Thursday 30 April 2020

More Lockdowns are not Far: Air Pollution in India

Over the past 10 years, India has gained worldwide notoriety for having the maximum number of cities with the world's worst air quality. The entire population that reveres every aspect of nature has contributed to its deterioration through negligence, ignorance, and malfeasance. Our media outlets only care about this news when some International Organization comes up with a new ranking, marking us as the most polluted. In response, our general conscience is tickled for a fleeting moment. With this article, I aim to tackle the ignorance of our general populace on this topic.

At first, let's draw our attention to the magnitude of this problem. According to a 2019 study [1], the death of 12 lakh Indians per year has been attributed to air pollution. This dwarfs even some of the grim predictions given for Coronavirus in India for which we have had a 40-day countrywide lockdown. The pollution-related deaths include deaths due to pneumonia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and lung cancer [2], all conditions that are incepted or exacerbated because of polluted air. Someone else's death for Indians is merely a number in our daily newspaper. Hence, it may be more useful to talk about the effect on the health of each individual. The hazardous air quality of India is associated with a decrease in 1.5 years of your life [1]. Now, let's consider the economic cost of ignoring this problem, which is crippling our country's growth. India is set to lose almost ~5.4% of GDP or about 10 lakh crore due to the adverse effect of pollution on our health [3]. This is greater than 4 times our allocation to the entire health sector (stands at ~1.3% of GDP). The cost comes from the loss of productive life of individuals, the cost of an overburdening health system, and the loss of about 50 crore working days among India's working population due to pollution-related illnesses [4].

The picture is grim, especially for India. In my opinion, the first step is a greater public awareness and this article serves to alleviate that problem. Indians must know more about the sources of air pollution, government policies for clean air, and about individual actions that must be taken to rein in this menace.

KNOWING THE ENEMY

We have heard about pollution from industries, automobiles, and construction. Often, the context is government regulations on curbing it. Yet we little about how exactly are they polluting the air. There are many pollutants, but for India's common man, we will focus on Ozone, and Particulate Matter (PM).

Ground-level ozone is a pollutant that is not directly emitted by pollution sources. It is released in the atmosphere when pollutants (SO2, NOx, and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs)) from industries and automobiles react in the presence of sunlight. Along with Ozone, these reactions release fine particles that remain suspended in the air, the combined effect of which, in low or no-wind condition results in the infamous smog [5] of Northern India. Funnily enough, Ozone, a toxic gas, has the same building blocks in a different orientation as the essential, Oxygen; talk about the fine balance of nature.
Why is Ozone toxic? Ozone is a powerful oxidizer [6], which means it can cause the same type of process that produces rust in iron, but much more nefariously. It is extremely harmful to humans causing irritability on the skin and in the air passage. Moreover, it is also known to adversely affect crops, and building structures.

Particulate Matter or PM is often the headlining pollutant of India. By definition, it refers to a range of tiny particles that may or may not be visible to the naked eye in the air. It could be anything from dust particles to unburnt carbon particles and can remain suspended in the air for long durations.
Why should PM concern us? These foreign particles enter our bloodstream through the respiratory tract resulting in a range of health problems.


Roadside construction material [7], indiscriminate outdoor fires [8], and industrial or vehicular emissions are all responsible for the increase in the levels of PM in your surroundings. In India, its effect is more vicious due to:
  1. extensive use of low-quality cooking fuels, like, firewood, coal, and cow dung cakes [2,9]
  2. ill-conceived adulteration of cleaner fuels for transportation [10]
  3. poor oversight of industrial emissions [11]
  4. systematic failure of government enforcement and individual responsibility for pollution control of independent & public vehicles [12]
Especially the first point is specific to South Asian and African economies. The adverse effect of PM filled smoke emitted from non-LPG cooking sources is compounded by the lack of proper ventilation in rural households [13] and the claustrophobic design of the urban slums [14]. The second point above reinforces our image as an inherently corrupt system, where rules are often circumvented and the latter two points may be attributed to poor governance. Often the discussion around PM is done using some numbers like, PM2.5 and PM10, which simply refers to particles with diameters, D < 2.5µm, and diameters between 2.5µm < D < 10µm, respectively. The count of both metrics is much higher for Indian cities than most European or American cities.

