Why National Green Tribunal got its pollution bans wrong

For a minute, let's assume that the National Green Tribunal (NGT) is right in implementing its ban on old vehicles, which is more than ten years for diesel vehicles and 15 for petrol ones. As per my estimates, the car population in Delhi-NCR would be about five million and this is not counting commercial vehicles and vehicles that pass through the area, as it is a major road hub, or are visiting Delhi NCR for short periods. About half of these vehicles would be falling into the ten to 15-year-old bracket. Just imagine the police impounding these vehicles. Where would they be parked? Where would they be disposed off? Are there any junkyards in Delhi NCR which can properly dispose off these cars?

The pollution checks

NGT has already mandated that commercial vehicles entering Delhi NCR be checked for pollution. Can the NGT imagine the nightmare that it would cause in terms of traffic jams as vehicles are stopped on the roads to be checked and the amount of pollution that it would cause from queued up vehicles with engines running? And what happens if the vehicle has to be impounded for exceeding pollution levels. Where would these vehicles be parked and how would their loads be transported to their destinations?

Age a flawed criteria for culling

Old does not necessarily equate to polluting though it may be true in some of the cases. It largely depends on the technology used in the engines, how they have been maintained and how much they have been used. Private vehicles 10/15 years old used for short commutes may be in better condition and thereby less polluting than two-year-old commercial vehicles run 24/7 literally and that too overloaded most of the time.

The diesel myth

Diesel engines are intrinsically more efficient than petrol engines and thereby emit less carbon dioxide per kilometre than petrol engines. The deterioration of diesel engines is less than that of petrol engines, if you run them the same distance on similar loads. There are technologies available that can make diesel engines very clean, the simplest one of them being the diesel particulate filter, being used in the European Union for the past decade. There is also a big difference between modern engines which have been available in India for over 20 years in premium cars and in affordable cars for nearly 15 years, and old school diesel engines - indirect injection without turbo charging. These cars with ECUs can easily be programmed to meet the most stringent Indian emission norms.

The fuel is the problem more than the cars

Even today India relies on some very old refineries, all government owned, for nearly 100 per cent of its fuel requirements. These refineries are not able to produce clean fuel, and especially clean diesel because of which tighter emission norms have not been implemented country wide. If the diesel was cleaner, then we could have mirrored EU emission norms and avoided the mess we are in. So the government and the refineries have to be penalised and not the common car buyer.

Whose fault is it anyway

Is it the fault of the car owner who bought a car in good faith. A car that met all the laws of the land? A car that still meets all the laws of the land? A car that he spent a huge amount of money on to maintain as it got older? At least half of the cars that are to be impounded, I am sure, would meet all laws as far as emissions and fitness requirements go. Besides why should a car owner pay for the breach of trust. Can one retrospectively say that ten-year old cars or 15-year old houses cannot be used anymore? What if NGT tomorrow decides that all houses that are not energy efficient need to be demolished - or if one were to draw a parallel, all house built before a certain date need to be demolished no matter if they are energy efficient or not!

Why is the car industry mum on the issue?

The car industry is not coming forward to defend either the cars or the technologies because it has a vested interest in a large chunk of cars going out of service - a huge surge in demand for replacement because none of the cities in the Delhi-NCR has a public transport system that can cater to all the people who are going to lose their cars.

The road tax conundrum

When a vehicle is first registered the owner pays road tax for the vehicle for a period of 15 years. After this period, the owners have to take their vehicles to the regional transport office for a fitness assessment and if their vehicles are found to be road worthy and meeting all requirements, they have to pay road tax for a further five years. Will the authorities refund the extra road tax that they had collected for the right to run the vehicles on public roads? Will they pay interest on the refunded road tax amount?

The 'vintage' and 'classic' car problem

What about vintage and classic cars? Will the government re-open their export so that they can add to the heritage of other countries and pollute those countries instead? As it is, our automotive heritage depleted fast before the government banned the export of vintage cars but in the future we will be bereft of an automotive heritage - to start off within Delhi-NCR and if the rest of the country also wants clean air and thinks this is the best way to go about it, then all over the country?