NEW DELHI: Road dust mitigation has been the primary focus of the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), launched in 2019 to set clean air targets for 131 polluted cities and reduce particulate pollution nationally. A Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) assessment found that 64% of the ₹4,974.08 crore spent under NCAP has gone into road paving, widening, pothole repair, water sprinkling, and mechanical sweeping.
Only 14.51% of funding has been used for controlling biomass burning, 12.63% for reducing vehicular pollution, and a mere 0.61% for controlling industrial pollution. The assessment highlighted that the primary focus of the funding is road dust mitigation.
NCAP aims to reduce particulate pollution by up to 40% by 2025-26 from the base year of 2019-20. It is the first performance-linked funding program to improve air quality in India. Originally, NCAP was planned to tackle both PM10 and PM2.5 concentrations in the 131 non-attainment cities. However, in practice, only PM10 concentration has been considered for performance assessment, with PM2.5 largely neglected.
The total allocation for NCAP is ₹10,566 crore, with ₹3,172 crore allocated to 82 cities and ₹16,539 crore to 42 cities and 7 urban agglomerations for the period from FY 2019-20 to 2025-26. Approximately ₹10,566.47 crore was released to the 131 cities between FY 2019-20 and FY 2023-24 (until May 3, 2024).
Sunita Narain, CSE director general, stated, “NCAP’s objectives are commendable, but investments are focused on dust control rather than on emission-spewing sources such as industries or vehicles.” Currently, cities must demonstrate improvement in PM10 levels for performance assessment, which can be influenced by meteorological factors, dust storms, and heatwaves, rather than just policy actions. This focus has led to stagnation in spending by cities because funding is linked to performance.
The 82 NCAP cities have utilized only 51% of the allocated funds, while the 42 cities and seven urban agglomerations have utilized about 67%. Jharkhand, Gujarat, and Chandigarh have utilized over 90% of their funds, while Meghalaya, Assam, West Bengal, Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka, Punjab, and Delhi have utilized less than 40%.
Key combustion sources, including transport and industry, do not receive priority under the current focus on dust control. Many industrial sources and power plants remain outside the orbit of city action plans. CSE recommends using PM2.5 as a more relevant health indicator to assess air quality improvement.
Another parallel program, Swachh Vayu Survekshan (SVS), was introduced by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change in 2022 to rank cities based on policy measures implemented. However, progress reports on transport sector interventions requiring improvement in on-road emissions management, old vehicle phase-out, public transport improvement, and parking policy are minimal.