An assessment by the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, of Delhi’s experiment with keeping odd-/even-numbered cars off the roads on alternate days in January 2016 showed that it had no perceptible impact on pollution in the Capital. Yet, the Delhi High Court has asked the government to inflict this substitute for meaningful action on the people of Delhi. Courts should desist from taking on the role of the executive. Now, the government of Delhi can blame the courts for actual implementation of a senseless policy, while it only talked about it. There are other things that the government can and must do. It can mobilise voluntary squads to educate people not to burn trash. Even as the Capital’s sky darkened with smog over the last week, smoke spiralling up from heaps of burning trash could be spotted in different parts of the city. This must stop. Construction sites must learn to control dust, both by using enclosures and water sprinklers.

The capacity of public transport must go up. But the more important challenge is to persuade the farmers of Punjab and Haryana not to burn the stubble that remains after the kharif crop has been harvested. True, ‘polluter pays’ is a fine principle. But farmers would turn around and ask why they should be the first group on which the principle should be practised. It would be better to create an incentive for them to not burn their crop residue.

The governments of Delhi, Punjab and Haryana should fund the setting up rural bio-digesters that pay farmers a price that would induce delivery for crop residue and other biomass that can be converted into revenue-earning methane and compost. Now, that would bring actual relief to the occlusion of Delhi’s skies by smog, unlike sham solutions like the discredited oddeven scheme.