VISUALIZING POLLUTION

Now that we know a bit about what concerns us, let's look at the level of these dangers in which we live. The following videos show how PM2.5, PM10, and Ozone level variations were captured by the air quality monitoring stations set up by Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), India. The color-coding used in the map refers to the table below and is consistent with the standards set up by CPCB (Source). Green is GOOD, red is BADThe grayed out area represents the regions where no data was available. 

Github repository for the related source code is shared hereDisclaimer: As the project evolved, some file names may have been changed. Their references in other files will have to be updated in case you run into an error.

.  
Daily PM2.5 Variation in 2019

Daily PM10 Variation in 2019

Daily Ozone Variation in 2019


Pollution LevelsPM 2.5 (in µg/m3)PM 10 (in µg/m3)Ozone (in µg/m3)
Level 1 (Dark Green)0 - 300 - 500 - 50
Level 2 (Light Green)31 - 6051 - 10051 - 100
Level 3 (Yellow)61 - 90101 - 250101 - 168
Level 4 (Orange)91 - 120251 - 350169 - 208
Level 5 (Red)121 - 250351 - 430209 - 748
Level 6 (Maroon)250+430+748+

A Short Critique

This article is not geared towards describing the extent of pollution. However,  I would be remiss if I do not mention the salient features of these images. The above videos clearly show the extremely hazardous levels of PM2.5 and PM10 that exist over a lot of north and central India especially during the Winter. The respite during summer is not due to human intervention but due to the natural summer monsoons that India receives. We haven't done our bit to curb pollution. For now, Ozone levels are under control but due to its hazardous nature, careful monitoring of its levels is necessary.

The most obvious takeaway from these videos is the large swaths of south, northeast, and parts of northern & central India that are grayed out. No air quality monitoring stations exist in these locations, which highlights the short-sightedness of our Clean Air Program, and only focusing on UP, Rajasthan. Only 128 cities are monitored in the country (of nearly 4000 cities). Districts that lie within 200km of these cities have been prescribed the same pollution levels and shown in the videos above. Even then a significant area is grayed out. It shows the lack of data acquisition even in the face of a crisis. This is clearly not a rigorous exercise, hence, I have taken the liberty of a 200km radius. It is simply an individual's effort to understand our country's air!

FIGHTING THE ENEMY

The Government has prioritized air pollution as an agenda with the National Clean Air Program, Prime Minister Ujwala Yojana (PMUY), and expediting the rollout of BS-VI vehicular emission norms. Even an entire book may not be sufficient to discuss and debate about Government undertakings, flaws in their implementation, and its lackluster final product. But, this does not vindicate us of responsibility.

An individual must:

1. Restrain from burning garbage or dried leaves. Instead, collect it and throw it along with household garbage in designated locations identified during Swacch Bharat Abhiyaan. Your locality is your house as well.

2. Reduce the use of private vehicles, and instead walk, carpool, taxi, or use public transport.

3. Engage with your neighbors during any construction. Complain if anyone uses roadside for construction debris/material and don't take responsibility for it. [15]

4. Actively engage with initiatives like PMUY by communicating the benefits to poorer households and assisting them in taking its full benefit [16]

5. Spread awareness. Make air pollution an important agenda on which you cast your vote in elections. Remember, that this is an improvement in daily life we will be fighting for.

Let's not wait for a savior!

SIDE NOTE ABOUT THE VISUALIZATIONS

Creating the above visualizations was a separate personal project that I had to undertake to give substance to this post. Another contributor to this project was my fiancee, Nidhi Tyagi, who is currently a resident of Delhi, notoriously known for its toxic air quality.

This visualization required developing several Python scripts (that was a new language for me), extracting data from the CPCB website for individual stations (Source), entity-matching for city names used to identify districts and the stations, and extensive exploitation of Microsoft Excel's capability to manipulate a large data-set. Details about this project are now shared in a Github repository for anyone interested (Source Code). Disclaimer: As the project evolved, some file names may have been changed. Their references in other files will have to be updated in case you run into an error.

Not many people would invest the time, and not many events like the lockdown will happen often to give the time-bandwidth to even concerned individuals. My sincere request to the CPCB and other Government bodies is that this data must be more organized and easily accessible.

Wednesday 15 April 2020

A Coming Together!


