Poor air quality in Indian cities makes headlines with disturbing regularity. Of the 30 cities with the worst air pollution in the world, 17 are in India. New Delhi has the worst air quality among capital cities globally, with concentrations of PM2.5 nearly 10 times higher than World Health Organization guidelines. The health cost is staggering.
This is not for want of a response. At the turn of the century, Delhi’s public bus fleet was converted to run on compressed natural gas. While there were initial improvements, the long-term impact on overall air quality remains debatable. Calcutta, similarly, has been trying to address pollution from thermal power plants, vehicles, industries, and the burning of wood and dirty fuels for cooking and heating. A pilot project in 2024 distributed 5,000 smokeless chullahs among the urban poor. These enable more complete combustion of solid fuels like coal or firewood, reducing emissions significantly. The aim is to reach 11 million poor households across the state and get them to adopt the smokeless chullahs or move to a cleaner fuel. Through stakeholder engagement, mass awareness campaigns and the Ujjwala Yojana, many users did shift away from coal-fired chullahs. But the move came at a somewhat higher cost, and increased their dependence on largely imported liquefied petroleum gas.
Our neighbourhood ironing man, Dilip, shifted from coal to LPG. He invested Rs 4,000 in an LPG iron press — heavier at around five kilogrammes and more demanding to use. Setting aside the initial investment, his monthly expenses rose by about
Rs 600. He passed this on to his clients, who did not object as the ironed clothes no longer bore the occasional coal mark or burnt thread.
Dilip works in a blind lane beside a boundary wall. He starts early, goes from door to door collecting washed clothes, irons through the day, and by about five in the evening, he is done for the day and prepares his dinner. He then makes his rounds returning pressed clothes and collecting payment. Dilip then washes up, finishes dinner, and retires to a parking space in one of the neighbourhood buildings. He has used that space since the building was under construction, through an informal arrangement with an elderly caretaker who was from his own village in Bihar. When residents moved in, the arrangement quietly continued. This is how it works for most of our neighbourhood service providers: no secured tenure, no documents proving residence, and therefore no access to schemes like the Ujjwala Yojana.
When Dilip switched to LPG a few months ago, he entered yet another informal arrangement. Paying a premium to cylinder delivery men for reliable supply, paying per kilogramme since he cannot get a full cylinder. His current rate is Rs 270 per kg. We pay less than Rs 70 for the same amount. This is becoming untenable for Dilip and his ilk. He cannot keep passing costs on to clients indefinitely. Dilip may be unlettered, but he knows when to switch back to coal. The chullah by the boundary wall has been rebuilt. He is waiting for a supply of bituminous coal at around Rs 20 per kg.
The burden of the transition to cleaner fuels has fallen disproportionately on the very people it was meant to help — poor households, roadside eateries, neighbourhood ironing men. When reliable access to cleaner fuels fails them, they do not have the luxury of waiting it out. They go back to their old ways and, when they do, whatever air quality gains were made are quietly erased, while those responsible for ensuring no open burning of solid waste and control of pollution face no consequences for their dereliction of duty.
Like the war that disrupted LPG supply, pollution control is not fair. But it need not be this unfair. We need to find ways for the poor households, roadside eateries, and neighbourhood ironing men to safely access electricity
to cook and run their micro-enterprises and be absorbed in the formal economy. Subsidised electricity tariffs for micro-enterprises, doorstep registration to ease LPG access, and tenure recognition for informal workers are the minimum conditions for a transition that does not leave Dilip and his ilk behind.
Anamitra Danda is an environmentalist. Views are personal