No yellow-label, please: A Chinese family rides an ice-chair on a frozen lake in Beijing on New Year’s Day. (AP)

Beijing, Jan. 1. Marxist Bengal may be bungling it with the three-wheelers , but communist Beijing has done it with errant cars, banishing some 350,000 polluting vehicles from the city’s streets from New Year’s Day.

It's the latest in Beijing's crusade against air pollution that started weeks before the Olympic Games in August.

Two days ago, Du Shaozhong, a deputy director of the environmental protection bureau of the Beijing municipal government, announced that all “yellow-label” cars would be prohibited from plying within the 5th Ring Road from today. And, the ban took effect today. Also, these cars will be prohibited within the 6th Ring Road from October 1, thereby further extending the area under the ban.

“The elimination of the yellow-label cars is key to improving the air quality in Beijing,” he had said.

Beijing has 3,53,800 yellow-label vehicles, which account for just 10 per cent of the city's total cars but these are responsible for 50 per cent of emissions in the city, the official media quoted Du as saying.

Yellow-label vehicles are those that do not meet the Euro I emission standard, which was adopted in China in 1992.

Simultaneously with banishing the polluting vehicles, the city government has offered incentives to owners of such cars to not use them. From today till the end of this year, owners of these cars will be paid up to 25,000 yuan (US$3,700) as “reward” if they stop using their cars. What’s more, they will be subsidised if they buy "environmental friendly" cars. Violators would be fined during a three-month reprieve period.

The restrictions on cars before and after the Olympic Games last August have had remarkable results as far as the Beijing air is concerned. The city has had 7 per cent more of the blue sky days due to these measures. A city that had long been notorious for its air pollution is now being cited for its anti-pollution measures.

Last week, writing in a newspaper here, a United National Development Program official suggested that New Delhi, which will host the Commonwealth Games next year, take its lessons from Beijing on controlling its air pollution. Comparing the air quality in Asia’s mega cities, he mentioned both New Delhi and Calcutta as the worst examples.

In the run-up to the Olympics, Beijing restricted the use of cars, making it mandatory for people to use their cars on alternate days in accordance with the last digit of their license plates. The city has a total of 3.3 million cars.

Environmentalists and the media have welcomed such moves, including the ban that took effect today. There have been editorials in local newspapers urging the people to use the restrictions to ride public transport more. Some have even suggested that the anti-pollution drive could see a return of bicycles as a major mode of transport. After all, bicycling, they said, is good for health too.

People in many Chinese cities regularly use bicycles on the city roads, which have separate lanes for them. But things changed in the late 1990s when the new car boom began sweeping the onetime nation of bicyclists. The wheel seems to be turning full circle, thanks to the scary level the city's air pollution has reached.