India - Environment
India is a country of great diversity with a wide range of landform types, including major mountain ranges, deserts, rich agricultural plains, and hilly jungle regions. Indeed, the term Indian subcontinent aptly describes the enormous extent of the earth's surface that India occupies, and any attempt to generalize about its physiography is inaccurate. Diversity is also evident in the geographical distribution of India's ethnic and linguistic groups. In ancient times, the major river valleys of the Indo-Gangetic Plain of South Asia were among the great cradles of civilization in Asia, as were the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in West Asia and the Huang He (Yellow River) in East Asia. As a result of thousands of years of cultural and political expansion and amalgamation, contemporary India has come to include many different natural and cultural regions.
The Himalayas (and the nations of Nepal and Bhutan) form India's northern frontier with China. Pakistan borders India to the west and Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) to the east.
When the 1991 national census was taken, India's population was approximately 846.3 million. The annual population growth rate from 1981 to 1991 was 2 percent. Accounting for only 2.4 percent of the world's landmass, India is home to 16 percent of the world's population. Every sixth person in the world in the early 1990s was an Indian. It is generally assumed that India's population will surpass the 1 billion mark some time before the next census in 2001. In July 1995, the population was estimated at 936.5 million.
India's total land mass is 2,973,190 square kilometers and is divided into three main geological regions: the Indo-Gangetic Plain, the Himalayas, and the Peninsula region. The Indo-Gangetic Plain and those portions of the Himalayas within India are collectively known as North India. South India consists of the peninsular region, often termed simply the Peninsula. On the basis of its physiography, India is divided into ten regions: the Indo-Gangetic Plain, the northern mountains of the Himalayas, the Central Highlands, the Deccan or Peninsular Plateau, the East Coast (Coromandel Coast in the south), the West Coast (Konkan, Kankara, and Malabar coasts), the Great Indian Desert (a geographic feature known as the Thar Desert in Pakistan) and the Rann of Kutch, the valley of the Brahmaputra in Assam, the northeastern hill ranges surrounding the Assam Valley, and the islands of the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal.
Smog
Air quality levels in India’s capital city of New Delhi reached the “severe plus” level on 01 November 2019, prompting the government to declare a public health emergency, according to local news reports. Thick smog lingered over the city, which is home to more than 25 million people. “Delhi has turned into a gas chamber due to smoke from crop burning in neighbouring states,” Delhi’s Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal stated. Schools in the area were forced to closed until Nov. 5 because of the toxic pollution, but as Kejriwal noted, the government was distributing free face masks to children through public and private schools in the city.
The Supreme Court had allowed bursting of firecrackers from 8 pm to 10 pm only on Diwali and other festivals. It had also allowed manufacture and sale of only “green crackers”, which have a low light and sound emission and less harmful chemicals. The court had asked the police to ensure that banned firecrackers were not sold and said in case of any violation, the station house officer (SHO) of the police station concerned would be held personally liable and it would amount to committing contempt of the court. But despite the apex court order, there were reports of its violation from many areas long after 10 pm.
The Supreme Court onNov 05, 2019 banned stubble burning in Delhi, Punjab, Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh in view of severe air pollution. It also banned all construction and demolition activities along with burning of garbage and waste in Delhi-NCR in the region. The apex court took to task State governments on toxic air pollution. It directed the Centre, States concerned to prepare roadmap in three weeks to prevent the prevailing situation in future.
India, and New Delhi in particular, have grappled with poor air quality for years. In a 2018 list of the world’s most polluted cities in terms of air quality, 25 of the top 50 cities — including New Delhi — are located in India. Air pollution in this region typically peaks around this time of year, partially due to fireworks from the Hindu festival of Diwali, according to the Associated Press. India’s Central Pollution Board noted that air quality is expected to marginally improve over the weekend, although levels may remain in the upper end of the “very poor” category. Until the air quality improves, India’s government is urging residents in New Delhi and surrounding suburbs to avoid outdoor activities.
Smog is a type of air pollution. The word "smog" was made in the early 20th century as a portmanteau of the words smoke and fog to refer to smoky fog.The word was then intended to refer to what was sometimes known as pea soup fog, a familiar and serious problem in London from the 19th century to the mid 20th century. This kind of smog is caused by the burning of large amounts of coal within a city; this smog contains soot particulates from smoke, sulfur dioxide and other components. Modern smog, as found for example in Los Angeles, is a type of air pollution derived from vehicular emission from internal combustion engines and industrial fumes that react in the atmosphere with sunlight to form secondary pollutants that also combine with the primary emissions to form photochemical smog.
The term "smog" was first used in London during the early 1900's to describe the combination of smoke and fog that often blanketed the city. According to several sources, the term was first coined by Dr. Henry Antoine des Voeux in his paper, “Fog and Smoke,” which he presented at a meeting of the Public Health Congress in July 1905. The type of smog described by Dr. des Voeux was a combination of smoke and sulphur dioxide, which resulted from the heavy use of coal to heat homes and businesses and to run factories in Victorian England.
The states surrounding Delhi are known collectively as the "grain bowl" of India after the agricultural sector underwent a green revolution in the 1960s, leading to a dramatic increase in rice and wheat productivity. In Haryana alone, 80% of the almost 5 million hectares of land is now under cultivation, producing over 13 million tons of grain per year.But as production grew, the sector could not keep up with an increasing demand for labor, with farmers eventually abandoning hand harvesting in favor of less labor-intensive methods such as the combine harvester.
Unlike manual harvesting techniques however, combine harvesters leave behind rice stubble, which prevents machines from sowing wheat seeds. With as little as 10 days between rice harvesting season and the sowing of wheat, farmers often turn to stubble burning to quickly remove the remaining rice crop residue.
Union Ministry for Agriculture & Farmers Welfare has adopted several measures to tackle Stubble burning incidents. Highlighting the considerable reduction in crop residue burning incidents in 2018, Dr. Trilochan Mohapatra, Secretary, Department of Agricultural Research & Education (DARE) & Director General, ICAR said 13-August-2019 India had demonstrated through coordinated public and private efforts such challenges can be addressed effectively. Mohapatra added that through the various efforts under the Central Sector Scheme on ‘Promotion of Agricultural Mechanization for In-Situ Management of Crop Residue in the State of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh & NCT of Delhi’ the paddy residue burning events have reduced by 15% and 41% in 2018 as compared to that in 2017 and 2016, respectively in all these States. Under the scheme, financial assistance @50% of the cost is provided to the farmers for purchase of in-situ crop residue management machines on individual ownership basis.
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