Rs 1 Lakh Crore—What Delhi Loses Every Year to Air Pollution

We forget death very easily. COVID-19 killed a little more than 25,000 residents of Delhi over the last 18 months. Strict lockdowns were enforced, life came to a standstill and there was genuine anguish among policymakers and voters. However, everything is almost back to normal and all is forgiven and forgotten. The anxiety should have shifted to pollution even as Delhi has been recording dangerous air quality that is fatal for the elderly and those predisposed to lung problems and heart diseases. If 25,000 died due to COVID-19 in the last 18 months, Delhi recorded 54,000 deaths because of pollution only in 2020. India contributes nearly a third of worldwide premature deaths due to poor air quality.

If death does not impact us, let us look at the economic losses we incur due to pollution. A study published in The Lancet found that 1.67 million deaths were attributed to air pollution in India in 2019. Another Harvard study pointed out that 2.5 million Indians died in 2018 due to fossil fuel pollution. How much do we lose because of these premature deaths of productive human beings every year? How much does our creaking healthcare system spend on treating the morbidity due to pollution? How much does labour productivity fall when people are coughing and wheezing at their workplace?

It is widely estimated that the economic cost of air pollution in India accounts for 4.5 per cent of the GDP, where premature mortality contributes to half the burden and health costs account for the rest. This is such an understatement; what these calculations do not include is the loss of productivity due to polluted air. There are several studies that show that when ambient pollution levels are high, worker productivity is low. The impact on the GDP is obvious, as not only does production suffer but so will consumption. A Greenpeace estimate puts the economic cost for Delhi alone at 13 per cent of the state domestic product, amounting to nearly USD 8 billion last year.

There are two different ways of measuring this loss. The numbers we see are those that calculate the impact based on human resource losses. These numbers, however, go up when the willingness to pay method is used. This is when the calculations take into account the maximum price residents are willing to pay to reduce the pollution levels. When Beijing was seized with the same problem as Delhi is today, nearly 20 years ago, the estimates for human resource cost versus the willingness to pay were at 3 per cent and 6 per cent of the Chinese GDP, respectively. If the willingness to pay were to be taken into account for Delhi, the national capital is losing more than Rs 1 lakh crore every year, or an estimated USD 13 billion worth of productivity due to the dangerous ambient air quality.