Karnataka State Pollution Control Board

IAS officer

alcohol

Agnihotra day

Recommendations to check air quality

The recommendations, which were submitted to CM Siddaramaiah on June 5, have baffled the bureaucracy, with many IAS officers describing these as ‘mostly bizarre’Tackling air pollution in Bengaluru and the state could be tougher than expected. Some of the recommendations made by none other than the(KSPCB) itself is a mixed bag ranging from the bizarre to the impossible to the mumbo-jumbo kind. Some are just party poopers. Those at the helm are putting the blame — or credit — at the doorsteps of the ‘public’ whose views it elicited, but to forward it in the form of recommendations to the state government in all earnestness begs logic.KSPCB was asked to recommend a ‘State Action Plan on Climate Change’. Solutions mooted include shuttering of pubs by 10 pm daily and conducting the vedic ritual of agnihotra homa!KSPCB’s recommendations on ‘State Action Plan on Climate Change’ is a must-read for all the wrong and weird reasons: Solutions mooted include shuttering of pubs by 10 pm daily and conducting the vedic ritual of agnihotra homa!The recommendations, which were submitted to chief minister Siddaramaiah on June 5, have baffled the bureaucracy with many IAS officers describing these as “mostly bizarre” and “highly absurd”. In fact, KSPCB had, in January this year, initiated a study based on interactive meetings various green activists and other stakeholders in order to prepare an exhaustive report on the list of recommendations that would be included into the state action plan on climate change.A senior, who tipped off Bangalore Mirror about the contents of report, said: “This was supposed to be a serious report from the pollution control agency but it seems to have turned into a comedy of sorts, at least with regards to recommendations pertaining to checking air quality.”The KSPCB study, while maintaining that air pollution was a major source of respiratory ailments and was rendering cities unfit for healthy living, has mooted 53 solutions for containing air pollution; of these six caught our attention:Banning all cars that give mileage less than 20 km/ litre of petrol/diesel.Closing pubs and bars by 10 pm and imposing green tax onic beverages.Rationing of sale of fuel to 100 litres per month per car.Forcing public servants to switch off lights and ACs during daytime.Sprinkling treated water on roads to reduce heat.’ should be considered as a public function periodically all over the state to cleanse the air.In fact, the remaining recommendations too are not path-breaking either. Some of them are: controlling stone crushers to reduce dust, strictly implementing emission standards, having dedicated cycle paths, using GPS-based vehicle tracking in government vehicles to curb misuse and reduce pollution, monitoring bio-mass waste burning and incineration units and providing local grid connections to outdoor broadcasting vans of television channels instead of diesel generators.When Bangalore Mirror took up the issue with KSPCB, weirder was its justification: KSPCB chairman Vaman Acharya said, “While we admit that some of the recommendations are odd, we want to make it clear that these suggestions came from the public during consultative meetings.” KSPCB maintained that over 2,000 people had attended the meetings held across 21 cities and towns in the state in the last few months.Interestingly, KSPCB has given an explanation for each of these unusual recommendations (see below).Why weren’t the recommendations from the public scrutinised before forwarding them to the government? The author of the KSPCB study report, Shankar Sharma, said: “We were only asked to listen to people by holding public consultation meetings and compile their recommendations. It is up to the government to decide on that and we have conveyed to the government what people had to say.” He added: “One may consider it as trivial. But in the long run it has a huge impact on the society.”But KSPCB failed to see the practicality of the suggestions made by the public. An officer in the chief minister’s office said: “They want cars giving less than 20 kmpl to be banned. Going by the recommendation, almost all cars will have to be stopped from plying. Moreover, Bengaluru’s stop-and-start traffic will never guarantee over 20 kmpl.”Another odd recommendation pertains to closing pubs and bars by 10 pm on the ground that it can save power. However, Sharma stated: “People were so angry that in one of the consultations, they shot back saying only a small chunk of the population frequents pubs and bars but are draining the resources in a big way. Why should a major part of population suffer just for an action of a small group? Rather than wasting power for lighting and air-conditioning, it can be conserved and used for others. As mentioned, we did not get into any discussion with the public and conveying what they had to say to the government,” Sharma clarified.On the recommendation of green tax on alcoholic beverages, Sharma explained, “Government keep saying that it lacks funds to set up pollution monitoring centres in cities. People drew our attention towards levying of green tax. They think that only rich and wealthier class of society splurge on alcoholic beverages and charging them extra would not make much of a difference as the same money would be used to improve quality of life of others.”But the suggestion that stands out in this age and times is that of observing Agnihotra day as a public function. Sharma maintained: “A senior academician in Dharwad argued that this vedic ritual had several cleansing effects on air and surrounding ambience and he presented lot of scientific data on the issue and quoted proven examples. Hence the recommendation was included.”However, Vaman Acharya said he was not enthused by the idea of a vedic ritual. He said: “On several occasions, people have come to me saying we could cleanse the air through homa and havan. In fact I have rebuked them. We only test and measure carbon-dioxide and suspended particulate matter in the air (SPM). If you measure air at a place where a homa is conducted, naturally both will be high. We are a scientific body and should not recommend such ideas. We at the board do not stand by what people have expressed but only communicated what people are saying.”Early closure will curb unnecessary power consumption for lighting and air conditioning. Green tax collected can be used for installing solar lights.It will cleanse the airIt will help save power and also be a role model for ordinary citizensThat would motivate people to switch over to higher fuel-efficiency cars and would also enable government to make LPG/CNG mandatory for all vehicles.This reduces the use of private vehicles and contains vehicular emissions.This would reduce temperature of city and suppress dust.