Why Guwahati should not depend on rain alone to tackle pollution

For the past 22 years, every time I visited my hometown Guwahati, yearning for a respite from a heavily polluted Delhi, I always looked forward to the blue skies, clean air and freshness.

Not so anymore.

Now when I visit my hometown, the air is no longer fresh, the skies are grey and everything looks dusty a lot of the time as the vagaries of rapid expansion and growth have taken a toll on this once-beautiful and green city, which is no more than a cacophonic concrete jungle these days.

Pristine places such as the Northeast have been always blessed to have favourable weather conditions such as plenty of rain and good wind speed, which help in the rapid dispersal of dust and pollutants — leading to clear, blue skies; often giving the impression that everything is hunky-dory on the pollution front.

But that impression could be utterly wrong because pollution, a word once synonymous with Delhi-NCR and the northern plains, is not alien to the Northeast anymore, presumed to be a clean air hotspot. Not even Kashmir or South India. 

These cities show their true colours when the weather gods aren’t there to help — during winters and dry spells — to help them drive away from the lurking danger; hazardous and toxic pollutants that wreak havoc on our health.

On December 22, 2020, a Lancet Planetary Health report attributed at least 1.7 million deaths in India to air pollution in 2019.

Busy and growing cities such as Guwahati, and even small towns, especially, are bearing the brunt of unbridled growth, industrialisation, construction, an increase in the number of vehicles, etc. 

A direct consequence of this is an alarming increase in air pollution levels, which is turning out to be a matter of major concern. And there are studies to prove this.

Research and advocacy group Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) in an analysis late last year pointed to the growing tentacles of air pollution in the Northeast. 

The CSE analysed the urban air quality status in Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura, Nagaland, Mizoram, and Arunachal Pradesh, and assessed annual and seasonal trends in PM2.5 concentration for the period January 1, 2019, to December 7, 2021.

Guwahati, the study said, had the most polluted air in Northeastern India, comparable to cities of north India.

Way back in 2013, the CSE had warned that 68 per cent of all cities monitored for air pollution in the Northeast region have particulate matter levels higher than the safety standards.

But why is this happening? It is a combination of many factors and one need not be a scientist to know the basic answers.

In urban areas, the general contributors to air pollution are generally vehicular emissions, industrial pollution, dust, smoke, etc. Guwahati (and even other big cities of the Northeast) has all of these.

A growing city, construction keeps on happening in Guwahati around the year; be it residential apartments by individuals or builders, infrastructures such as flyovers or commercial buildings or roads. All these activities generate dust.

Adding to the dusty mess is the rampant cutting of trees and human habitation on the surrounding hills, which expose the topsoil. So when it rains, the soil flows down to the plains and settles down on the drains and roads and when the weather is dry and windy, it just gets blown into the air.

It is often seen that mandated safety norms such as coverage of a work area with a green cloth or high barriers and sprinkling of water to keep the dust at bay are hardly followed either at big project sites or individual constructions. The result: alarming levels of dust in the air.

The city’s vehicular load is another factor. Guwahati had an estimated 12 lakh registered vehicles and the number is just growing by the day. A huge number of these would be old, polluting vehicles that have crossed their 10-year and 15-year limit, still plying on the road, bypassing the mandatory pollution checks.

A casual visit to the busy Adabari bus stand or a drive through the Jalukbari-Bashistha bypass shows how all pollution norms have gone for a toss. Smoke-belching buses and trucks make breathing quite a task in these areas.

Further down, on the Khanapara-Jorabat-Byrnihat route, the problem ends up in a choking mess in the heavily polluted industrial town of Byrnihat — both on the Assam and Meghalaya sides.

Unchecked industrial emission is another major cause of concern in all big cities, adding to the filthy air. Guwahati, with industries in and around the city, has the right ingredients for industrial pollution and discharge.

Separate studies by the Desert Research Institute, Nevada, US, and by IIT Guwahati have shown the presence of alarming levels of black carbon in Guwahati, attributed to the high number of unchecked diesel vehicles in the city and its surrounding areas, plying without pollution clearance.

Northeastern states are spared of grave issues such as the burning of stubble and farm residue like in Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, etc., but the smoke generated by the burning of waste and leaves as well as solid fuel is another contributor to air pollution. In urban areas, solid fuel such as wood won’t be in much use but waste burning is an unchecked problem.

Anumita Roychowdhury, executive director in charge of research and advocacy, CSE, feels that the National Clean Air Programme has to move beyond focusing only on a few cities to taking a larger approach to mitigate air pollution.

Chandra Bhushan, an environmental expert and the CEO of the International Forum for Environment, Sustainability and Technology, says Delhi, by the virtue of being the capital, gets all the attention. “But a look at the national ambient air quality report shows that pollution is an all-India issue and not just a rural or urban problem, or even an Indo-Gangetic plain phenomenon,” he told this writer.

Sufficient laws and pollution control norms are in place but strict implementation is the key to these being successful.

In the Northeast, these problems have been compounded due to the changing weather patterns and the gradual reduction of rainfall, which acts as a natural cleanser of air.

This March, when I visited Guwahati, there was hardly any rain, leading to unprecedented heat conditions and foul and dusty air.

The respite came in April after the skies opened up. But it is wrong and dangerous to wait for divine intervention every time and do little to assuage the problem. The rain god saved Guwahati this time. He won’t be there every time.

(A native of Guwahati, the writer is an independent journalist presently based in Delhi, and writes on issues of public interest)

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