It’s not quite Dickens but Delhi now has its own mournful dirge on the city’s dirty air. “No one noticed / When the sparrows left / It was just another / smoggy winter morning,” wrote an unknown poet in the Indian capital. “Delhi bought air purifiers / masks, cough syrup / and tweeted in anger.”
The poem, which has been widely shared among Indians, has struck a chord with the stark way it contrasts middle-class consumerism with faux concern for the environment. Air conditioners, gas-guzzling SUVs and firecrackers for the Hindu festival of Diwali, the poem points out, remain on Delhi's shopping list, even as the city struggles to breathe.
Delhi's situation is indisputably parlous and seemingly intractable. While it doesn't boast the dubious distinction of having the dirtiest air in the world – that title belongs to Kanpur, in Uttar Pradesh – with a population of more than 18 million, Delhi is certainly the largest city with such dangerously polluted air.
It has high levels of particulate matter (PM), tiny particles that can penetrate the lungs, and even the bloodstream, and are extremely harmful to human health. Delhi has a PM of 2.5, meaning its particles are up to 100 times smaller than the width of a human hair.
World Health Organisation guidelines say such particles should not top 25 microgrammes per cubic metre on average. In some areas of Delhi, the figure often hits 700. By comparison, smoke from the Californian wildfire pushed San Francisco's PM2.5 concentration up to 221.1 micrograms per cubic metre, the equivalent of smoking about 10 cigarettes per day. On November 8, the day after Diwali, several Air Quality Index monitors maxed out at 999, double the upper limit of what is considered hazardous and equivalent to smoking more than 40 cigarettes a day.
But that reading is not unknown in Delhi. Exactly a year ago, when I was navigating the gray-brown haze that lay thickly over the city, the AQI reading consistently hit 999. Unsurprisingly, this year's WHO ranking of air quality in 4,500 cities listed Delhi as the sixth most polluted.
The consequences are obvious. Not just in the sense of the daily "death of the sun", as the author Charles Dickens described the smog in Victorian London. Every winter, Delhi residents report burning eyes, persistent coughs, multiple respiratory ailments and a range of other health issues. These are surely the result of breathing toxic air, or the "new tobacco", as WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus calls it. And Delhi-dwellers are agonising about the long-term health prospects. Air pollution contributes significantly to non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular and respiratory conditions and lung cancer, which are among the top 10 causes of deaths globally.
Those who can afford to try to stop themselves from inhaling too deeply when out in the open and limit their time outdoors. They use masks and respiratory filters when they are on the move and air purifiers at home. Recently, there have been reports of a number of well-heeled citizens – dubbed "pollution refugees" by the Washington Post – fleeing the capital for more salubrious places to live and raise a family. Those who cannot afford to leave stick it out. As one rickshaw-puller recently told the BBC: "I guess hunger is a bigger problem than pollution for us."
But given the crisis – and it is a crisis – why has it come about and why now? It seems all too easy to blame Diwali firecrackers, car exhausts, construction activity, coal-fired power plants and charcoal braziers. Diwali has long been celebrated, cars have plied Delhi’s roads for at least a century, trucks have long spewed noxious fumes, factories emitted smoke, buildings been developed and roadside chaiwallahs stewed their brews on coal stoves. So why is Delhi choking now?
Obviously, a key reason is the exponential rise in the number of cars and people, and a greater consumption of everything, as well as increased waste disposal. In west Delhi, the burning of plastic and electronic waste is a dirty and frequent business. But according to Siddharth Singh, energy expert and author of the newly published The Great Smog of India, the burning of crop residue from the farming states of Punjab and Haryana, near Delhi is one of the main triggers.
He argues that India’s “green revolution”, starting in the 1960s, unwittingly caused Delhi’s agony. It worked to support food security, crop prices and combine harvesters, which cut and thresh and speed up industrial farming. But the harvesters leave stubble that must either be removed by expensive machines – unaffordable to most Indian farmers – or simply be burned. The farmers do the latter and 23 million tonnes are burned in northern India every winter.
The smoke from the stubble blows into neighbouring Delhi and the air becomes a lethal cocktail of particulate matter, carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide.
This is, of course, only an opinion – albeit an informed one – but it might be a good place to start to address the crisis of Delhi’s unbreathable air. Poetry, masks and filters offer only temporary relief.
