Sahil yaduvanshi, 4, loves airplanes. He does not have to go far to look at one. He just has to peer out of his play school window and look up every few minutes to see one. “This is Cattie…,” he shouts out to his friend Pushpesh as he looks out. Sahil enjoys the sight of the planes, and wants to become a pilot when he grows up. His only complaint is to do with the roar of the planes. “I cannot hear my teacher and my friends because of the noise,” Sahil said. He studies in Aadyant pre-school in Vasant Kunj in Delhi. Most of his friends find it difficult to concentrate after a third runway—Runway 29—became operational at the Indira Gandhi airport in September 2008. “The children get disoriented as there is an airplane flying by every few minutes. We have to repeat lessons and even raise our voices to be heard,” said Bhavina Bembi, a school counsellor.

In flight path The problem of noise disturbance is not restricted to the school but the entire residential area from Andheria Modh, east of the airport, to Bijwasan to its west. These localities are in the airport flight path. “We got the noise levels in Vasant Kunj area checked privately and found it varies between 75 and 100 decibels,” said Anil Sood, president of the non-profit Chetna.

This is much more than the limit of 55 dB during the day and 45 dB at night set by the Central Pollution Control Board (cpcb) for residential areas. Before the runway was built, the noise level varied from 59-65 dB, according to studies carried out by the cpcb in areas around the airport in 2004 and 2007. Environmental clearances were also given a go by. Sood said he had filed an RTI application and found no environment impact assessment was carried out before constructing the third runway. The Delhi International Airport (Private) Ltd (dial), the company that manages the airport, has now agreed to undertake noise abatement measures. This was after a meeting with the Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority (epca) on January 10 to discuss noise abatement measures.

Measure noise “We are interacting with resident welfare associations of Vasant Kunj and other localities. We will take corrective measures,” a dial spokesperson said. dial has promised to install six aircraft noise monitoring systems (anms) by June this year. This conforms with cpcb guidelines for monitoring noise pollution around airports, issued in June 2008. “Right now airports hire contractors to measure noise pollution.

They use a simple sound level meter. An anms is a complete set of sound level meters along with software connected to the air traffic control room and measure the noise of each aircraft that lands or takes off,” said a cpcb official. He said this would help compare data of aircraft. These instruments cost Rs 50 lakh each and would have to be imported. “Class 1 sound level meters, made as per international specifications, cost about Rs 10 lakh and come with their own software. An anms will have three or four of these devices, said Piyush Kumar a sales engineer with Josts Engineering Company Ltd, an importer. As per the minutes of the epca meeting, the airport managers have proposed closing Runway 29 during the night and switching off one or two engines at the time of landing to lower noise levels. Phasing out old noisy aircraft and using only one runway during off-peak hours have also been proposed. Once that happens Sahil has better chances to work towards his desire to fly.

A cpcb official said it is difficult to maintain the noise standards in residential areas near airports at par with other localities. New standards are being worked out, he said. In most countries, noise limits in the airport vicinity vary from 57 dB to 90 dB with a night curfew in many of them. Residents around the airport want a ban on flights at night with immediate effect.

It’s official. The Central Pollution Control Board (cpcb), the nodal body for regulating environmental norms in India, is being “reduced to a near-defunct body”. The parliamentary standing committee on science and technology, environment and forests for the first time took note of the problems ailing cpcb in a report tabled in Parliament on October 21.

Issues like unqualified members and lack of enforcement power have long plagued the central and state pollution control boards (spcbs), a fact acknowledged by the board heads. The committee also noticed that the scarcity of technical staff was affecting the functioning of the boards.

“The key posts in cpcb and spcbs are being manned by officers of the Indian Administrative Service or bureaucrats who neither possess the necessary capabilities and expertise in properly managing and planning pollution control activities nor have enough time to pay attention to these activities,”

the report said.

In 2004-05, of the total cpcb and spcb staff, only 48 per cent were technical. An earlier report by a Supreme Court monitoring committee had stated that 77 per cent of the chairpersons and 55 per cent of the member secretaries of spcbs were not qualified to hold the post. The parliamentary committee report also criticized having part-time chairpersons by many state boards and said that only a full-time chairperson with adequate knowledge, background and experience in environment management could do justice to the post.

Dilip Biswas, former chairperson of cpcb, said during his tenure he had quite a few members on the board who were unqualified for the post.

“Meetings were more like a ritual than platforms for discussing important issues because many members were illiterate as far as environment was concerned. Many a times they would not even turn up for meetings.”

The law was to be faulted, said Biswas not the people as it did not define the exact qualifications of the board members. “Also, there is drastic shortage of general staff,” he said.

Though cpcb is an autonomous body, it is controlled by the Ministry of Environment and Forests. Most of its members are ministry representatives. The acting chairperson of the board is the joint secretary of the ministry. The Water Act, under which the board was formed, allows the Central government to supersede cpcb in certain cases. “Such a provision renders cpcb to act as mere puppet in the hands of the Centre and does not allow any space for independent and autonomous functioning,” the report said. Citing the ministry’s 2002 decision to delegate punitive powers to cpcb with the condition that if need be the Centre may revoke the decision, the report said, “If all the powers and functions were to be concentrated in the hands of the ministry …such an apex body is untenable.”

The report has raised concerns about the cpcb data on air and water monitoring. It said hazardous pollutants like volatile organic compounds, ozone and aromatic hydrocarbons were not being monitored. Of the 332 monitoring stations in the country, several are not working and the data is not updated regularly. There is no central agency to set standards for emissions.
Even if the standards are finalized by a technical body, the ministry takes a long time to notify them, as has happened in the case of the sponge iron industry.

Low salaries to the technical personnel and lack of training also contributed to cpcb’s failure, it stated.

Mili Majumdar, area convenor, GRIHA, says the rating system has been designed to suit Indian conditions and in particular for non air-conditioned buildings, unlike international rating systems like US-based Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (leed), which is designed for energy efficiency measures in air-conditioned buildings only.But V Raghuraman, principal adviser and chief co-ordinator, energy environment and natural resources, Confederation of Indian Industry, says,

“Leed is far ahead of GRIHA. A rating system is not just about energy consumption of a building but many other things like recycling and natural habitat. There are 30 buildings certified with LEED under India.’

GRIHA has 32 criterias for rating buildings, with a total of 100 points. A building needs to score at least 50 to apply for certification. Preserving landscape during construction; soil conservation after construction; reducing air pollution are some of the qualifying criteria. Buildings will also need to quantify energy consumption in absolute terms and not percentages alone.

But a leed-accredited professional from Delhi says the “social’ aspect, which is “most important’, is missing in GRIHA— and leed as well.

“The basic issues are same in most rating systems. The Japanese system takes into account rehabilitation of displaced people; accessibility for the old or people with special needs. Rating should look at the reuse of old buildings by developing them rather than making new ones, especially for rehabilitation,’

he said. Arvind Krishnan, Department of Architecture, School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi, agrees,

“The challenge is to generate typology of buildings and urban form in its three dimensional configuration—environmentally, socially and economically sustainable. But none of the rating systems can help generate such typologies.’

GRIHA does list minimum disruption of natural ecosystem as a rating criterion. But then the system has agreed to rate the Commonwealth Games Village coming up on the bed of the Yamuna river in Delhi. Experts at TERI pass the buck. “Selection of the site is under the control of the urban planning department. Our job is to minimize losses on the site,’ Majumdar says.