Sunday, November 6, 2016

Delhi Schools Closed for Three Days as Pollution Worsens

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-37887937

Delhi's Chief Minister, Arvind Kejriwal, has announced a three-day shutdown of all schools in India's capital territory. All construction and demolition work has been banned for five days in the city. Water will also be sprinkled on main roads to help suppress dust. Delhi's current pollution levels lie at PM2.5 - over 90 times the level considered safe by the World Health Organization (WHO) and 15 times the Indian government's norms.

The efficiency ramifications of this move can be viewed in two ways; on one hand, shutting down schools and advising people to stay away from work as far as possible is a hindrance to productivity in the economic sense - learning will cease for three days and, while people may be working from home during this time, there is no guarantee that they will be equally productive. Additionally, other measures to curb pollution (all construction and demolition work has been banned for five days, and plans to shut down the coal-based Badarpur power plant have been in the works for several months) will also affect productivity and output. Furthermore, should there be a lesser quantity of electric energy produced, it will likely be the poor and those in remote areas who feel the change the most, creating issues of equity. On the other hand, staying indoors will certainly mitigate the negative health effects of being outdoors with the polluted air, and both short and long term healthcare costs due to respiratory infections an will likely decrease should increasing measures be taken to improve air quality.

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