These are dark times of the Coronavirus. The lockdown has already been in place for about 20 days now, return to normalcy is not close, and the grim news just keeps on coming. It is no help to keep worrying about the future so I thought that I will take a trip down the memory lane, about a great American vacation.

For a vacation, it's not the location but the people that matter and I had that covered. A reunion of college friends, sparked by a wedding, made grand by the presence of our girlfriends/partners/fiancees and truly special in nature with everyone flying from all across the world on their student stipends just to rekindle the flame of the good ole' days. This was a homecoming that beckoned an adventure. To rise to such an occasion, we planned an 8-day vacation through the American West and Southwest, beginning from our friends' LA wedding, looping through the motley landscapes of three national parks, seasoned with Vegas, and dipped completely in the American style road-trip.

Wedding Group Pic
Unlike every year when we got barely managed to scrape together a couple of days during Christmas break, this time we had 8 days of bliss, largely unconcerned with the post-vacation mayhem of work. Right at the wedding, everything was new yet familiar. We partied all night just like we were back in the hostel but the location was a well-endowed hotel suite, the jokes remained crass but this time we also had our female companions, the booze kept flowing but this time everyone wanted to pay, the food was sumptuous but it wasn't Dominos BOGO offer. As everyone caught up with each other and their jet lags set in, time just fast-forwarded us through the wedding. It was a beautiful affair and with a desi-style flash mob, we bid adieu to the bachelorhood of one from our gang.

The next day we were to set out on our trip. The take-it-as-you-go gang surprisingly started organizing themselves on time! As I drove our 15-seater monster van into the hotel driveway, everyone was packed and ready to go. With a push and a shove, it seemed like a cakewalk to pack the 12 of us + our luggage into the beast.  Wheels rolling on the afternoon of Dec 29, we were on our way to the Death Valley National Park. Sun gave way to absolute darkness as we navigated the traffic of LA, bid adieu to the tree-lined roads of the city, and transitioned from the massive interstate to the empty state highways. En route to our hotel for that night, not many cars crossed our path as we tread along at 60mph in the eerily dark California. Just before we reached our old western-style motel, our gurgling stomachs took us to a local pizzeria. Full of fresh pizza, and exhausted with the last two nights of wedding parties, everyone just took to their beds quickly.  
   
The next day we found out that some of us sneaked out at night to enjoy a couple of beers and have a gala time with the locals. As the stories and games began, we reached the Death Valley National Park within an hour. Even after 5.5 years in the US, new landscapes continue to amaze me. A barren, rocky, hilly park full of white sand spanned as far as I could see. Cameras were out and spirits were up (a good nights' sleep helped). We hiked across large swaths of dunes near the Visitor Center, and around the Uhbebe Crater. It was just a day that we spent in the park but our sand-filled shoes and overstocked photos looked like they had been there for much longer. I don't remember what we did for lunch that day but everyone sank into their gluttony at Denny's diner that night.

As we woke up to another splendid day, the new years' eve awaited us at Hoover Dam and Vegas. The most expensive part of our trip didn't pan out as we planned. Everyone was disorganized, no one wanted to drink or gamble, all the parties were full, the strip got boring too soon that night, and to top it all a mishap caused a muscle tear for Ashu, who was actually visiting Vegas for the first time (quite a few of us had been to Vegas before, I included). After everyone realized that no one is awestruck by the extravagance of Vegas, we finally celebrated New Years' at our Orleans Hotel terrace with the fireworks. It was painful to see everyone trying so hard to make the most out of Vegas. Thankfully, the following days were so much better.

A sumptuous breakfast the next day set us back on track. Well, not quite! We did run a bit late. Our plan was to reach the Hualapai Reservation and visit the Grand Canyon West Rim. A couple of stops and 100s of photos later, we finally reached the reservation just in the nick of time to enjoy a beautiful sunset from Guano Point. In my opinion, visiting the reservation was quite expensive.
That day our nigh pit stop was in Kingman, AZ. For some reason, close to the city there is a Punjabi Dhaba in the middle of the American countryside catering to the truckers. As soon as I found out about this, I turned the wheels for an amazing desi-dinner. A great end to a beautiful day.