The specs
Engine: 2.0-litre 4cyl turbo
Power: 261hp at 5,500rpm
Torque: 405Nm at 1,750-3,500rpm
Transmission: 9-speed auto
Fuel consumption: 6.9L/100km
On sale: Now
Price: From Dh117,059
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The National's picks
4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
7pm: Flood Zone
7.40pm: Straight No Chaser
8.15pm: Romantic Warrior
8.50pm: Calandogan
9.30pm: Forever Young
AGUERO'S PREMIER LEAGUE RECORD
Apps: 186
Goals: 127
Assists: 31
Wins: 117
Losses: 33
The specs
Engine: 2.0-litre 4-cyl turbo
Power: 201hp at 5,200rpm
Torque: 320Nm at 1,750-4,000rpm
Transmission: 6-speed auto
Fuel consumption: 8.7L/100km
Price: Dh133,900
On sale: now
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
ESSENTIALS
The flights
Emirates flies from Dubai to Phnom Penh via Yangon from Dh2,700 return including taxes. Cambodia Bayon Airlines and Cambodia Angkor Air offer return flights from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap from Dh250 return including taxes. The flight takes about 45 minutes.
The hotels
Rooms at the Raffles Le Royal in Phnom Penh cost from $225 (Dh826) per night including taxes. Rooms at the Grand Hotel d'Angkor cost from $261 (Dh960) per night including taxes.
The tours
A cyclo architecture tour of Phnom Penh costs from $20 (Dh75) per person for about three hours, with Khmer Architecture Tours. Tailor-made tours of all of Cambodia, or sites like Angkor alone, can be arranged by About Asia Travel. Emirates Holidays also offers packages.
More from Rashmee Roshan Lall
Countries offering golden visas
UK
Innovator Founder Visa is aimed at those who can demonstrate relevant experience in business and sufficient investment funds to set up and scale up a new business in the UK. It offers permanent residence after three years.
Germany
Investing or establishing a business in Germany offers you a residence permit, which eventually leads to citizenship. The investment must meet an economic need and you have to have lived in Germany for five years to become a citizen.
Italy
The scheme is designed for foreign investors committed to making a significant contribution to the economy. Requires a minimum investment of €250,000 which can rise to €2 million.
Switzerland
Residence Programme offers residence to applicants and their families through economic contributions. The applicant must agree to pay an annual lump sum in tax.
Canada
Start-Up Visa Programme allows foreign entrepreneurs the opportunity to create a business in Canada and apply for permanent residence.
Disposing of non-recycleable masks
Use your ‘black bag’ bin at home
Do not put them in a recycling bin
Take them home with you if there is no litter bin
- No need to bag the mask
Sukuk explained
Sukuk are Sharia-compliant financial certificates issued by governments, corporates and other entities. While as an asset class they resemble conventional bonds, there are some significant differences. As interest is prohibited under Sharia, sukuk must contain an underlying transaction, for example a leaseback agreement, and the income that is paid to investors is generated by the underlying asset. Investors must also be prepared to share in both the profits and losses of an enterprise. Nevertheless, sukuk are similar to conventional bonds in that they provide regular payments, and are considered less risky than equities. Most investors would not buy sukuk directly due to high minimum subscriptions, but invest via funds.
Company%20Profile
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
If you go
The Flights
Emirates and Etihad fly direct to Johannesburg from Dubai and Abu Dhabi respectively. Economy return tickets cost from Dh2,650, including taxes.
The trip
Worldwide Motorhoming Holidays (worldwidemotorhomingholidays.co.uk) operates fly-drive motorhome holidays in eight destinations, including South Africa. Its 14-day Kruger and the Battlefields itinerary starts from Dh17,500, including campgrounds, excursions, unit hire and flights. Bobo Campers has a range of RVs for hire, including the 4-berth Discoverer 4 from Dh600 per day.
Ms Yang's top tips for parents new to the UAE
- Join parent networks
- Look beyond school fees
- Keep an open mind
WHAT IS GRAPHENE?
It was discovered in 2004, when Russian-born Manchester scientists Andrei Geim and Kostya Novoselov were experimenting with sticky tape and graphite, the material used as lead in pencils.
Placing the tape on the graphite and peeling it, they managed to rip off thin flakes of carbon. In the beginning they got flakes consisting of many layers of graphene. But when they repeated the process many times, the flakes got thinner.
By separating the graphite fragments repeatedly, they managed to create flakes that were just one atom thick. Their experiment led to graphene being isolated for the very first time.
In 2010, Geim and Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics.
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Specs
Engine: Dual-motor all-wheel-drive electric
Range: Up to 610km
Power: 905hp
Torque: 985Nm
Price: From Dh439,000
Available: Now
Scorecard
Scotland 220
K Coetzer 95, J Siddique 3-49, R Mustafa 3-35
UAE 224-3 in 43,5 overs
C Suri 67, B Hameed 63 not out
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Tonight's Chat on The National
Tonight's Chat is a series of online conversations on The National. The series features a diverse range of celebrities, politicians and business leaders from around the Arab world.
Tonight’s Chat host Ricardo Karam is a renowned author and broadcaster who has previously interviewed Bill Gates, Carlos Ghosn, Andre Agassi and the late Zaha Hadid, among others.
Intellectually curious and thought-provoking, Tonight’s Chat moves the conversation forward.
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