National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) for Indian cities: Review and outlook of clean air action plans

Highlights

• Review of India's 102 publicly available city clean air action plans.

• Review of the institutional, legal, and administrative arrangements for regional air quality management.

• Review of availability of city-specific information on source contributions and financial commitments.

• NCAP requires a central executor with legal mandate to prioritize actions and an institutional mechanism to track progress.

Abstract

National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), launched in 2019, is India's flagship program for better air quality in 122 cities. This review evaluates the scientific, legislative, financial, and institutional framework of the 102 publicly available clean air action plans submitted under NCAP. We assessed the robustness of the plans using the background information on pollution sources and their contribution; legal backing for the clean air action plan; cost of measures; and existing institutional accountability regime. We used the tally chart method for estimating city-specific and sector-specific mitigation measures, the number of actions under the purview of various implementation agencies, and the number of institutional, physical, and promotional interventions in the plans. Transport and road dust together cover 50% of action points, followed by interventions for the industries. Domestic cooking and heating is mentioned as a source only in 42 plans for a total of 2% of the action points. Institutional nature of the interventions was observed in 74% of the action points, using the language “overseeing, planning, proposing, preparing, investigating, identifying, ensuring, strengthening, training, studying, and engaging”. We also identified the plans that contained information on source contributions, an outline of financial requirements for executing the plans and measures for mitigating pollution from regional sources. Only 25% of the plans integrated information on the relative source contributions to formulate control strategies. Even fewer plans outlined the financial requirements for executing the plans. The institutional and administrative arrangements for ensuring inter-departmental and regional alignment in air pollution mitigation strategies are absent. We close the review with recommendations which include mandating regular updates for emission and pollution loads, granting greater fiscal autonomy for Urban Local Bodies to maintain the infrastructure necessary for sustaining air quality benefits, and moving from city-centric to airshed-centric air quality management.