Government’s proposed air quality index comes under a heavy cloud

NEW DELHI: Several key issues need to be resolved before a proposed Air Quality Index (AQI) can start yielding meaningful results. India’s environment ministry is bullish about the index -- environment minister Prakash Javadekar announced at the launch last week that it would play a big role in cleaning up the country. However, two members of the committee that designed the index told ET, on condition of anonymity, that the ministry was trying to roll out the AQI without addressing important questions. The outcome, they said, could be one where data fudging, as happened in China, intensifies.

As ideas go, the proposal to set up an AQI has been welcomed. Air quality data is currently collated by a set of government agencies – the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), the State Pollution Control Boards (SPCBs), academic institutes -- and polluting industries.

Some of this data enters the public domain – in the form of actual readings, or 15-minute/hourly/daily averages of pollutant concentrations. Indexes, which convert raw concentration numbers into colour-coded assessments of health risks--healthy, poor, very poor, harmful, hazardous, etc--are better at communicating what this could mean for people. The criticism of the committee members springs from concerns about usage.

An index is only as accurate as the data it's based on. As ET reported earlier this month, the information generated by the SPCBs and the CPCB is flawed. It doesn't measure critical pollutants and is too focused on large cities. There is no certification of instruments or processes to ensure that the details being collected are accurate. India-specific protocols, defining what pollutants to measure and how to measure them, are missing. “Unless we fix these, the index is not of much use," said one of the committee members cited above.

As the ET story had reported, several of the continuous monitoring units (CMUs) already in operation at state level are struggling for want of spares or providing incorrect numbers due to poor calibration. For instance, the unit at Patna has been reporting a reading of minus 46 for ozone for over a month now.

The CPCB said adding more air quality stations will fix the data quality problem. It wants one "continuous monitoring unit in each state capital and million-plus population city," about 66 in all, said AB Akolkar, CPCB member-secretary. Each of these, he told ET in an emailed response, will be established on a "50-50 costsharing basis between CPCB and SPCBs/PCCs," except in the Northeast where it will follow a 90-10 cost sharing model.

But apart from the question whether one CMU can accurately capture a city's air quality, there are other challenges. Prime among them is the relationship between the CPCB and the SPCBs. The latter don’t report to the CPCB but to their respective state governments. Further, most SPCB heads are political appointees, as recent research by Tata Institute of Social Sciences professor Geetanjoy Sahu has shown.

This has significant implications. Take the national capital--between November and January, PM 10 and PM 2.5 will be very high, close to 400, putting the city in the hazardous category. (PM refers to particulate matter and the number to the size of these particles.)

“What should the CPCB or the state Pollution Control Committee do in such times?” asked the official cited above. “Should they issue an advisory closing schools and telling people to stay home?” That would result in schools being closed for three months, drastic action that can have an adverse impact. Advisories – or the risk of being named the most polluted city in the country – could create an incentive for SPCBs to either “stop sharing their data with the CPCB or to fudge their numbers,” said the official.

Akolkar said such a situation wouldn’t arise. "The entire system is unmanned and data shall be made available at both the ends simultaneously." However, CMU companies and SPCB officials say calibration of these machines is frequently altered to manipulate readings. That could be tackled through "routine calibration exercises through our zonal Laboratories," Akolkar said.

There is potential for conflict of interest. For the AQI to be credible, the CPCB will need to ensure that the data from the SPCBs is accurate. At the same time, the state government, if only to ensure less panic around air quality, might seek to influence the SPCB.

To be sure, the CPCB is not planning to issue public health advisories at this time. “Initially, the CPCB proposes to establish a linkage between local government and air quality data so as to create understanding on the Air Quality Index and desired air quality, so that local authorities can act on it,” Akolkar said. But that leaves India with a system very close to what already exists. Under this, the SPCBs are empowered to issue health advisories which they never do.

There are other questions that need to be addressed. Rakesh Agarwal, the head of Envirotech, a company that makes instruments used for gauging concentrations of particulate matter, asked why the index is tracking the same eight pollutants country-wide. It should track more locally relevant pollutants such as mercury, which is present wherever coal mining takes place.