No scrapping old cars, please!

Forcing people to junk old vehicles and buy new ones will not reduce pollution

Alok Tiwari

 

All hell broke loose last week when the police in Delhi began impounding some vehicles entering fuel pumps for a refill. Without much notice, the authorities had begun enforcing an old rule that prohibited running of petrol vehicles older than 15 years and diesel vehicles older than 10 years in the national capital. Cameras read the numbers of vehicles and checked with the transport department’s database. As soon as an older vehicle entered the fuel station, an alarm was raised. In some cases, the police took the vehicle straight to a scrap station. All the owners got was scrap value calculated as per specified formula and promise of tax rebate on the new vehicle they may purchase. In other cases, the vehicles were let off, but drivers were warned not to ply them on the roads anymore.

This led to immediate panic and protests. Though the move was a long time coming, it was deemed so impractical that everybody thought it would never be implemented. Some confined their older vehicles to home. Some tried to dispose of them in other states where they were still street legal. Naturally, this led to a crash in secondary market. Even luxury cars were sold for a pittance. Many questioned the logic of the policy itself. Some said it was confiscation of private property that the state had no right to do. Others pointed out that state could not ban vehicles after 10 years when it has taken road tax for it for 15 years. The authorities eventually realized the intensity of the protests and put the policy on hold.

This respite, though, is temporary. Nobody in the government has talked about withdrawing the policy altogether. It is a Damocles’ sword hanging over the vehicle users in Delhi. Sooner or later, the policy will be implemented nationwide. Union minister of highways Nitin Gadkari has often supported the scrappage policy citing pollution caused by older vehicles. Most states already levy a green tax on older vehicles, renewing their registration for five years at a time. This additional burden is again meant to encourage the owners to go in for newer vehicles that are supposedly more fuel efficient and hence less polluting. The next step will be to ban older vehicles completely.

Alas, if only it were so simple. Hoping that trading in older vehicles for newer ones will reduce pollution is akin to hoping that demonetisation will reduce corruption. What appears appealing at first glance often misses the complexities of the problem. There are several reasons why the scrappage policy is pig-headed. For one, it misses the economic reality of even the relatively well-off in India. Though vehicles ownership, including cars, has multiplied in last couple of decades and the country is home to one of the biggest auto industries in the world, owning a vehicle is still a big deal for most people.

At a time when economic hardships are forcing people even in rich countries to hold on to their vehicles longer, to force people to trade in their 10- or 15-year-old vehicles is cruel. There are many households and small businesses that purchase cheaply available pre-owned vehicles with the intention of driving them for many more years. This has spawned a huge repair and maintenance industry. The policy threatens the existence of army of mechanics in every city who ensure these vehicles keep running.

The second reason is that upgrading the vehicle will make only marginal difference, if at all, to air quality. This is because there has been only incremental improvement in fuel efficiency of vehicles over the years. This too is negated by two factors. One is overall increase in number of vehicles. Earlier if there were 100 highly polluting vehicles in an area, now there are 500 slightly less polluting ones. The air quality can only get worse. Second factor is that while trading in, most people upgrade to bigger vehicle. So even if they buy a more fuel efficient one, they will burn the same or even greater amount of fuel. Even buying an electric vehicle will have only a limited effect on air quality unless bulk of the electricity is coming from renewable sources, which is not going to be the case for many years.

It is widely proven that the least polluting vehicle is your existing one. Because no matter how great the fuel efficiency of the new one, it is more than offset by the total carbon footprint of making of a new one. So, the best policy would be exactly the opposite of what the government is doing in Delhi and intends to do all over the country. It must incentivise people to hold on to their vehicle for as long as possible. At the same time, it must strictly enforce the emission norms. This will ensure vehicles are maintained in good condition. Action should be taken against ill-maintained vehicles, not older ones.

There are other things that can be done to improve air quality in cities without forcing people to spend huge amounts on new vehicles unnecessarily. First is providing top quality public transport. This single thing can make a huge difference. Once this is done, use of private vehicles in crowded and polluted areas of a city can be disincentivized through high parking charges or even a congestion tax. Restricting purchase of vehicles to only those who have adequate private parking place, a measure being enacted in Maharashtra, will also reduce car numbers and congestion.

Forcing people to scrap vehicles in perfectly good condition is morally and scientifically wrong. As a former defence officer has pointed out, the government itself is making do with fighter jets over 40 years old. It is also using tanks that are decades old. When it makes allowance for its own economic compulsions, it needs to do the same for the people at large as well.