If you’ve ever lived in north India during the winter and struggled to breathe, you’re likely familiar with the acronym NCAP – the National Clean Air Programme. Launched by the environment ministry, it sets clear air targets for 131 cities that are required to reduce particulate concentration in the air.

The deadline to achieve 40 percent reduction is 2025-26.

Eighty-two cities get funds for this directly under NCAP. The remaining – 42 cities and seven ‘urban agglomerations’ – get funds under the 15th Finance Commission. From 2019 to May this year, all 131 cities were allocated a total of Rs 10,566 crore through both sources.

Newslaundry learned that the 82 cities funded by NCAP used Rs 1,092 crore out of the Rs 1,615.47 crore released in the last five years – about 66 percent. The cities of Delhi-NCR, where the AQI reached an astonishing 481 last month, used less than 40 percent.

Only 55 cities out of 131 managed to reduce their PM10 concentration in the air by at least 20 percent. Delhi managed a reduction of just 14 percent.

Underutilisation, misallocation

In October, the NCAP implementation committee held a meeting online. According to the minutes of the meeting, 68 cities did not utilise 75 percent of the funds allocated to them.

Noida, for example, used 11 percent of its total allocation of Rs 30.89 crore. Visakhapatnam used 14 percent and Anantpur 20 percent. Among metro cities, Bengaluru’s utilisation was lowest at 30 percent followed by Delhi (31 percent) and Pune (46 percent).

Delhi also lay at the bottom of the table when it came to utilisation of funds by states and union territories. Only Gujarat utilised 100 percent of its funds, followed by Odisha at 93.55 percent and Chhattisgarh at 92.8 percent. Delhi shared space with Jammu & Kashmir (40 percent) and Meghalaya (44 percent). 

According to minutes of a meeting in September by the NCAP apex committee, 67 percent of funds is spent on dust mitigation measures like repairing roads, installing pavements, improving traffic junctions, sprinkling water, and mechanised sweeping of roads. 

As for other pollutants – 14 percent is spent on vehicular pollution, 11 percent on solid waste management and biomass burning, four percent on capacity building and monitoring, two percent on construction and demolition waste, and one percent each on industrial pollution, public outreach, and domestic fuel.

But why the focus on dust mitigation over all else? 

The environment ministry said in August that this is because studies “indicate that dust from road, construction and demolition activities contribute maximum to the PM10 level in the cities”. Hence cities had “prioritised their actions based on the sources of pollution”.

However, this should be taken in context of the fact that NCAP funding is based on performance, and performance is assessed on the basis of improvements in ambient PM10 levels. Earlier this year, a study by the Centre for Science and Environment pointed out that this deviates focus from PM2.5 pollution, which Indian Express described as “more lethal”. 

This point – on spending less on other vital components – was raised in the meeting of the NCAP implementation committee. According to the minutes, participants discussed 21 “irrelevant” activities that were funded despite having little or no direct connection with improving air quality. These included installing streetlights, beautification protocols, installing CCTV cameras at dumping sites, buying computers and software, and paying electricity bills at construction and destruction waste plants.

Another curious point is that while NCAP seems to focus on PM10 levels to assess a city’s performance, it also ranks cities under a programme called Swachh Vayu Survekshan based on policy measures implemented to reduce air pollution.

The study by the Centre for Science and Environment found that the two rankings don’t often correspond. For example, a city that scores under the Swachh Vayu Survekshan might perform very poorly for not improving PM10 levels. 

Anumita Roy Choudhury, the author of the study, told Newslaundry this needs to be addressed. “In the case of Delhi, its ranking is poor in terms of PM10 reduction. But its ranking under SVS is in the top nine. So there’s a huge gap between action taken and reduction of PM10. This gap needs to be addressed,” she said. 

Goals met? Not quite 

But here’s what the nation really wants to know. Even as a focus on PM10 is not quite effective, is the spending to bring down PM10 achieving its goal?

Let’s take Delhi, which utilised 32 percent of Rs 42.69 crore released under NCAP over five years. This money was predominantly spent to procure 14 mechanical road sweepers, 28 water sprinklers, smog guns, and two pothole repair machines. The procurement of the sweepers and repair machines are still “in progress”.

