The air is not that fresh in the top ‘clean’ cities, data shows | India News – Times of India

NEW DELHI: Indore may be India’s cleanest city and has achieved the highest rank seven times in a row, but when it comes to air quality, it reported a 21% increase in the level of pollutant PM10 in 2023-24 compared with 2017-18. The city joined 30 other cities, including Navi Mumbai, Vizag, Cuttack, Guwahati, Gwalior, Patna, Raipur, Chandigarh and Bhopal, which reported an increase in annual average particulate matter (PM10), a critical air pollutant, during the period .
All these 31 cities are in the list of 130 below National Clean Air Program (NCAP), launched by the Ministry of Environment in January 2019 with the aim of improving air quality by reducing PM10 by 40% by 2025-26 from 2017-18 levels or achieving national standards during that period .
Incidentally, Navi Mumbai ranked third and Vizag fourth in the list of cleanest cities after Indore and Surat in 2023. This ranking is based on the performance of the cities in terms of their performance in sanitation and municipal waste management. On the air quality front, Vizag reported a 58% increase (second worst in the list of 31) in PM10 levels in FY 2023-24 compared to FY 2017-18, while Navi Mumbai recorded an increase of 11% reported during the period.
Surat, on the other hand, reported a 21% reduction in air pollutant levels in 2023-24 compared to 2017-18, but the city’s PM10 emissions remain much higher than the acceptable limit of 60 g/m3. While the two types of cleanliness – sanitation/waste and air – cannot be compared due to the very different nature of the problem, it shows that efforts on one front may not make cities livable unless air quality is also addressed. ensured by tackling climate change. several other factors in adjacent areas or in a region.
On the positive side, the comparative data on pollutant levels shared by the Ministry of Environment in Parliament shows that 97 out of 130 cities have shown an improvement in air quality in terms of annual average PM10 concentrations in the FY 2023-24 compared to FY 2017-18. .
Although 55 cities achieved reductions of 20% or more over the period, most still reported pollutant levels higher than acceptable standards. Varanasi was found to have the best performance by reducing PM10 levels by 68%, the highest percentage reduction in the list of 97, but the city still has higher levels of pollutants than the National Air Quality Standards (NAAQS).
A total of 18 of the 130 cities will meet national air quality standards for PM10 in the period 2023-2024. Among major cities, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Delhi, Nagpur, Chennai and Surat, among others, have already seen improvements, but their pollution levels are still not high enough to meet the annual average tolerable limit.