Time To Prioritise Health On A War Footing

Context: With the third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic been rendered inevitable by the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Prime Minister, it is time to prioritise mitigation of health adversaries due to rising pollution.

Issue of Asian Brown Cloud (ABC) on Indian air: The ABC was initially noticed in 1999, leading to scientific studies and monitoring stations being set up in Nepal.

• ABC is not just about pollution: It has a severe impact on the melting of glaciers, a drop in sunlight penetration, a weakened monsoon, and poor agricultural yields due to all of these.
• Entirely consisting of man-made materials: Like sulphate aerosols (produced by burning fossil fuels), nitrate aerosols (from vehicular emissions), and black carbon (from the incomplete combustion of diesel fuel, burning biomass, and cooking with solid fuels).

Way Forward:

• Manage stubble burning: This is the most immediate cause of pollution across Haryana, Rajasthan and Delhi, and as research shows, contributes to lowering crop yields and further reducing water availability.
  • The government has to get ready to use either commercial crop-spraying aircraft or the Air Force to douse fires as soon as they appear.
• Addressing the pollution due to surface dust: Apart from tons of construction waste distributed all over Gurugram, dust rises from acres of government land, bare as a bone, where even the mud has been dug out for use elsewhere.
  • The simple solution is grass. Once the monsoons come, stubborn grass will begin to grow where the top soil is not lost.
  • Meanwhile, municipal corporations that pride themselves on sending out teams to cut jungli areas have to stop.
  • District collectors need to pass down efficient pruning techniques to resident welfare organisations and local governments.
• Effectively regulate the waste recycling: The government needs to bring waste recycler and collection agencies under its purview as a recognised sector with stringent guidelines.
  • Each of the fly-by-night firms needs to pay a cess to clean up.
• Treating health as a security issue: Health has become a top security issue, and thus all the coordination should be done under the National Security Council Secretariat.