A long drive awaited us the next day as we had paid tickets for a tour of Antelope Canyon, all the way around the Grand Canyon. The van was abuzz as everyone engaged in different games, made sandwiches in the moving van and we drove this distance without many stops. On our way, we came across roadside Native-Indian shops, dilapidated vehicles, and mobile caravans. This was a very different countryside to the one that I am used to seeing in Wisconsin. Close to the canyon, we made a stop at the Horse-Shoe Bend. It has become an organized tourist spot, unlike my last visit of 2015. After another ton of pictures at the Horseshoe bend, we finally reached the Antelope Canyon and were greeted by our local guide. The tour was like muscle-memory for her.
She bossed her way around, telling us exact locations where to take pictures, an uninterrupted description of the canyon, and identifying specific features that were beyond beautiful. With the beautiful canyon captured in our phase, we were back on the road. After another short drive across the state line into Utah, a long wait for our dinner, and reaching our frigid hotel location in Tropic, UT, everyone just sprawled across a room. All of us played an online mobile game 'Psych' and finally snuggled into our beds after deciding to see the sunrise in Bryce Canyon, our final major destination.

As expected only a few of us got up early enough and I am glad I did. The Hoodoos of Bryce Canyon greeted us with a beautiful snow-capped landscape in the briskly cold weather. We were a bit late but still, the sun looked like it was splitting the landscape in the distance as the rays reached us. After soaking our eyes aplenty of the sunrise, we headed back to pick up the rest of our entourage and some grub for our tummies. We didn't loiter around too long and headed back to the park. At the visitor center, we found out that our attire was not sufficient to go on a Ranger hike. Nonetheless, we decided to do a different hike deep into the canyon, which was open to us. We ventured into the Navajo Loop and Peekaboo Loop, marveling at multitudes of unique rock formations. It's fascinating to think that these beautiful canyons have been carved out due to the ice, water, and airflow patterns specific to only this particular part of the world. We only stayed close to the Bryce Amphitheater in the park. Had it been a longer trip planned in better weather, there are plenty more hikes and the other end of the park left to explore.

Procuring dinner was a big hassle that day. In the off-season, only the famous Ruby's Inn was open. Everyone was exhausted with the hike so I and Ameek went there to get a supper packed for everyone. Our order was too overzealous and we had plenty left after everyone was done eating back at the hotel. The freezing night turned darker as we scrolled through all our pictures, played more games and recalled the beautiful memories we have made so far. The next day was the beginning of our return journey. We stuffed all our bags one more time in all the cramped spaces of the van, the way we had been doing at every stop-over.


No more plans, just the busy highways of Arizona, Nevada, and California. On our return, we were supposed to reach our final cheap hotel right outside LA, convenient to catch our flights the next day. On this last long day of driving, we planned for lunch at an amazing Indian restaurant, me and Nidhi had stumbled across the last time we visited the area. It's called the Red Fort Cuisine of India near St. George, right on our way. Managed by a Sardar Uncle, we relished the great tasting Indian food. We touched Vegas by early evening to pick up Nidhi's credit card. Oh yes! She forgot it while paying for our breakfast the day we left Vegas. I am glad we called in and asked them to hold it for us. The winding roads kept moving away, puzzles started to float in the van, snoring and dozing heads in all rows, and eating the left-overs from last night just passed our time. On the last night, everyone was tired of the long drive. We planned on how to return our super-van tomorrow, and how to get everyone to the airport on time before calling it a night.

Just like that, a beautiful week ended and made way for a year of excitement until of course the pandemic. I defended my Ph.D. thesis three weeks after that breakfast in the dingy truck-diner, and moved back to India a month later. That trip was a true reunion and we missed all of our gang who were not able to come. It did make me hopeful that no matter where we are, our network follows.



