BMC must respond to air pollution as a public health emergency like Covid-19

Clearly, the agencies involved in Mumbai’s administration can no longer treat this as business-as-usual or an issue that will dissipate on its own as the winter ebbs, as they are most likely to, and wake up only when the smog makes the city invisible next winter

For several years, Mumbaikars believed the coastal city was a cut above New Delhi in the fierce rivalry between the two during winters, given that the national capital was generally enveloped in a smog for days, making visibility low and people’s health precarious as air pollution peaked. Mumbaikars have been forced to drop this snobbishness in the last two months as Mumbai’s air quality has seen depths that we did not think possible. The city has had more days of “poor” and “very poor” Air Quality Index (AQI) through December and January than in any previous winter, according to the data available. On some days, the AQI has been worse than in New Delhi too.The problem needs no more description or testimony; we know it, we are all living it. The question is: What have the agencies responsible to counter the air pollution done about it in the last two-three months? A more basic question, perhaps, is where, with which agency, does the buck stop.

To recap, Mumbai’s AQI has swung between 200 and 400, straddling the categories of poor, very poor, and severe since December 2022. These are alarming and cataclysmic levels of pollution which affect every person across the city, irrespective of class and geographical location. Mumbai, going by the trend of the last few years, usually sees moderate to poor AQI, between 100 to 200, through the winter months thanks largely to the sea breeze which helps lift the load. This has been the first winter in which “the city has seen a seen a prolonged period of poor to very poor AQI in the last six years” since tracking was started six years ago by SAFAR, according to its founder project director Dr Gufran Beig.

The reasons for the rising pollution levels are not clouded. There has been a huge uptick in construction and related activities across Mumbai after a lull during the Covid-19 years of 2020-21. Traffic movement is back to the pre-pandemic levels too, possibly with more vehicles on the roads than at any other time in the city. Land-filling has been relentlessly happening at various locations. Along with all these there is dust from unpaved roads, debris thrown every few metres at the sites of major infrastructure projects across the city, and garbage dump fires, all contributing to the rising air pollution.

There have been natural reasons too; the sea breeze which helped Mumbai has changed, perhaps due to climate change factors. Experts have noted a reduction in coastal wind speeds around the city due in large measure to the abnormal drop in surface temperature in the Pacific Ocean among other locations. Simply put, the change in wind patterns has meant that dust particles — of which there are many more now due to the causes identified above — remain in the air for a longer time.

Clearly, the agencies involved in Mumbai’s administration can no longer treat this as business-as-usual or an issue that will dissipate on its own as the winter ebbs, as they are most likely to, and wake up only when the smog makes the city invisible next winter. The buck stops with the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) and the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB). The time for action is now; in fact, it is late already.

To begin with, it is important to see the alarming air pollution as a complex multi-sectoral issue rather than an isolated one to be addressed by one agency — the most important acknowledgment of such drastically poor levels of AQI should be as a public health emergency or at least a public health hazard. Mumbai’s air has to be made cleaner, first and foremost, for its 20 million residents. It has caused health problems for millions, with general practitioners in practically every area registering a higher number of patients with upper respiratory tract infections.

Poor air quality most impacts all those who work outdoors and spend a large amount of time on streets, such as vendors, drivers, police personnel and so on. It has been a health hazard for months now — and air purifiers or masks cannot be the answer to the problem. At what point will it be declared a public health emergency so that counter-measures can be initiated on a war footing? This is a question that public health professionals in the BMC and the state government must answer — soon.

The BMC is responsible also for the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) that has been drawn up for precisely such a time. How and to what extent it was implemented in the last two months remains unclear in the absence of direct communication from the civic body to Mumbaikars. Is this not important? During Covid-19 months in 2020, the BMC had kept a steady stream of information about the spread of the pandemic in every ward, steps taken, location and occupancy of Covid centres and so on. If it could be done then, it can be done again. And air pollution is no less a public health emergency than the pandemic.

In fact, the ward-wise war room approach to tackle that public health emergency, often cited as the Mumbai model, and Mumbai’s municipal commissioner Iqbal Singh Chahal had come in for lavish praise from all over the world. Air pollution, according to the GRAP, too needs to be tackled at micro-area and ward levels. The template exists; Chahal and his team have to resurrect it from two years ago and tweak it to address air pollution instead of the virus spread.

Alongside this, the BMC and MPCB must join forces to regulate construction sites with at least adequate proper green curtains, ban the throwing of debris along infrastructure project sites irrespective of how important that project is, and use water sprinklers regularly across the city to keep the road and traffic dust down. There is some merit in regulating the number of vehicles on the roads, perhaps through the controversial odd-even number plate registration as was done in New Delhi, and commercial vehicles can be off the roads from 8am to 8pm; there must be recognition that the odd-even measure is a Band-aid solution to a bleeding wound but it might work in the short run. If nothing else, the BMC can — and must — start imposing stiff penalties on offenders from infra majors to polluting vehicle owners.

What Mumbai needs is rapid and purposeful action that is not hampered by the multiplicity of agencies; the BMC has to be in command and control. If it could use water sprinklers and regulate construction activities along Marine Drive during the G-20 summit last month, then it can do so across the city too. The ball is in your court, Mr Chahal. And this action should be replicated across the Mumbai metropolitan region.

Smruti Koppikar, journalist and urban chronicler, writes extensively on cities, development, gender, and media. She is the founder editor of ‘Question of Cities.’

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