44
Asia The Economist February 18th 2023
South Asia’s filthy air that fringe Nepal’s capital are often hidden
by yellow-brown haze.
Choked and gasping South Asia’s filthy air takes a terrible
toll on the health and economic prospects
of millions. High levels of fine particulate
matter, known as PM2.5, burrow deep into
lungs and enter the bloodstream, increas-
ing the risk of heart and lung disease as
DE LHI, D HAK A , ISLAMABAD AND MUMBAI
well as strokes. Air pollution is estimated
Fixing pollution will require countries that hate each other to co-operate
to kill over 2m people in Bangladesh, India,
I ndians are accustomed to seeing their
streets getting a lick of paint or the odd
pothole being filled before a senior politi-
world’s filthiest air. Yet as infrastructure-
building and industrialisation accelerate
across the region, due in part to a post-pan-
Nepal and Pakistan each year. Globally, it
reduces average life expectancy by 2.9
years. The corresponding figure for India is
cian or foreign dignitary comes to town. demic growth spurt, the smog is spreading. five years. On the Indo-Gangetic Plain, ac-
But to prepare for a visit from Narendra According to a new analysis by the World cording to a recent study, the average Indi-
Modi, the prime minister, on February 10th Bank, nine of the world’s ten cities worst an life is up to seven years shorter due to
officials in Mumbai deployed a new tactic. afflicted by air pollution are in South Asia. air pollution than it would be otherwise.
They sprinkled its roads with water. And on February 12th, at the height of the A study recently published in the Lan-
They hoped to damp down the street winter smog season, only two of the ten cet, a medical journal, estimated that in
and construction dust that contributes to most polluted places in India were in and 2019 India’s economy lost $37bn, or 1.4% of
the city’s pervasive smog. For much of this around Delhi. The rest, including Mumbai, GDP, to pollution-related death and illness.
winter, Mumbai’s skyscraper-filled skyline were in western India. Another study by the Clean Air Fund, an
has been almost invisible behind a grey Earlier in the season the Pakistani cities ngo, and the Confederation of Indian In-
haze of particulate matter. On some days of Karachi, also on the Arabian Sea, and Pe- dustry, a trade body, calculated that India
the Arabian Sea city’s air has been worse shawar, near the border with Afghanistan, lost 1.3bn working days that year due to em-
than that in Delhi, India’s more famously both briefly topped a global index of cities ployees staying at home because they or
polluted capital. Between November and with the worst air quality. In Kathmandu, their family members had pollution-
the end of January, Mumbai, the country’s on the northern edge of the Indo-Gangetic linked illness. Pakistan’s province of Pun-
commercial capital, recorded 36 days with Plain, the peaks of the snowy Himalayas jab, which accounts for 60% of the coun-
“poor” air quality, a level at which even try’s output, has seen serious smog-related
otherwise healthy people can have diffi- disruptions this winter; its school holidays
culty breathing. This represents a grim ex- → Also in this section were extended, flights diverted or delayed
tension of what was already one of the and motorways closed overnight.
46 The Taliban’s new canal
world’s worst environmental problems. Predictably, the poor see the worst of
Delhi and nearby cities on the populous 46 Aboriginal booze bans this. The Indo-Gangetic states of Uttar Pra-
Indo-Gangetic Plain, which extends from desh and Bihar are among the poorest parts
47 Banyan: Modi against the media
Pakistan to Bangladesh, have long had the of South Asia—over 115m of their inhabit-
The Economist February 18th 2023 Asia 45
ants live on less than $2 a day—and also the km area, encompassing the capital and mulation, while each working towards a
most polluted. Poor people are likelier to parts of Haryana, Rajasthan and Uttar Pra- locally determined target. This would al-
use dirty fuels, contributing to high levels desh. It is home to 46m people. Its constit- low them to prioritise relatively easy or
of indoor pollution. Meanwhile, “the rich uent authorities include Delhi and four low-cost forms of pollution control—such
are trying to create a bubble for themselves states, several central-government minis- as regulating brick kilns—over more diffi-
with air purifiers,” says Karthik Ganesan of tries, and various universities and ngos. cult or expensive sorts, such as closing
the Council on Energy Environment and “The idea is not just to bulldoze, but to fol- coal-fired power stations. The Bank reck-
Water, a think-tank in Delhi. low a practice by which everybody is taken ons that in this scenario South Asian life
Air pollution, which nonetheless af- into confidence,” says M.M. Kutty, the expectancies would rise, infant mortality
fects rich and poor, however unevenly, is a commission’s chairman. would drop and health-care expenditure
political concern across the region. Yet its Though many have criticised the would fall. For a cost of $5.7bn, it estimates
governments’ mitigation efforts have CAQM’s slow pace of progress, the early re- the approach could bring economic bene-
mostly been ineffective. India launched its sults are promising. According to official fits worth $52.5bn by 2030.
