Manoj Joshi: You can't solve pollution with a poll

There was a meme in movies on ancient Rome in the 1950s and 1960s There would be the gladiators fighting egged on by a stadium full of bloodthirsty Romans Finally came the moment when the defeated gladiator was to be killed or spared The Roman emperor usually Nero or Caligula would look at the spectators for their preference indicated by showing their thumbs up or down Usually pandering to the crowd the Emperor would then signal his decisionAlmost all studies of the January 115 oddeven scheme show that the only value of the exercise was to decongest roads a bit the removal of half the private cars made little difference to the levels of pollution FILE PicAFPSo the second round of Delhirsquos oddandeven car scheme to control pollution will take place next month Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwalrsquos announcement to the effect on February 11 followed a decisionmaking process that hearkened to that old Roman style What else can one say of a consultation with the 43113 people in 276 mohalla meetings that decided by an ldquooverwhelmingrdquo 81 per cent to continue the scheme It is not clear how many of these opinions had been mailed in online Delhirsquos population is give or take a few around 17 millionBesides this crackpot lsquoshow of handsrsquo kind of consultation there seems to be no valid rationale for repeating the experiment It is not clear what it will achieve since the same set of exemptions have been made mdash single women bikes and scooters and VIPs So no new data will be collected except through the changed weather conditionsSecond almost all studies of the January 115 scheme show that the only value of the exercise was to decongest roads a bit the removal of half the private cars made little difference to the levels of pollutionThe design of the experiment especially the exemptions suggest that this is a political tamasha rather than a serious effort to resolve the pollution problemThe exemption to single women drivers can be understood given the poor state of security for women in the capital But why the bikers Simply because they belong to AAPrsquos mass base are poorer people who cannot afford alternate transport like taxis even the AAP government admits that the public transport is not up to it and will resist any effort to prevent them from using their vehicles So conveniently they have been excludedIn the past month after the lsquosuccessfulrsquo oddeven experiment the AAP government has milked it for everything its worth There were ads in the media public contact programmes aimed more at shoring up the AAPrsquos political base rather than an act of genuine consultation One would imagine that all that the AAP government had been elected to do was to implement the oddeven schemeIt is easy to see why this is happening Shocked by the walloping they got in the state Assembly elections last year the BJP has used all the instruments at its command to prevent the Delhi government from functioning But Kejriwal amp Co unlike the fat cat Congress are fighters and so have taken recourse to political theatre to keep their political head above waterPollution in Delhi is a serious problem But almost all studies suggest that its causes are more complex than the vehicles in the city A study carried out by IIT Kanpur indicated that road dust burning biomass industrial stacks contributed a greater share than vehicles 56 per cent of the PM 10 and 38 per cent of PM 25 came from road dust Biomass burning resulted in 1726 per cent of the pollution and secondary particulate matter 2530 per cent Vehicles did contribute 9 to 20 per centThe clear policy response to this would be action on all these fronts While the existence of the fine IndoGangetic plains dust and the straw burning create their own problems there is no excuse for mounds of dirt lying around the roads in Delhi and the lack of any kind of pavementsData on the outcome of the Jan 115 scheme is also mixed The proponents of the plan hung on to every percentage point to make their case But a Council on Energy Environment and Water study in collaboration with the Energy Policy Institute showed little change in the PM 25 level between Jan 115 2016 and the same period in 2014 Indeed in 2014 it was significantly lower than in 2015 suggesting that Met conditions made the differenceEveryone would wish Kejriwal and his team the best of luck in reducing pollution levels in the national capital But it is not going to happen through street theatre The Roman Emperortype approach cannot be used to deal with what is an extremely serious problem Referendums are dangerous and deceptive weapons The only people who have learnt how to use them for good governance are the Swiss The Californians who tried to copy them through their Proposition ballots have bankrupted their state with contradictory decisionsThe writer is a Distinguished Fellow Observer Research Foundation New Delhi