But the major source of PM10 pollution in Delhi is industrial, which is coal and fly ash, contributing to 37 percent of pollution in summer and 12 percent of pollution in winter. Biomass and waste burning contributes 25.43 percent, and road dust and construction soil 30 percent. Transport, in winter, contributes to 19 percent of PM10 pollution. (It should be noted that NCAP funds are intended to be spent for an entire year; not every city gives the breakup of pollution based on season.) 

Yet there seems to have been no spending by Delhi, across winter and summer under the fund, to mitigate industrial pollution.

Next, take Navi Mumbai, also funded under the NCAP. Allocated Rs 9.42 crore over five years, it spent 92 percent of its funds on categories like mechanised road sweeping, water sprinkling, creating ‘green belts’, procuring e-buses, and public awareness – spending that predominantly targets dust and vehicles.

Meanwhile, the environment ministry says Navi Mumbai’s PM10 pollution is due to road dust (28 percent), transport (16 percent), industry (16 percent), coal and fly ash (12 percent), waste burning (15 percent), and secondary aerosol (13 percent). And Navi Mumbai’s performance in reducing PM10 concentration is abysmal; in fact, the annual average PM10 concentration increased from 88 in 2017-18 to 98 in 2023-24. (Note that some cities, like Delhi, do not categorise coal/fly ash in a category separate from industrial pollution.)

We also looked at Ludhiana, which utilised 90 percent of Rs 97.75 crore allocated under the NCAP. Most of this was spent on constructing end-to-end pavements on 114 km of roads, setting up green urban spaces, mechanised road sweeping, water sprinkling, collecting construction and destruction waste, and anti-smog guns. Here, more than 30 percent of PM10 concentration is caused by industrial pollution, across seasons. Ludhiana only managed to reduce its PM10 concentration by four percent.

Baddi in Himachal Pradesh, which recorded “very poor” AQI in November, spent its NCAP funds on two things: constructing pucca roads and installing a Continuous Ambient Air Quality Monitoring System. It’s worth noting that 21-22 percent of its PM10 concentration is contributed by industry.

Cities like Gwalior and Bhopal, where road dust accounts for a significant portion of PM10 emissions – 88 percent and 60 percent, respectively – failed to make substantial progress in reducing PM10 levels. PM10 concentration in Gwalior increased from 126 in 2017-18 to 136 in 2023-24; Bhopal’s increased from 112 to 113 in the same period.

Gwalior spent Rs 82 crore of NCAP funds and Bhopal Rs 180 crore, but they’re at the bottom in terms of reducing PM10. Instead, both cities prioritised spending on road paving, building footpaths, municipal waste processing plants, construction and demolition processing plants, parks, urban forests, public awareness, and installing e-vehicle charging points.

Update at 5.30 pm, January 9

Shortly after this piece was published, the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air issued a press release noting that only 31 percent of the 131 NCAP cities met targets set for 2024. The press release drew on the same minutes of the meeting used for this story.

Forty-one cities managed to “achieve the initial target of a 20-30% reduction in PM10 levels” by 2024. The press release said there is “a lack of transparency” so it’s unclear how this improvement was achieved.

“The fact that the majority of cities are still struggling to meet even the initial target raises serious concerns about the feasibility of achieving the ambitious 40% reduction within the next two years. Additionally, 29 cities have reported an increase in PM10 concentrations compared to their baseline levels, indicating the need for enhanced efforts and strategies to address air pollution effectively.”

As per targets, 130 cities were expected to “complete source apportionment studies”, CREA said, referring to a scientific process that identifies sources of air pollution. But “only 50 have done so to date as per the NCAP implementation committee’s minutes of meeting”.

“Worse, only 17 cities have published detailed reports, leaving the rest without accessible results,” the press release said. “ This lack of timely updates and utilisation of the PRANA portal highlights a significant gap in the effective implementation of NCAP.”

Air pollution is killing India’s people. We believe it needs focus all year long, not just when the air is particularly bad in winter. That’s why we’ve launched Fight To Breathe, a collaborative campaign to tackle air pollution. Here’s how you can join. Click here to power this campaign. 

And with elections around the corner in Delhi, we want to know if air pollution is something political parties care about. Click here to power our election work.