Monday 13 April 2020

An Alternate Workspace

Gazing into the distance from my terrace, I can see the Jaipur I may have never seen from up here in all those vacations I spent at home during this decade of my adulthood. It’s ironic that this is the most chaotic situation that the world has ever been in, yet the naked eye sees the most peaceful ‘Pink City’. An explanation for this clean, fresh air that blankets the city needs no scientific analysis or statistic. The reason is obvious: the pandemic-forced full stop to traffic and industry.
I am not an extremist. I feel that the environmental carelessness of human growth was natural and that a woke society needs to right the wrongs done in the past. But not like this. Not at the mercy of a microscopic virus. Not at the cost of an overflowing morgue. I am fearful of the emergency brakes that have been put on our economy, abhor the complete isolation everyone of us has to live in and in nervous apprehension wait for the post-lockdown time. Yet, I can’t help but look at the silver lining of chirping birds, fresh air, and a clean Ganga. So, after twenty days of lockdown with another twenty in sight, I can’t simply go on lamenting. Let’s look at the future. Today, I saw an ad in our daily newspaper appealing its readers to come up with any ideas that can help us navigate this catastrophic Coronavirus situation. This motivated me to pen an idea I have held for some time now: Decentralized Working.
Let me systematically unravel what I mean by this phrase and why it is a viable alternative to the current office model of our companies and industries. Since the 90s, the world has shifted its workforce from largely manual labor to a growing legion of professionals who work on their computers. About 29% of Americans “can” work from home as per the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (Source). I am not familiar with such a statistic for India, but there are at least 3 million (Source) IT professionals in the country who can work from home. As the world stays home to stave the dangers of coronavirus, many of my friends, who are software developers, consultants, accountants, lawyers, and scientists continue to work; voraciously gulping down their Wi-Fi data. Can we continue on this path beyond the lockdown?
Maybe not to this extreme of completely staying home for work. As Prof. Raghuram Rajan mentioned in his recent interview with Prannoy Roy, we have started to appreciate the importance of human interaction as a basic need. Personally, I didn’t need the Coronavirus to make me realize this because I have spent the last 5 years doing my Ph.D., a painstakingly lonely and solo undertaking. Besides, there are logistical issues in India for a rapid transition to working from home. About 54% of HR leaders believe that poor internet infrastructure results in inefficient working conditions (Source). Another social study taken over a small dataset of about 10,000 individuals (Source) suggests that 99.8% of our workforce is inept for work-from-home culture. While reiterating the lack of social interaction, the study also attributes this inaptitude to poor communication skills, lack of individual drive, and inadequate personal management skills.
The solution of “Decentralized Working” that I am proposing here could be a mid-way of traditional office space and work-from-home model. It hinges on the idea of having multiple satellite offices within the city instead of a single main office that everyone rushes to at 9 a.m. in the morning. The retail sector like mobile stores, and banks, have always used this model by creating multiple outlets in the same city at key points. But with the proliferation of the Internet, this model need not stay just in the retail realm. The key distinction for other companies would be that instead of optimizing sales, they may choose to locate their offices strategically to optimize travel distances for its employees.
These offices can be made economical in a co-working model, where many companies identify city hotspots beneficial for their employees and are put together with another company with a similar location need. Existing infrastructure/buildings/campuses of many companies can be repurposed into these co-working nexuses as they themselves head into the decentralized model.
The social and economic benefits of decentralization can be manifold. At first, traffic congestion in downtown cities would decrease substantially. More employees will have reduced commute time associated with general well-being (Source) or can commute on foot associated with a healthier lifestyle (Source). The burden of providing conveyance to their employees will be greatly reduced on the companies. Moreover, since the growth of WeWork, Regus, and other co-working space startups, plenty of studies have touted the business benefits of this paradigm (Source).
Decentralized working is an amalgamation of traditional offices and working at home. The traditional concept of the office allows us to overcome several shortfalls of working-from-home such as lack of individual drive to work, personal management, and infrastructure capacity. However, the multiple office novelty of this concept introduces the challenge of communication skills already being observed during this lockdown. Teams may still need to coordinate across workspaces and Zoom/WebEx/GoTo Meetings will have to fill the void.
Coronavirus has already put us in a tough spot. The lockdown rules will only gradually wear off with partial relief from the curfew across a city. The transition can be made easy with this Decentralized model, which could simply be an investment to judge its efficacy for the future. Governments can actively encourage the adoption of this model especially in cities like Bengaluru, which has notoriously earned the title of the traffic-king of the world (Source). The government’s help with land acquisition for building such spaces, rebates to companies moving to this model, and push to advance infrastructure in such special localities, can systematize the chaotic urbanization of our cities.
I am not a city planner, not a businessman, and not a policymaker. As a concerned citizen, I just wish to see the clear skies of today across my city, state, and country till the day I am here and beyond!