensive data & categorization about number of automobiles running on roads of Delhi on a given day. Without understanding the source of particulate pollution, I have only tracked the PM2.5 and PM10 concentration at various monitoring stations spread across NCR for last 15 days.
One factor that may have important role on the air pollution is wind velocities in the city. For this reason, I have also been tracking the wind velocities from monitoring station located at Safdarjung Airport. The wind velocities are not localized to pollution monitoring stations but they indicate whether the corresponding day can be termed windy or calm in Delhi. However, this is not an academic exercise but just an educational activity to gauge the impact of a Government plan at my personal capacity.
With all these limitation in data collection, three obvious observations can be made about air pollution in Delhi from data gathered so far:
- The Odd Even Plan have had absolutely no impact on air pollution in Delhi (The vertical blue line in the graphs shows the day from when Odd Even Plan is implemented across the city).
- The windy days (Notice the AQI levels around Christmas Day) are better and results in lower pollution in City.
- PM2.5 and PM10 have exactly similar trend with respect to wind velocities in the city.
Figure 1: PM2.5 Concentration at Various Monitoring Stations across NCR
Figure 1: PM2.5 Concentration at Various Monitoring Stations across NCR
It will be premature to make any conclusion about the odd-even plan but we must be honest about impact of these plans and increase the intensity & applicability of such measures till we know that we can control the issue by reducing vehicles on the road only. I will continue to monitor AQI for atleast 15-20 days from today with a hope that things might improve in coming days with either own conscious efforts or winds from north-west.
Reports in newspaper show that vehicles on road on first two days of this year has been significantly lower. However, these data show that the concentration of particulate matter has increased on average by 9-11% in New Delhi, South Delhi, Noida & Gurgaon while it has reduced in Northern Delhi by almost the same amount with significant reduction of almost 15% observed in Pusa & Pitampura areas. Still, it will be wrong to conclude that odd-even policy will be sufficient to address the air pollution in Delhi.
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