Air of denial | Delhi and Beijing share a pollution-denial playbook

Delhi’s greenwashing efforts risk repeating Beijing’s pollution denial era.

Reports suggest that the Delhi government is greenwashing Delhi’s air pollution problem.

For starters, the Air Quality Index (AQI) reporting appears to be capped at 500, as there is a discrepancy between what government agencies report and what residents see on their privately owned AQI monitors or even on their indoor air purifiers.

Second, the visuals of round-the-clock usage of tankers and sprinklers, meant for road cleaning, in the vicinity of the AQI monitoring stations have gone viral on social media. Third, news reports indicate that Delhi has relocated some of its AQI monitoring stations to greener parts of the city, which have traditionally had lower pollution levels.

Worse still, several AQI stations had stopped working during the peak Diwali period, which in turn gave a false hope of a green Diwali and lower air pollution than the actual case.

Beijing, the capital of the People’s Republic of China, underwent a somewhat similar cycle in 2012-2013, when it was in a denial mode as far as its air pollution was concerned. Delhi seems to be doing what Beijing then did.

Beijing went through a severe pollution cycle between 1998 and 2013, and it managed to overcome its problems only when it fixed responsibilities, ran public awareness campaigns, and invested in technological and social transition to combat air pollution challenges. When Beijing was in a denial mode, like it was in 2012, its air pollution only spiked, and Delhi can expect the same if it does not change its ways.

In 2007, China was home to 16 of the world’s 20 most polluted cities. To counter this fact, China started measuring what it called Blue Sky days, which was only a visual representation of the situation, without any scientific data.

China implemented AQI-based monitoring in Beijing and other cities only after the United States embassy in Beijing started recording PM2.5 levels and broadcasting it on its social media handles. Initially, authorities in China called it a jurisdictional violation. China’s then-Vice Environmental Minister Wu Xiaoqing said that it was unfair that the US embassy was releasing the data based on one measuring station, and that the benchmark didn’t match China’s standards. It eventually asked the US and other embassies to stop doing this. This was a classic case of denial. Even as it was doing it, Beijing's air quality did not meet even the domestic standards, and was six times above the WHO-recommended safe levels.

Like Delhi, Beijing also had a passenger car problem. Beginning in 2000, Beijing experienced a phenomenal growth in demand for personal automobiles as it added 1 million cars every two years, in contrast to Tokyo’s 15 years. Prosperity and the rise of the middle class did contribute to this.

The automobile sector was also a major revenue and employment generator, so very few dared to change it. It was only when Beijing won the bid for the 2008 Olympics, things began to change. Beijing experimented with modified traffic rules by which 20% of the vehicles were ordered off the road each working day. It also legalised car-pooling apps. Lastly, in 2009, Beijing initiated an annual lottery system for private car registrations and limited new private cars in the city to 240,000 annually.

Beijing was also ruthless in how it relocated polluting industries away from the city centre. It began by limiting the usage of coal within the third ring road, and removing the polluting industries outside the fourth ring road area, and eventually outside the city limits. The authoritarian efficiency and the fact that China was conscious about its status as the world’s largest polluter in the wake of the Beijing Olympics helped it take decisive action.

Another important strategy was to take a regional approach, including neighbourhood areas, and ask them to implement the same norms. The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei strategy (BTH) was envisaged in the 12th five-year plan to create and implement a regional policy on development and environment. Another significant step was that China continuously upgraded and empowered its environmental bureaucracy to combat its environmental problems.

Lastly, an important part of the puzzle was the fact that public anger and the party’s desire to manage people’s sentiment also helped in the case of Beijing. In late 2011, people were angry when reports came out that many homes and offices of China's top officials were equipped with air purifiers, while publicly the government denied the severity of the problem.

In the case of India, low public awareness and a lack of demand for environmental accountability are the weakest links in its effort to combat the problem of air pollution. The government’s greenwashing is not going to help Delhi get its act together on this issue either.

Avinash Godbole is Professor and Associate Academic Dean, JSLH, JGU. Views expressed are personal. X: @avingodb.

(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.