Till last year, Beijing was the pollution capital of the world. That ignominy now falls on Delhi, where pollution levels have started jumping off the charts. So what did the Chinese government do in its war against pollution and what are the lessons that the Modi sarkar can learn from the Xi Jinping government?
On January 12, 2013, the Air Quality Monitoring Station at the US embassy in Beijing recorded that the pollution levels in the Chinese capital had gone off the charts. On a scale of one to 500, the air pollution index stood at a "beyond hazardous" reading of 755. The situation was described by US embassy officials as being "crazy bad". All of Beijing resembled an airport's smokers lounge. Alarm bells were pressed. "Airpocolypse" was declared. And the lives of citizens changed forever.
Organised protest is strictly barred in communist China. But such was the fear and fury of the citizens that pollution protests went viral despite the great Firewall of China. One of the reasons that pollution became such a hot button topic was growing public awareness. A local NGO called the Institute of Environment and Public Affairs launched an application called Blue Sky Map, which monitors the level of particulate matter (PM) in the atmosphere. The application became an instant hit with more than three point five million downloads.
The idea behind the app is to use government-sourced data to create awareness about air pollution and air quality. The idea is also to look closely at pollution data of big companies so that people know the biggest emitters in their areas. The app gives people the opportunity to share that data on social media and shame the big companies into acting.
A hazy day in Zhengzhou, Henan province, China. |
As public awareness grew, the usually stoic Chinese government was forced to act. Premier Li Keqiang declared a war on pollution. The government introduced a tough new environment protection law at the beginning of this year:
In addition to enacting a tough law, authorities in Beijing have taken stringent measures to counter the negative effects of air pollution.
The results of the government's efforts are finally beginning to show. A Greenpeace study released at the end of last month shows a 13 per cent fall in the level of PM 2.5 in Beijing's air quality for the first quarter of 2015. This is the first time in many years that the level of pollution in Beijing has come down instead of spiralling upwards.
We have seen a gradual improvement in the air quality reduction in pollution concentration. The report that we released in April shows that the level of PM 2.5 has reduced in the most polluted areas of north China. Three years ago, no one knew what PM 2.5 was. Now it's a very popular topic that everyone knows and cares about.
On Monday, the level of PM 2.5 in Beijing stood at a moderate 52, while Delhi was thrice as polluted with the PM 2.5 level measuring an unhealthy 151. As the saying goes in China, clean air does not come to those who wait. It is now time for the Modi sarkar and the people of India to act.
Environment minister Prakash Javadekar was recently in the news for saying that the surfeit of recent stories about the growing levels of air pollution is a conspiracy against India. Despite being an information-controlling state, the Chinese government paid attention to its citizens when they took to the streets and campaigned online against air pollution.
It's about time that the Modi sarkar stopped seeing conspiracies in Delhi's polluted air and declared an all out war on pollution.