Paper: GS – III, Subject: Environment and Ecology, Topic: Pollution, Issue: Delhi’s Air Pollution.
Context:
Delhi’s air crisis reflects structural governance failure, not seasonal spikes. Lockdowns proved emission cuts alone insufficient, demanding a shift from reactive measures to predictive, preventive, and participatory air-governance.
Key Highlights:
Need for Governance Shift: Reaction → Prediction → Prevention
| Current Approach | Required Shift |
| Control | Prevention |
| Reaction | Prediction |
| Emergency bans | Continuous planning |
| Fragmented action | Airshed-level strategy |
Key Strategies for Cleaning Delhi’s Air
- Predictive Pollution Modeling: Utilize AI, IoT, and satellite data to forecast pollution levels and trigger pre-emptive implementation of GRAP measures.
- Transparency and Participation: Ensure transparency in decision-making to encourage public participation and empower citizens to contribute to solutions.
- Stable Electricity Supply: Eliminate the need for diesel generators by providing a reliable electricity supply.
- Dust Control: Implement mechanized sweeping and water sprinkling on roads and construction sites to minimize dust emissions.
- Greening and Landfill Management: Pave unpaved areas, green bare patches, and contain landfills to reduce dust and other pollutants.
- Airshed-Wide Action: Implement pollution control measures across the entire airshed, involving all habitations, institutions, and individuals.
- Protection of Vulnerable Populations: Focus on protecting the most vulnerable populations through targeted interventions and awareness campaigns.
- Administrative Changes: Adjust office hours to align peak traffic emissions with periods of better atmospheric mixing.
Delhi’s air crisis is not a failure of alerts or enforcement, but of governance design.
Only a Delhi-specific, predictive, and participatory air-governance framework rooted in science, foresight, and public trust can move the city from seasonal despair to sustainable clean air.
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