The Leapfrog Factor: Clearing the air in Asian cities
A 2006 Centre for Science and Environment publication

"Anil (Agarwal, the founder-director of CSE) believed that books, if rich in values, would explode one day like a bomb. But we must learn to shorten the fuse -- we must campaign."
                'Preface', The Leapfrog Factor: Clearing the air in Asian cities

In 1996, Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) had unveiled a small -- but potent -- treatise on the problem of vehicular pollution, little understood in those days. Titled Slow Murder: The deadly story of vehicular pollution in India, the book was a landmark of sorts. It was the first expose of its kind of the impact of vehicular pollution and pollution makers. It helped catalyse a strident public campaign on the issue. It made a difference. It was a bomb whose fuse CSE and its team of Clean Air campaigners had shortened.

Ten years after, it is time for another bomb. A book that looks beyond vehicular air pollution to the realities and rationale of modern urban planning and management and offers viable alternatives and solutions. The Leapfrog Factor: Clearing the air in Asian cities is, first and foremost, a record of the learnings that these 10 years have given us. It, therefore, begins at the beginning: with the story of Delhi, "a story of change." Change which was not small or inconsequential, but one which led to enormous upheavals. To control the pollution that was throttling it, Delhi leapfrogged from dirty fuels and emissions technologies to much cleaner options.

But Delhi's success is just a small beginning: there are still miles to go, and the book takes the reader along as it visualises this journey. In fact, the gains of Delhi can be lost if we do not get our act together. Each year, air pollution accounts for 0.8 million deaths and 4.6 million lost life years worldwide; two-third of this occurs in developing Asian countries, and India alone accounts for more than 0.1 million premature deaths. The book uncovers the national crisis: a growing number of cities -- many of them non-metro smaller cities -- are turning into pollution hotspots. In 57 per cent of the cities monitored in India, respirable particulates are at critical levels (more than 1.5 times the standards).

Technology leapfrog to counter this scenario, say the writers, is feasible and affordable. But India's technology roadmap remains on hold, largely because refineries and the automobile industry are refusing to play ball on one hand and the government remains apathetic and non-committal on the other. Take the curious case of two-wheelers, a dilemma that is unique to Asian cities. Despite meeting one of the most stringent standards in the world, a new two-wheeler pollutes more than even a new Euro IV car. This is because industry is avoiding radical transition to advanced technology solutions. Tax policies can cushion the costs of this transition, but the government does not care.

India cannot afford to ignore the threat of dieselisation either. Diesel vehicles will dominate nearly 50 per cent of new car sales in the country by 2010. Toxic diesel particulates are carcinogens and can even kill foetuses. China, Thailand, Hong Kong and Singapore have already begun tightening their emissions regulations for diesel. It will be deplorable if India, one of the largest producers of vehicles and fuels in the region, falls back and put its own population at serious health risk.

The book exposes the government's lack of initiative in another area. Gaseous fuel programmes such as CNG afford an opportunity to leapfrog to cleaner emissions. But despite the success of the CNG programme in Delhi and the interest of other cities (such as Ahmedabad, Kanpur and Lucknow) to adopt it, the government has failed to frame a composite policy to promote gaseous fuels for transport. The basic issues of pricing of natural gas to improve its competitiveness, and expediting implementation of the natural gas grid to link a much larger number of cities remain unresolved.

Energy use in the transport sector poses a complex challenge: transport demand has grown at 1.2 times the GDP growth rate and the transport sector already consumes nearly half of the total petroleum products in the country. The writers make a strong case for fuel economy standards in India. Despite crippling oil prices and increasing dependency on imported oil, the government has not mandated fuel economy standards for vehicles. The government continues to provide tax sops to the car industry to sell more cars. The automobile industry peddles more and more oil guzzlers or diesel cars, and the consumer is made to pay more for fuel. What is required is fuel economy standards for each vehicle category. Fuel-efficient diesel engines, running on dirty diesel and spewing toxic emissions, are certainly not the answer. China, for instance, has taken the lead in enforcing one of the most stringent fuel economy standards but has taken measures simultaneously to plug the diesel loophole - it has set tighter fuel economy standards for SUVs, imposed an additional tax on diesel cars and kept the gap between diesel and petrol prices narrow.

The book's big story, of course, is devoted to the most oppressive problem of current times: the exploding numbers of vehicles that are choking our cities and immobilising them. A large share of daily travel trips in our cities is being made by personal transport that occupies more road space, carries lesser number of people, pollutes more and throws out pedestrians, buses and bicycles. The city of Delhi has more cars than the total number of cars in the states of Gujarat and West Bengal. The sheer numbers of vehicles are threatening to undo the gains that Delhi had garnered from improvement in vehicle technology and fuel quality. A car caught in congestion can emit nearly four times more. The solution that urban governments have for countering the crisis is more roads and flyovers. But they conveniently ignore the fact that for every 10 per cent increase in lane mile capacity, there is a nine per cent increase in traffic.

Public transport is a viable solution, but it is in a state of collapse across India. Only eight of the 35 cities that have more than a million population have dedicated bus services -- and these are under extreme pressure. Approximately 80 million trips daily are needed in our metro cities, but the available rail and bus transport can cater to only 37 million. To make matters worse, city governments penalise public transport and tax bus transport higher than cars. In Delhi, for instance, the total road tax that a bus pays per vehicle kilometre is Rs 5.69, while a car pays only Rs 2.39.

Based on a rigorous review of international experiences with vehicular pollution control and the emerging pollution challenge, The Leapfrog Factor makes a strong plea that India will have to jump ahead to control one of the most serious public health challenges in our cities. Besides being a compendium of findings from a 10-year-long campaign, the book is also a product of our times -- one that attempts to take the bull by the horn. Its prescription for taming the crisis -- "Reinvent mobility. Reverse automobile dependence" -- has a no-nonsense quality to it which city governments might chose to ignore. But they will do so at their own peril.