What Delhi thought in 1998 Calcutta is thinking in 2008. That too only half way, or even less.

Ten years ago, on July 28, the Supreme Court set what has come to be acknowledged as the gold standard for cleaning up India’s urban air. By a strange coincidence, one of those quirks history manages to conjure up, on the 18th of last month Calcutta High Court adopted as its own order a string of steps the state’s environment department presented to it as a plan to cut pollution.

As people associated with the campaign against pollution rejoiced at the first verifiable commitment made by the government before the court, the realisation has slowly dawned that the proposals lack the vital limbs to work.

The biggest difference between the Supreme Court order and the Calcutta High Court directives is the emphasis on marrying pollution control with traffic planning in one and the silence in the other. Or what a wiseacre described as Calcutta's customary inability to see beyond its nose — this time figuratively as well as literally.

Banning commercial vehicles of a vintage of 15 years and above and conversion of autorickshaws to LPG are the only two Calcutta steps common with the Supreme Court order.

Bhure Lal, who heads the independent committee whose recommendations the Supreme Court turned into directives, explained why the green battle can’t succeed without the heavy artillery — buses, trains and trams.

“If the objective is to have a clean Calcutta, the government has to decongest Calcutta and provide adequate environment-friendly public transport to people so that they have alternatives to move around and the number of private vehicles can be reduced,” he said.

If no such traffic road map was placed before the court, it is safe to assume it doesn’t exist. A Metro linking the east to the west beyond the river and occasional bursts of activity around a proposed light rail transit are all that is in public knowledge about the government’s traffic planning.

John Whitelegg, a transport planner and environment expert formerly with the United Nations Environment Programme, studied the city’s transport system and submitted his recommendations to the government. There it stands, still.

Whitelegg’s comment sums up the government’s approach: “It is planning to withdraw (hand-pulled) rickshaws but they are replaced by polluting autorickshaws.”

In reality, while the man-drawn vehicle has not entirely disappeared, its mechanised brother is proliferating with the productive prowess of the cockroach.

Even as Calcutta salivates at earning bragging rights over a rail under the river, an urban development official warns that the East-West Metro is out of tune with demographic changes.

“The East-West Metro contradicts the Vision 2025 document prepared by the Calcutta Metropolitan Development Authority as it is not connecting areas which are expected to see the maximum growth in the near future,” he said.

Calcutta has not only been unfortunate in its choice of rulers — the politics is not important here — with the roach vision, but also in falling victim to circumstances that conspired to throw it out of the Supreme Court’s pollution watch.

The Bhure Lal committee keeps an eye on pollution in all major cities, except Calcutta and Mumbai. The Supreme Court order never did affect Calcutta because a public interest litigation filed, ironically, by environmentalist S.M. Ghosh against the West Bengal government was already in the high court.

Now that Ghosh’s case has been disposed of and the city could legitimately come under the Delhi committee’s supervision, it hasn’t happened because someone has to move the Supreme Court first.

“It would have been an extremely welcome development,” said activist Subhas Dutta of that prospect.

Other than the fact that the environment ministry proposal is a much watered-down version of the Supreme Court’s prescription, there is also the question of how the administrator can also act as the monitor.

“How can the DG (of police) or CP monitor the performance of the police force under their command and report to the court? Ditto with the state pollution control board chairman,” said Dutta.

The committee consists mainly of senior government officials apart from two academicians, unlike the national-level panel that is independent.

Dutta presses for the committee to be given similar independent status but still accepts that at least a beginning has been made, though 10 years late. In the meantime, the levels of key pollutants in the air — suspended particulate matter and respirable particulate matter — have risen close to double the national permissible limit.

The environment department looks at it that way too — as a beginning. “We prepared the notification taking help from the Supreme Court order but had to keep in mind that this was the first of its kind notification from the environment department,” said an official.

The official also argued that the Bhure Lal committee was independent and could act with much greater freedom under the court’s direct supervision while the environment department had to operate within its official brief.

“If you consider only the environment departments or state (pollution control) boards in the country acting suo motu, this notification is perhaps the boldest one,” he said.

But the boldness probably lies in taking it out of the hands of the Subhas Chakraborty-led transport ministry which, as the administrative authority so far, has defeated every effort to control emissions by commercial vehicles.

It is also directly responsible, possibly with political and administrative sanction, for methodically destroying the public transport system. Calcutta has steadily moved from larger, and more economically and environmentally efficient, modes of road transport to smaller and smaller vehicles.

From double-decker buses to single to minis to autorickshaws. If it were possible to get any smaller, Subhas Chakraborty would have done so. The rest of the world is going in the other direction, discouraging small vehicles like private cars from entering the city through prohibitive parking fees and congestion charges to force people to use public transport.

