re: Proposal to ban 15 year old vehicles. EDIT: Concept paper released on page 18 Anyone really interested in the issue of vehicular pollution control might do well to read a couple summary pages of analysis put forth by journalist Malcolm Gladwell, published in section four of a chapter entitled, "Million Dollar Murray" in his book "What the Dog Saw".
The context in that case was one where (similar to many other parts of the world), around five percent of the vehicles, due to poor maintenance or unauthorized modifications, were creating over half the pollution on the roads.
As much as we may complain about the corruption at our PUC centers here in India, it was the case that even there in Denver, Colorado, "there was little evidence that the city's regime of inspections made any difference in air quality."
There was a much simpler, cheaper solution suggested, with a proposed capability of reducing pollution by an estimated 35-40% over a few years... But sadly, governments everywhere have had the same tendency to embrace "sweeping reforms" that in the end are much less effective than some simpler, if novel, approaches that would actually be nearer a solution.
"The challenge of controlling air pollution isn't so much about the laws as it is about compliance with them. It's a policing problem, rather than a policy problem", he writes. "We put together blue-ribbon panels when we're faced with problems that seem too large for the normal mechanisms of bureaucratic repair...[but such problems are] not of policy but compliance... [there is a need to] adhere to the rules already in place".
Here in Manali, I'd thought long ago of a solution far simpler, cheaper, and more effective than the one being attempted at present:
1. Have a single police officer stand just out of town armed with a handycam, recording images of vehicles beginning their ascent towards Rohtang, his assistant taking note of the number plates of those which are "grossly polluting".
2. Station another officer or two at a checkpoint/barrier a half-kilometer ahead, who simply receive alerts by walkie-talkie and hand out challans to those driving vehicles obviously polluting with large amounts of tailpipe smoke, and/or banning them from proceeding beyond that point. That's it. Hard evidence is there on video for anyone who wants to protest, and the pollution issue will largely fix itself, because owners of highly polluting vehicles will make sure their mechanical issues are solved before trying again. No taxi-wallah wants to lose a day's work / a few thousand rupees and bear the wrath of his passengers for being turned back in the midst of someone's dream holiday.
So forget about the age of the car. Forget about questions of overloading. Forget about driver skill or accelerator pedal modulation. Forget about the corruptions of the PUC centers. If there's clouds of smoke coming out the pipe, the car is dirty, contributing far more than its share of pollutants - and it shouldn't be going to Rohtang. Full stop.
As it stands, that dirty car and many others like it will be taken to the private PUC center south of town and be issued a certificate without even putting the test probe in the pipe. It will then head up to Rohtang (or Solang, or Hamta) emitting the pollutants of five, or ten, or twenty vehicles. A concerned authority, in an elaborate study, will note the general pollution problem up there and effectively ban 19 clean-running vehicles (i.e., a daily cap, or ban of 10-year-olds or of diesels, etc), when they could have got rid of just that one, and left 95% of the vacationers and the local economy unscathed.
Would that have been too easy?
We can make it even easier: Use a remote, infra-red analyzer as the one mentioned in Gladwell's essay, and an automatically-triggered camera (or radio tagging) to record the registration numbers of offending vehicles that pass by. And send the owners challans in the mail. Non-payers will not be able to renew their insurance or (for taxi/commercial) to remit their road / token tax. The technology exists and is very cheap in comparison to stationing dozens of officers at Bahang/Palchan/Gulaba/Mardi (purportedly) for "enforcement".
A similar scheme would probably also work in the major metros better than anything else yet proposed / implemented. As might an incentive-based citizen reporting system as is being done in Delhi re: the burning of rubbish.
Food for thought.
-Eric |