[Gufran Beig, project director of India’s System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research (SAFAR), noted a gradual decline in firecracker use in recent years as “awareness of [the] ill effect of any kind of toxic firework” increases. But pollutant emissions from agricultural burning and fireworks may degrade the city’s air quality to “severe” this week, according to predictions from SAFAR, which is affiliated with India’s Ministry of Earth Sciences. The main day of Diwali celebrations falls on Thursday.]
By Amy Cheng
Last year, pollution emissions from
the firecrackers contributed to Delhi recording its worst air quality in years.
One year later, the air in India’s capital is still expected to be “very poor”
during Diwali celebrations, even with a ban on fireworks — which are still
popular.
Gufran Beig, project director of
India’s System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting and Research (SAFAR),
noted a gradual decline in firecracker use in recent years as “awareness of
[the] ill effect of any kind of toxic firework” increases. But pollutant
emissions from agricultural burning and fireworks may degrade the city’s air
quality to “severe” this week, according to predictions from SAFAR, which is affiliated with
India’s Ministry of Earth Sciences. The main day of Diwali celebrations falls
on Thursday.
Calls for a green Diwali, both in
India and in the diaspora communities, have resulted in changes such as gifting
plants to loved ones, avoiding plastic products and reusing old holiday
decorations.
Delhi’s chief minister Arvind
Kejriwal from the ruling Aam Aadmi Party announced two months ago that a
complete ban on “the storage, sale and use of all types of firecrackers” will
last until January. This measure, Kejriwal wrote in
a tweet, could be lifesaving.
City authorities rolled out a
similar moratorium on fireworks last year, amid concerns that unsafe levels of
pollution may further the spread of coronavirus cases. Other states adopted similar
policies, encouraging the Indian public to cut back on fireworks. At the time,
the South Asian country was reporting about 40,000 new cases a day.
Residents, however, flouted the
firecracker ban. Sparklers lit up the Delhi night sky and crackles from
explosive fireworks could be heard in many neighborhoods, according to local media. Noxious fumes and debris from the fireworks,
coupled with existing poor air conditions, shrouded the city in haze the
following days, with the air quality index soaring to hazardous levels.
So far this year, police in Delhi
have arrested 26 people and seized over 8,800 pounds of fireworks in a
crackdown on rule-breakers, according to local media.
Even if Delhi residents abide by
the no-firecracker mandate this Diwali, forecaster SAFAR still predicts “very
poor” air quality due to heavy pollution carried by wind from the rural farming
regions northwest of the capital.
For years, some 29 million
inhabitants in the greater capital area have suffered extreme air conditions in
the fall as villages set fire to straws in their freshly harvested rice fields
to make room for wheat production, an outlawed practice that still persists.
Punjab and Haryana,
agriculture-heavy states where billows of smoke rise from rice fields in the fall,
containing high levels of fine and coarse particles, sit near Delhi’s borders.
Agricultural fires contribute as much as half of all pollution in the capital
on certain autumn days, studies have shown.
The Indian government has tried both
carrot and stick policies to move farmers away from stubble burning: Some
received about $32 for every acre of farmland left untorched, while others were
thrown in jail for failing to pay burning-related fines.
Reports from a government
commission on air management say that rice field burnings have fallen compared
with last year. But Beig, with the pollution-tracking agency, pointed to this
year’s prolonged monsoon season, which brought rain and favorable winds, as
partially responsible for the rare breath of fresh air Delhi residents enjoyed
in October.
One of the most polluted countries
in the world, India is also a top carbon gas emitter. During a Tuesday speech
at the COP26 climate summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi pledged to
reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2070, setting India behind countries like
China by a decade.
Read more:
Can India chart a low-carbon future? The world might depend on
it.
India’s losing battle against pollution: Delhi air quality
reaches toxic levels, again
