A woman wears a mask to protect herself from the pollution during a protest in Delhi. An Aam Aadmi Party minister put out a social media petition asking citizens for suggestions to check pollution following reports that Delhi is experiencing the worst smog in 17 years. On November 2 and 5, 2016, some areas in Delhi recorded a 24-hour average PM 2.5 level of over 950 µg/m³–nearly 40 times above the WHO safe levels.
 
In a 334-page report, submitted to the Delhi government in January 2016, IIT Kanpur (IIT-K) recommended 28 measures over the next seven years, to contain and reduce from source various pollutants fouling the Capital’s air; 17 measures could begin immediately. The IIT report should also be useful to the Centre, which has been given two days by the Supreme Court to suggest how the air quality crisis can be addressed, according to this Mint report.
 
If all the 28 recommendations are implemented, air quality will improve by anywhere between 30% to 100%, the study estimated. At least 19 of these 28 steps are not new to the Delhi government, found an IndiaSpend analysis of available government data sets on action taken to curb air pollution in Delhi since 2015, indicating that solutions were either ignored or not implemented.
 
These recommendations include:

• prohibiting the burning of domestic waste;
• ensuring electric tandoors for restaurants with seating capacities of over 10 persons;
• stopping the burning of crop residue;
• careful handling and transportation of construction materials and debris;
• minimising the release of particulate matter into the air at concrete plants;
• and regularly checking vehicular pollution.

The study, which did not recommend a restriction on cars based on odd-even registration numbers, put forth a slew of longer-term measures to curb emissions from vehicles and industries–some of which may begin in 2017.

Click here to view the action taken on the recommendations.
 
Through the year, there was no debate and little action over the IIT-K recommendations and Delhi’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government only took emergency measures–including closing down schools, shutting down a power plant, banning garden-waste burning, and banning construction activity, and diesel generators for 10 days except in hospitals and emergency situations–when the air-quality deteriorated in Delhi last week.
 
Instead, AAP minister for water and tourism, Kapil Mishra,, put out a social media petition on November 7, 2016, on Change.org, a social-media platform.
 

 
‘What steps should the Delhi govt take?’ asks minister. IIT-K told his govt
 
“Pollution in Delhi has reached a point of being a Public Health Emergency. I have seen multiple petitions and appeals on Change.org to address Delhi’s pollution crisis… I am keen to hear from you,” read the petition. “Take two minutes to let me know your opinion – What steps should the Delhi Government take?”
 
The petition came following reports that Delhi is experiencing the worst smog in 17 years, as mentioned in this Indian Express report. On November 2 and 5, the daily average levels of PM 2.5 pollutants in Delhi (fine particulate matter less than 2.5 microns in size) hovered over 700µg/m³ with some areas registering a 24-hour average of over 950µg/m³–nearly 40 times above the safe levels set by World Health Organization(WHO)–show data from our #Breathe network of sensors.
 
PM 2.5 is about 30 times finer than a human hair and poses the greatest risk to humans. The particles can be inhaled deep into the lungs, causing heart attacks, strokes, lung cancer and respiratory diseases. Their measurement is considered to be the best indicator of the level of health risks from air pollution, according to the WHO.
 
Delhi environment minister Imran Hussain also urged Union environment minister Anil Madhav Dave the same day for a large-scale apportionment study–identifying sources of pollution–for the national capital region (NCR), by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), to design anti-air pollution measures, said this Mint report.
 
This apportionment study, Comprehensive Study on Air Pollution and Green House Gases (GHGs) in Delhi, is–as we said–already available with the Delhi government, its details reported by IndiaSpend in October 2016.
 

Source: Source: Comprehensive Study on Air Pollution and Green House Gases (GHGs) in Delhi, IIT Kanpur
 
In winter, Delhi’s major sources of PM 2.5 pollutants, as identified by IIT-Kanpur, are: industries, especially thermal power plants, emitting secondary particles (25 – 30% of pollution), vehicles (20 – 25%), crop fires (17 – 26%), solid waste burning (9 – 8%), and, to a lesser extent, soil and road dust, as we reported.
 
