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Car emissions issue pits India against First World

Veeresh Malik in New Delhi

Even as the curtain of smog generated by motor vehicles thickens in New Delhi, foreign auto manufacturers like Toyota, Ford and General Motors are toying with a plan to introduce more diesel cars in India.

Industry analysts say fuel quality in India, especially that of diesel, remains a debatable point. The absence of a strict inspection and maintenance regime in India leaves the automobile market open to top-dollar, imported kit-culture machines, they point out.

Several aspects make the auto emission controversy curiouser.

In advanced countries, the auto industry is increasingly shifting focus to fuel cells and alternate fuels. But in India, the old internal combustion engines continue to be in vogue.

Leaded petrol has been banned in most parts of the country. But there is no way yet of measuring benzene, the replacement for lead in petrol. There is no well-oiled system in place to check the effectiveness of catalytic converters once a car has been sold. Nor are there any available specifications on catalytic converters.

Diesel in India continues to have 0.5 per cent sulphur content. Although acidification is not a worry yet, the adulteration of petrol is a fact of life, something the oil companies do not admit.

Even as the din over the Supreme Court ruling on the car emissions and Euro-II norms continues, foreign car-makers are demanding that India should adopt Euro-III norms.

Auto industry analysts, however, argue that the continuity in promoting sustainable transport needs to be emphasised more than anything, especially in developing countries like India.

They say the existing standards should not be allowed to lapse overnight, or become unrealistically expensive. This important socio-economic requirement needs to be addressed carefully in the case of developing countries, where inter-modal movements of human beings and goods are often state-subsidised.

Global warming, attributed to emission of greenhouse gases, is a global environmental problem. It has been caused by decades of emissions from all over the world. The contribution of the transport sector is said to be about 20 per cent. What is happening today is the result of technology used 50 to 70 years ago, mainly in what is now the developed world.

At the 1997 climate conference in Kyoto, the developed countries agreed with some reluctance to reduce emission of greenhouse gases by 5.2 per cent by 2012, compared to the 1990 levels. Developing countries, instead of being provided some allowance to catch up technologically for the missing years, are expected to maintain similar rates of reduction.

The credit-debit passbook system being adopted by the developed world in calculating reduction of greenhouse gases has also caused confusion among other countries. For reduction in greenhouse gases by a developed country anywhere in the world will be allowed as a credit to the said developed country.

Volvo trucks are a case in point. Following the Supreme Court directives on vehicular emissions in the National Capital Region of Delhi, Volvo has come out strongly with a case for Euro-II compliant trucks and buses all over India.

There is, however, a cost involved. Where an ordinary bus costs about half a million rupees, a similar Volvo bus will cost two million rupees upwards. In other words, introduction of eco-friendly buses like that of Volvo will raise the fares of public transport systems. And the credit for reducing greenhouse gases will, in this case, go to Sweden, while India foots the bill by way of higher transportation costs.

All for the technologies developed by the developed world 50 years ago! For the developed countries, it is a case of "heads I win, tails you lose".

The Indian government's position, along with that of the rest of the developing world, is that the developed world has to reduce emission of greenhouse gases by a higher amount as their past record is bad. Moreover, their current energy consumption, that leads to greenhouse gases emissions, are very high.

The developed world, on the other hand, wishes to use 1990 as a base year for everybody, and from there seek a percentile reduction, for everybody.

This has acquired the flavour of a North-South divide and a discord between the First World and the Third World. Whose view will prevail remains to be seen.

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