Death Traps

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The attitude of GOI is usually to sweeps things under the carpet (even if it concerns the long term welfare of the people) than catch the bull by its horns: LINK

India’s government has decided to stop releasing real-time air quality data for the capital New Delhi, amid growing global attention on the city’s dangerous levels of pollution. The decision follows numerous assessments, including from the World Health Organisation, that New Delhi now has the world’s dirtiest air — with pollution levels exceeding those in Beijing, with its notorious smog. The Delhi Pollution Control Committee has been providing real-time, online air quality data measuring multiple pollutants — both toxic gases and fine particulate matter — from its six monitoring stations around the city. It is one of the only Indian government agencies to provide such detailed, real-time information — rather than a synthesised air-quality index — and activists have considered this “best practice†that other agencies should follow. However, India’s environment ministry has now decided to stop the flow of real-time data within two weeks, after which the information will be sent to the Central Pollution Control Committee “for their analysis†Experts also questioned the notion that air quality data needed to be “validated†on an ongoing basis, saying most monitoring machines around the world were automated and released their data publicly. Air pollution is emerging as a significant public concern in India, especially in the capital, which spent much of the winter blanketed in a smog laden with dangerous fine particulates that can lodge permanently in the lungs, causing respiratory problems. Real-time data are used by the public to help make decisions as to the best time to be outside. The decision to stop Delhi’s real-time air quality data comes amid a growing tendency by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government to clamp down on anything seen as detracting from India’s international image or reputation. Last week, the government banned the domestic broadcast of documentary about the lethal December 2012 gang rape of a young woman on board a Delhi bus, and also tried — unsuccessfully — to prevent its airing abroad.

[zen]

More trouble on cards for Ind if it does not wake up quickly to address issues related to pollution and population:

Link Pollution has turned the sacred waters into a lethal cocktail of industrial and human waste. Can the river be saved? Equally sinister are the findings of scientists investigating the rapid, sewage-borne spread of genes known as NDM-1 and NDM-4 (NDM stands for New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase) that associate themselves with bacteria to form *“superbugs” highly resistant to most kinds of antibiotics. NDM-1 was first detected in Delhi drinking water in 2010, and David Graham, a Canadian environmental engineering professor at Newcastle University, told me that he, as a visitor to India, and I, as a resident of Delhi, were both likely to be harbouring NDM-1 in our guts. A research paper he co-authored last year found that concentrations of NDM-1 in the relatively clean waters of the upper Ganges multiplied greatly when Hindu pilgrims from India’s big cities visited holy sites such as Rishikesh and Haridwar in the early summer. The rise was correlated with increases in faecal bacteria, too, suggesting that poor sanitation was once again the cause of the contamination. It is a grim irony that urban Indians who come to pay homage to the Ganges end up dirtying the river and spreading exposure to life-threatening diseases across the country.

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