New pollution-control measures: Old wine in a new bottle
 
Our analysis of Lok Sabha (parliament’s lower house) responses and websites of the Delhi Government show that the central and state governments were already supposed to have carried out some of the measures that IIT-K suggested in its report, an indication of poor implementation.
 
While the CPCB banned the used of coal in restaurants and hotels in December 2015, burning garbage has been banned for more than a decade under the Municipal Solid Waste Management rules of 2000.
 
Construction dust, previously governed under the same law, is now addressed in the Construction and Demolition Waste Management Rules, 2016.
 
Meanwhile, a 2006 Environment Impact Assessment Notification regulates pollution from building activities and concrete plants, with laws for prevention, abatement and air pollution, as this response to the Lok Sabha from December 2015 revealed.
 
Similarly, efforts to check vehicular pollutants have been underway at Pollution Under Control (PUC) centres under a 2004 programme.
 
Among the new measures recommended in the report, the government has yet to buy machines that can vacuum major roads and spray water to settle dust. Private contractors largely did not respond to a related tender because it clubbed sweeping with greening and beautification of roads, according to this March 2016 NDTV report.
 
Meanwhile, minister Mishra says 5,000 responses from citizens
 
“In a single day Change.org received 600 petitions with respect to the Delhi smog,” AAP minister Mishra told IndiaSpend. “We felt that aside from the policy decisions the Government will take on this issue, it was time to reach out to the people and find out what are their thoughts on how to tackle this problem and what they can commit to individually.”
 
In less than one hour, his petition elicited more than 5,000 responses, said Mishra.
 
In the petition, Mishra said he and Hussain would personally look into the recommendations offered: “My commitment to you is that we will start working on the solutions being provided immediately.”
 
(Saldanha is an assistant editor with IndiaSpend.)

This article was first published on IndiaSpend

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Among divorced Indian women, 68% are Hindu, and 23.3%, Muslims, according to Census 2011 data on the marital status of Indians. The data were recently cited by Muslim groups protesting the national law commission’s formulation of a uniform civil code, especially a ban on triple talaq, according to this report in The Hindu.

 
Among divorced men, Hindus account for 76%, and Muslims, 12.7%. Both Christian women and men cover 4.1% of their gender-respective divorced groups.
 

Source: Census 2011
 
What do the ratios imply?
 
Women’s rights activists believe that the gender imbalance in the numbers implies that more men than women are remarrying. “If there are 100 divorced couples, it should show a 50:50 sex-ratio. The skewed ratio plainly shows that after divorce, not only is it easier for men to remarry but also that they show a greater need or want to remarry,” Flavia Agnes, legal scholar and women’s rights activist, told IndiaSpend in a telephonic interview.
 
The skewed ratio among Muslims could be attributed to two problems, according to Hasina Khan, founder of the Bebaak Collective, a Muslim women’s organisation based in Mumbai. “The first is the absolute powers given to men under the Muslim Personal Laws by allowing triple talaq and so on. For women, getting married provides security of shelter and food with few rights for negotiation,” she said.
 
The other reason is the state’s failure to empower Muslim women, she added.
 
“There is little political will to address the needs of this sub-group. The socio-economic condition of Muslim women in India continues to deteriorate with inadequate access to good education, job opportunities and so on,” Khan said. 
 
Maharashtra has most divorced women
 
With a total population of 8.5 lakh divorced persons, the Census recorded more failed marriages in rural India where a higher proportion of the nation’s population still resides. In urban India, there were 5.03 lakh divorced persons.
 
Maharashtra, with 2.09 lakh persons, recorded the highest number of divorced citizens. The second-most populous state also holds the largest disproportion of men-to-women divorcees. About 73.5%–or 1.5 lakh–divorced persons in the state are women.
 
The highest population of divorced men in the country–1.03 lakh persons–resides in Gujarat, accounting for 54% of the state’s divorced population. 
 
Goa, with 1,330 divorcees, holds the lowest record of failed marriages.
 
