Hey folks,

Winter is about to set in, while the smell of the festival season still lingers in the air. Want to rush out and breathe in a lungful of crisp, chilly air? Well, if you live in Delhi, you may as well swallow a spoon full of poison. Something that kills you slowly and painfully. Because air pollution in the capital city – which set an example to the rest of the country barely 5 years ago by saying no to buses using CO2 emitting diesel and forcing the government to switch to the cleaner Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) – is once again reaching critical levels.

In 2002, the annual average levels of respirable suspended particulate matter (RSPM) in residential areas were 143 microgram per cubic metre. They dropped to 115 by 2005. But in the winter of 2006 they swung up to 350, and are climbing ever since. So this winter we can look forward to more wheezing, coughing and trips to the hospital…

But, hey, aren’t the cleaner fuels clean enough? They are. But how can a few thousand CNG-run buses fix the damage being done by a few million diesel-run personal cars? Yes, the total number of diesel cars running in Delhi streets today emit as much as 30,000 diesel buses would!

So the choice is ours. We can stop buying cars. Or we can stop breathing.