Two years ago, China seemed oblivious to the extraordinary levels of air pollution in many of its cities and the health consequences. But over the past six months, there has been an explosion of information on pollution concentrations, warnings from the media and new policies from the government. It took a long time, but change is happening.
Could India be next? In January, India was startled by the release of the annual country rankings of the Yale Environmental Performance Index, which highlighted its troubling air pollution. The calls for change have started: On Monday, the country’s powerful Supreme Court will hear an amicus plea on the worsening pollution in New Delhi.
Despite a national election coming in May, air pollution has been largely absent from the debate between the two major political parties, Bharatiya Janata and the Indian National Congress. But many successful Indian environmental policies have come from the Supreme Court, and we encourage it to proceed in this vein by embracing more transparent and flexible market-based regulations to better protect the health of its citizens and allow robust economic growth to continue…