More women than men deserted after marriage
 
More women than men in India are separated–out of a marriage without a formal divorce–the Census data showed. Activists believe that this indicates widespread practice of polygamy across India.
 
“Men often desert their wives in a separation, withholding from them the freedom to remarry. The data incongruence clearly shows that more men are into polygamy, obtaining second and third wives, while society gives no rights for women,” Agnes said.
 
Within religious communities, the highest imbalance of separated women-to-men ratio has been recorded among Muslims, with women accounting for 75% of the separated population. Christian women, who comprised 69% of the separated population within their community, follow. Another significant disparity has been recorded among Buddhists, where separated women comprised 68% of the demographic group within their community.
 

Source: Census 2011
 
Over the decade ending 2011, there was a 39% rise in the number of single Indian women–including widows, divorcees and unmarried women, and those deserted by husbands–IndiaSpend reported in November 2015. However, the number of bachelors (58%) still exceeds unmarried women, according to the Census data, indicating a higher pressure on women to get married.
 
The triple talaq debate
 
On October 7, 2016, the National Law Commission published a list of 16 questions seeking public opinion on the need for a uniform civil code for India. Apart from probing citizens’ perception of gender equality in prevalent personal laws across religions, a question asked if the practice of triple talaq should be abolished, continued or amended. Another question sought views on strengthening Hindu women’s rights to inherit property.
 
The Muslim Personal Law Board has criticised the legal panel’s exercise, claiming the law commission is not acting independent of the central government that opposed the tripletalaq law in Supreme Court the same day. Responding to a batch of public interest litigations filed by NGOs and women’s rights groups on the issue, the Centre said the practice cannot be regarded as an essential part of religion, according to this Times of India report.
 
“There are gender discriminatory personal laws across India’s religious communities–not merely among Muslims. Though it claims to aid vulnerable sections, the law commission’s plans for the uniform civil code do not deal with these in the right spirit. The uniformity it speaks of would only dilute India’s plural cultures while bringing in the same patriarchal bias,” Khan said.
 
Hindus comprise about 80% of India’s population, while Muslims account for 14.23%. Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jains comprise 2.3%, 1.72%, 0.7% and 0.37%, respectively, of the population.
 
(Saldanha is an assistant editor with IndiaSpend.)

This article was first published on India Spend

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An expectant mother having an ultrasound examination in Anand, Gujarat. The Uttar Pradesh government has left unspent about half the funds it was allocated to curb female foeticide, according to a recent report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India. The audit found that none of the diagnostic centres followed mandatory rules of preserving image records or backups taken during the ultrasonography of pregnant women. In 68% of cases, women did not even hold the necessary referral slips from their doctors.

UP, India’s most populous state, also records the second highest fertility rate in the country after Bihar. An average woman here bears at least three children in rural areas, according to the 2013 Health and Family Welfare Statistics report. However, the state is also witnessing a rapid decline in its child sex ratio. For every 1,000 boys aged between 0 and 6 years, the state has 902 girls (Census 2011), down from 916 in 2001 and 927 in 1991. Three decades ago, in 1981, UP recorded a ratio of 935.
 
Over the same period, the country’s child sex ratio has fallen from 962 girls per 1,000 boys aged 0 to 6 years, to 914 girls per 1,000 boys in 2011.

 

Source: Ministry of Health & Family Welfare
 
Latest figures for UP from 2015 indicate that the child sex ratio has further fallen to 883, observed the CAG report based on data from the Health Management Information System.
 
Nature produces more males than females, as boys are more vulnerable to infant diseases than girls. The child sex ratio, therefore, tends to mirror the sex ratio at birth–ideally, between 943 and 954 females for every 1,000 males.
 
Since 2001, the child sex ratio in India, in general, and UP, in particular, has plunged below this, suggesting that female foeticide continues unabated.
 
This is despite the fact that UP, which elects 73 of 543 members of parliament in Lok Sabha, has considerable political clout. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, won his parliament seat from Varanasi in 2014, while Congress president Sonia Gandhi bagged Rae Bareilly.
 
