Choking Beijing went from grey to blue. Can Delhi do the same?

It was a dystopian nightmare come true. An ashen cloud of acrid smog hung over the city. Those who ventured out felt their eyes burn, their breath became laboured. Many suffered coughing fits as respiratory illnesses soared. The city authorities shut schools and stopped the movement of trucks. The media called it “airpocalypse”.Reads like life in present-day Delhi? This, however, is a snapshot from Beijing’s winter of early 2013, when a particularly long spell of visibly toxic air inspired the airpocalypse coinage, just like the early 20th-century London haze had led to another portmanteau, “smog”.Delhi hit the season’s worst on the air quality index (AQI) around the middle of November. Over the next few days it continued to rise, touching 494 on November 18, the second-worst air quality ever recorded in the national capital, pushing pollution levels to the ‘severe plus’ category.Despite the authorities imposing Stage 4 Graded Response Action Plan (Grap), the air quality has been fluctuating between the poor and severe range, hitting 420 again on November 23. It has improved a bit since, with an AQI of 382 on November 26 (very poor).For years now, the national capital has been grappling with severe air pollution, with the air quality nose-diving in autumn-winter. The crisis is similar to what Beijing had been facing around 2013, when the Chinese city would regularly top the list of the world’s most-polluted capitals.Beijing’s air had become a source of international embarrassment for the Chinese political leadership. Pressure on China’s rulers was also growing from the public. With smartphones giving Beijingers the real picture of their city’s air quality, anger over pollution had been rising.By all accounts, Beijing’s critically polluted winter of 2012-13 proved to be the last straw. Forced by public opinion and protests, not just in Beijing but in several Chinese cities, pollution became a political priority. In March 2013, then Chinese Premier Li Keqiang pledged at the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress to “resolutely fight a good battle to defend blue skies”.In 2013, Beijing’s annual average concentration of inhalable particulate matter measuring 2.5 microns or less in diameter stood at 101.5 microgram per cubic metre (μgm/m3). By 2023, it was 38.98 μgm/m3). In short, the Chinese capital can teach Delhi a thing or two about air pollution control. Common cause and effectThere are geographical, meteorological and growth similarities between Beijing and Delhi. Both sit on basins close to mountain ranges, which prevent easy dispersal of pollutants. As a result, winter conditions such as calm winds, temperature inversion, humidity and lack of rain cause massive spikes in pollution.Pollutants from neighbouring regions — Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and NCR towns in the case of Delhi, and Hebei and Tianjin provinces for Beijing — impact both cities. Just like the Thar in Delhi’s case, Beijing gets dumps of dust from the Gobi desert to its west during spring and summer, raising levels of PM10 (particulate matter measuring 10 microns in diameter) in the air.Both Beijing and Delhi have been grappling with explosive growth that has added people, vehicles, buildings, roads and industries in and around the metropolises at breakneck speed. All these are potential emission sources. medium115768659Battle for blue skiesWith Beijing hitting a breaking point in 2013, Li had declared a national “war against pollution” by 2014, with the first targets being reducing PM2.5 and PM10, and eliminating outdated energy production and industrial plants. For Beijing, many of the focus areas and actions taken were those that have been discussed (and some rolled out) in Delhi-NCR. The key difference was in the scale and rigour of implementation.For instance, Beijing’s mayor, who in 2014 had pledged a “life and death” effort to reduce PM2.5 concentrations by a third in four years, was replaced in late 2016 for apparently failing to meet the target, according to a Washington Post report.Incidentally, in 2019, the Indian government launched the National Clean Air Policy (NCAP) with what then Union minister Harsh Vardhan termed a “modest target” of reducing particulate matter by 20-30% (over 2017 levels) in five years across 121 cities.In late 2023, Climate Trends and Respirer Living Sciences tracked the progress in 46 cities and found that eight had met the PM10 target while pollution levels in 22 cities had actually increased.The NCAP target has since been revised to a 40% reduction by 2026. Given current progress, many experts feel this target is likely to be missed as well. medium nocaptionhttps://youtu.be/fuqSXp480os?si=jYp_83LUwN1utZbVHere’s how Beijing cleaned its airData is power: A dense PM2.5 monitoring network was set up, with over 1,000 sensors across the city, for zeroing in on dirty-air spots and timing of emissions.Reshaping transport: The growth in freeways was slowed, along with parking curbs. The focus shifted to mass transit and reviving traditional Chinese urban design of walking centres. These measures aimed to decouple private vehicle use from wealth, nudging even well-heeled Beijingers to embrace public transport and cycling.Vehicle emission controls: In 2017, Beijing rolled out strict vehicle emission standards on a par with the norms of Euro VI (European emission standards). Polluting vehicles were phased out through scrapping incentives and private cars reduced via licence plate lotteries and driving bans. Electric vehicles (EVs), including buses and taxis, were promoted. Today, according to one estimate, Beijing has around 4 lakh EVs, the second highest for any city after Shanghai (5 lakh), and 2 lakh charging points.Coal not cool, crackdown on units: Beijing reduced its reliance on coal, transitioning many of its power plants and heating systems to natural gas while increasing investments in renewables. Heavily polluting industries were relocated outside the city. A massive drive was launched to clean up thousands of polluting factories in neighbouring provinces. According to reports, at the height of the campaign in 2017, as many as 5,600 environmental inspectors were hired from across China to check on industries surrounding the capital.Low emission zones: Through LEZs, Beijing aimed to enhance air quality within defined geographical boundaries in the city by restricting access to polluting vehicles. These zones became catalysts for fleet transformation.These efforts bore results. Annual PM2.5 concentration in Beijing dipped by 35% in just four years from 2013 to 2017. By 2023, the level was down a massive 60%. Per a University of Chicago report, such a percentage drop in pollution took decades to achieve in the US. China accounted for over three-quarters of the global decline in air pollution between 2013 and 2020.A few experts have called it a “shock and awe” campaign, pointing to coercive methods used to achieve results in double-quick time. Others have said poor Chinese workers were hit hard by factory closures and glitches in the transition to natural gas for heating left a large population exposed to China’s freezing winter at the peak of the campaign.However, few dispute the gains in air quality. In 2021, Beijing met China’s national air quality standard for the first time. The improvement continued through 2023, prompting China’s environment minister Huang Runqiu to remark, as quoted in state-run Global Times, “The ‘Beijing blue’ has gradually become our new normal”.