Ministry of Environment & Forests is a mess…..

Tax payer’s money has been wasted over the last 60 years in India and still over the next few decades we might carry the legacy. The global climate has changed a lot over the last decade. Global economy is well worried about the condition of the global climate. India has been ranked 155 of 178 countries on the green index. Recently Yale University has reported that Delhi the capital of India is the most polluted city of the world beating Beijing. Prime reason behind this is that by vehicular and industrial emissions and 1,400 vehicles which are added to Delhi roads every day. Lack of proper public transport has given birth to private transport.  In other words public transport infrastructure is deliberately not developed since private automobile investments in Indian economy would decline. We are sacrificing our nature and earning profits and growth from the same. In the initial days we did not create proper waste and garbage management since government would not find any private segment to come and bribe them for getting these projects. Later on whatever private companies came they were routed through the political channel to pocket the money into the system.

On the green index, India is worse than all the other BRICS nations - China, Brazil, Russia and South Africa. China ranks at 118; South Africa is the best of these at 72. Switzerland tops the list of 178. Yamuna River itself is one of the biggest examples of devastating condition of the garbage and waste management in India. Over the last decade India achieved 8% GDP growth but failed to create a infrastructure to meet the waste and garbage management matching with the growing population. Now we are planning for another 8% GDP growth over the next 5 years from here and hence there will be stupendous pollution growth and we are sitting at zero place to control and manage the same.

Increase in Death & Hazards

According to the study of Centre for Science and Environment, Indian Council of Medical Research and US-based Health Effects Institute annual premature deaths caused by particulate air pollution have increased by six times since the year 2000. According to another report by The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) report is a world-wide initiative involving the World Health Organization (WHO), which tracks deaths and illnesses from all causes across the world every 10 years. The new findings were released by Aaron Cohen, principal epidemiologist of the Health Effects Institute and co-chair of the GBD Ambient Air Pollution Expert Group. The report says that about 620,000 premature deaths occur in India from air pollution-related diseases each year from 100,000 in 2000. The new type of pollutants like nitrogen oxides, ozone and air toxics are increasing the public health challenge.

City Wise chemical pollutants which we are breathing:

· About 10 per cent of the cities (19) exceed the NO2 standard. Of these, about nine have critical levels. Howrah, Barrackpore, Badlapur, Ulhasnagar and Asansol are the five top critically polluted cities.

·  The concentration of PM10 - particulates that measure between 2.5 and 10 micrometers - in Delhi air has increased more than 350 per cent over the past five years.

·     One city—Lote in Maharashtra—exceeds the SO2 standard. Moderate levels of SO2 are noted in Jamshedpur and Saraikela Kharsawan in Jharkhand; Chandrapur, Badlapur, Ulhasnagar, and Pune in Maharashtra; Ghaziabad and Khurja in UP, Dehradun in Uttarakhand and Marmagao and Curchorem in Goa.

·    Howrah, Barrackpore, Asansol, Durgapur, Sankrail, Raniganj, Kolkata (West Bengal), Badlapur and Ulhasnagar (Maharashtra) have critical levels of NO2 and PM10. Delhi, Haldia, Bicholim, Jamshedpur, Meerut, Noida, Saraikela Kharsawan, Jalgaon and Raipur have high levels of NO2 as well as critical levels of PM10.

We have formed the Ministry of Environment & Forests board for accessing environment hazards coming from various manufacturing and mining projects. The board spend Rs 10,000 cr in the 5 year term from (2007-12) and under the 12th year plan (2012-2017) the same amount have been increased to Rs 170874 cr, an increase of 70%. Well the recent study report of Yale University and moreover you the readers are the best judge about the development being made in the environment segment. Just calculate the loss of property and health we Indians are facing despite of spending Rs.10000cr of the tax payers money.

Many of my friends would come up to compare India with other countries in terms of pollution and its hazards. I fail to understand that why India cannot be teacher and needs always to become a student to learn the same.