UP seeks funds, leaves much untouched
 
The CAG report rapped the state government for its “lackadaisical attitude” towards implementing the Pre-Conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act, 1994 (PC-PNDT Act). The law aims to prevent sex-selective abortions through regulation and monitoring of clinics using ultrasound equipment. Earlier this year, state chief minister Akhilesh Yadav had sworn to protect the girl child through strict implementation of the Act across UP.
 
With state elections due in five months, activists are hoping the CAG comments will be raised in political campaigns. “It’s time for politicians to rally and push for more action on crimes against unborn girls. In past UP elections, caste and communalism took precedence over basic human development issues,” said Sabu George, a veteran advocate against female foeticide and member of the National Inspection & Monitoring Committee set up under the PC-PNDT Act.
 
Between 2010 and 2015, UP–among the 10 Indian states with the lowest child sex ratios–claimed it would need Rs 20.26 crore to prevent sex-selective abortions through implementation of the Act. Of this, the state received 35% (Rs 7.09 crore) from the Centre through the National Health Mission.
 

Source: Comptroller & Auditor General
 
‘Missing daughters’, the CAG critique
 
From the funds received, the state spent 54% (Rs 3.86 crore) over five years–barely 20% of the state’s original estimate, the CAG report noted. The state also raised an additional Rs 1.9 crore through registration or renewal fees and penalties charged from diagnostic centres. This is kept in a savings bank account and remains unused.
 
“In most women empowerment schemes, UP showed significant savings ranging from 46 to 100 per cent — mainly due to poor implementation,” the CAG audit observed in a chapter entitled ‘Missing Daughters’. “Despite allocation of funds, majority of the schemes… could not achieve their goal of reducing gender disparity due to lack of planning and inefficient execution by implementing agencies and ineffective monitoring by the governance structure.”
 
“Missing Daughters” is a comprehensive audit of the implementation of the PC-PNDT Act at the state-level (carried out in 20 of 71 districts) to ascertain whether available diagnostic technologies are properly regulated and monitored.
 
13 of 20 audited districts maintain poor records
 
The audit found that none of the diagnostic centres followed mandatory rules of preserving image records or backups taken during the ultrasonography of pregnant women. In 68% of cases, women did not even hold the necessary referral slips from their doctors.
 
Further, as per the PC-PNDT Act requires, a district appellate authority (DAA) must maintain permanent records of all diagnostic centres including details of the ultrasound machines possessed. However, in 13 of 20 audited districts, no such records were available.
 
Despite this negligence, the audit found that “neither any action was taken nor any penalty imposed on the defaulting USG centres by District Magistrates” in 936 (58%) of 1,652 registered diagnostic centres in the surveyed districts. Only show-cause notices were issued to 221 centres in five years without follow-ups.
 
State and district advisory committees did not meet regularly, nor did they ensure proper follow up action on their directions. “This rendered the entire system of monitoring, created under the provisions of the PC-PNDT Act, ineffective and largely dysfunctional,” the CAG observed.
 
Owing to its size and population, UP’s ineptitude in dealing with gender disparities has considerable impact on India’s ability to improve its performance in the global human development index. Recently, the country was ranked 108th of 145 countries in the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Index, much below neighbours such as Sri Lanka (84) and China (91). Along with Bihar and Rajasthan, UP is among the worst Indian states for women to live in, IndiaSpend reported in July 2016.
 
UP and gender ranking of rest of India
 
“One in every four Indian girls is born in UP. Thus, the state’s declining sex ratio seriously impacts India’s overall child sex ratio, and we are not likely to see much improvement in rankings in 2021 unless the issue is taken up seriously in the largest state,” said George.
 
The report on UP is also symptomatic of a larger trend of states’ poor implementation of the Act across India, as IndiaSpend has previously reported in June 2015. Since the law came into effect in 1996, only 350 people have been convicted under the Act, suggesting vast underreporting of the crime, IndiaSpend reported in August 2016.
 

 
(Saldanha is an assistant editor with IndiaSpend.)

This article was first published on India Spend
 

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