Whitelegg says: “A Metro or light railway transit is planned only where other modes are inadequate. However, in Calcutta, all the transport modes seem to run parallel to each other and thus competing. There is no concept of a grid and things like single ticketing, which complement one mode to another.”

London is one of the examples where a committed administration has strengthened the public transport system to the extent that the number of daily commuters has doubled over the past four years. It has not stopped at that, introducing low-emission zones where diesel buses and heavy vehicles cannot enter. A congestion charge for entering the city centre is in place since 2003, brought into force by ‘Red Ken’, as the British tabloids fondly call Ken Livingstone, who was then the mayor of London.

Indian communists, many of whose past generation of leaders cut their teeth on the ideological bone supplied by their British counterparts, should have no qualms about drawing inspiration from Livingstone.

But why look at the imperialist West when an example exists within three and a half hours of flying time to the east, in Singapore? That city state has been charging a congestion levy from close to the time the Left Front took power in Bengal.

Just as public transport is not a part of the plan submitted to the high court, the environment department’s list of actions excludes the key element that led to so much success in Delhi — forcible adoption of CNG as fuel.

“The Supreme Court had shown the way by ordering mass conversion to cleaner fuel like CNG to reduce pollution at source,” said Anumita Roy Chowdhury, a researcher with the Centre for Science and Environment.

Under pressure from the court, a reluctant and transport lobby-influenced Delhi government was compelled to convert all public transport to CNG.

A conversation between the government counsel and the Supreme Court bench during the emission case hearing in Delhi went thus:

Counsel: Our submission is to allow us some more time to implement these.

Bench: People can’t breathe and you are asking for more breathing time?

The small beginning made in Calcutta can go forward only if the high court drives this government breathless.

The Supreme Court issued an order on July 28, 1998, to fight pollution in Delhi. Last month, the high court accepted a plan submitted by Bengal’s environment department to clean up Calcutta’s air. The following is a comparison

SC— Restrict plying of commercial vehicles, including taxis, which are 15 years old by October 2, 1998, in less than three months of the promulgation of order
HC— Restrict plying of all commercial vehicles more than 15 years old or convert to Bharat Stage III from April 2009, giving about eight and a half months
SC— Restrict plying of goods vehicles during day
HC— No such order
SC— Augment public transport
HC— No such order
SC— Replace all pre-1990 autos and taxis — those that are eight years old — with new vehicles using clean fuel
HC— All 2-stroke autos to be scrapped by December 2008. All autos to run on LPG from December 2009
SC— Financial incentives to replace all pre-1990 autos and taxis
HC— No such order
SC— No 8-year-old buses to ply except on CNG or other clean fuel by April 2000. Entire Delhi bus fleet to be converted to CNG by April 2001
HC— No such programme
SC—New bus termini to be built at entry points for interstate buses so that they don’t enter city
HC— No such order
SC— GAIL told to expand CNG-dispensing outlets from nine to 80 in two years
HC— Oil companies asked to ensure adequate supply
but no specific directive; general instruction to ensure no pilferage and adulteration of fuel
SC— Two independent fuel-testing labs to be set up
HC— No such order
SC— Automated inspection and maintenance centre for commercial vehicles
HC— Auto emission testing centres to remain under strict vigil and to be fined and suspended for irregularities

WHAT DELHI HAS DONE

Achievements

More than 3,000 public transport buses change fuel to CNG
All three-wheelers and four-wheeler taxis ordered to shift to CNG
Cap on commercial vehicle lifespan. Vehicles older than 15 years asked to go off the road
Implementation of EuroII standards date advanced from 2005 to 2000
Sulphur content in diesel and petrol lowered to 500 parts per million

Concerns

The first-generation reforms helped Delhi arrest what environmental scientists had dubbed runaway pollution. Carbon dioxide levels have dropped and particulate matter pollution has stabilised — despite a steadily increasing number of two-wheelers and four-wheelers.

Those gains are now being threatened by the increasing number of vehicles on the road. Levels of oxides of nitrogen, viewed as a problem associated with advanced technology, are now rising.

Next step

Environmental activists believe the next generation of reforms is overdue. “We now need mobility management — steps that encourage the use of public transport and discourage private vehicles,” said Anumita Roychowdhury, coordinator of the Right to Clean Air campaign of the Centre for Science and Environment.

“Public transport systems already meet a big proportion of the (movement) needs in metros,” Roychowdhury said. “They need to find ways to retain their existing riders and attract more,” she said.

Delhi is already on its way with a Metro that is far more ambitious in its reach than its Calcutta counterpart. The Delhi Transport Corporation has introduced 25 air-conditioned, low-floor buses as part of its 3,500-odd fleet to make public transport attractive and is experimenting with the concept of bus lanes for faster flow.