National Clean Air Programme in 2019 with figures, Delhi’s average daily concentra- The idea of Bangladesh, India and Paki-
the aim of improving air quality in 102 cit- tion of PM2.5 declined in 2022, the body’s stan—let alone Afghanistan and Iran—
ies (later increased to 131). Four years on, first full year of operation, to 98 micro- working together to such an extent is, the
only 38 are on track to hit their targets. Pol- grams per cubic metre from 105 the previ- Bank’s authors concede, “far from straight-
lution in many of the rest, including Ban- ous year. The number of hours of “severe” forward”. It might almost seem absurd.
galore, Chennai, Mumbai and Nagpur, has PM2.5 fell from 628 to 204. Yet more signif- South Asia is one of the most unneigh-
increased. Pakistan, beset by perma-crises, icant progress, the Bank suggests, will re- bourly, least-integrated regions in the
is vacillating over whether to launch its quire a major expansion of this approach. world. It is haunted by a history of war and
own national clean-air programme. Ban- mutual suspicion. Its cross-border link-
gladesh drafted a clean-air act in 2019 but Blue sky thinking ages are meagre. Trade within the region is
has not passed it. Across South Asia, there It has identified six regional airsheds. They just 5% of its members’ total trade; the cor-
has been “very little improvement despite are vast areas, covering multiple urban, responding figure for East Asia is 50%, ac-
the policies in place to improve” air quali- provincial and national jurisdictions. Sig- cording to the Brookings Institution, a
ty, says Hans Timmer of the World Bank. nificantly, four of the six span national think-tank in Washington, Dc.
There are many explanations for this borders. One stretches from eastern Iran Yet if anything could begin to knit the
failure, including the difficulty of regulat- into western Afghanistan and southern region’s divisions, perhaps the shared goal
ing industry in a region where government Pakistan; another covers much of northern of helping its people breathe easier might.
is weak and corruption rife. Yet the biggest India and western Bangladesh. According Air pollution is politically salient across
reason, the Bank suggests, is that policy- to the Bank’s modelling, the more co-ordi- South Asia and the very opposite of zero
makers are mostly trying to abate pollution nated the pollution controls adopted in sum. The subcontinent’s winds blow back
within the cities concerned, and much of it these expanses, the more cost-effective and forth; none of South Asia’s polluting
originates elsewhere. and beneficial they would be. countries and cities is permanently up-
Take the smoke that arises in India’s The ideal scenario, it suggests, would be wind. To seriously reduce the blight from
state of Punjab every autumn when its mil- for authorities within a given airshed to which all of them are suffering, they will,
lion-odd farmers set fire to their stubble co-operate on data-sharing and policy for- in the end, have to co-operate.
fields. It drifts eastwards, enveloping Delhi
and other cities of the northern plain. Or
the fug of pollution arising from the brick
kilns that ring Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital. Kabul
Islamabad
“In most cases less than 50% of the pollu- AFGHANISTAN Peshawar
tion is coming from the cities themselves,” CHINA
Punjab
says Mr Timmer. In three South Asian cap- Lahore
itals—Colombo, Dhaka and Kathmandu— Punjab
less than a third of air pollution comes Haryana Delhi
PA K I S TA N NEPAL Kathmandu
from within the city. Around 30% of Indian
Punjab’s pollution originates in Pakistan, Uttar BHUTAN
Rajasthan Pradesh
while 30% of pollution in Bangladesh’s Bihar
Karachi
major cities has blown in from India. BANGLADESH
A better approach is to design and de-
ploy controls across the far-flung zones, Dhaka
Arabian
known as airsheds, in which air pollution Sea MYANMAR
Nagpur
circulates. It has been done successfully in Mumbai
Europe and China, whose capital was once I ND I A Bay of Naypyidaw
as synonymous with smog as Delhi is to- Bengal
day. Beijing’s air is now cleaner chiefly
thanks to the creation in 2013 of a powerful
airshed-wide authority responsible for the
capital, the city of Tianjin and 26 adjacent PM2.5 micrograms per m3 Bangalore Chennai
prefectures. In 2017 PM2.5 levels in Beijing 2019 average
were half those of the previous year. 0 25 50 75 100+
India is trying to follow this example in
and around Delhi. In 2021 it launched a pol- SRI LANKA
Airsheds
lution-control agency, called the Commis-
Sources: Socioeconomic Data and
sion for Air Quality Management (CAQM), Applications Centre; World Bank
Colombo
with responsibility for a 55,000-square-
