Out of 20 of the world's most polluted cities, 14 are in India: WHO

Delhi and Varanasi are among the 14 Indian cities that figured in a list of 20 most polluted cities in the world in terms of PM2.5 levels in 2016, data released by the WHO showed on Wednesday.

The WHO data also said that nine out of 10 people in the world breathe air containing high levels of pollutants.

Other Indian cities that registered very high levels of PM2.5 pollutants were Kanpur, Faridabad, Gaya, Patna, Agra, Muzaffarpur, Srinagar, Gurgaon, Jaipur, Patiala and Jodhpur followed by Ali Subah Al-Salem in Kuwait and a few cities in China and Mongolia.

In terms of PM10 levels, 13 cities in India figured among the 20 most-polluted cities of the world in 2016.

The World Health Organisation has called upon member-countries in its Southeast Asia Region to aggressively address the double burden of household and ambient (outdoor) air pollution, saying the region, which comprises India, accounts for 34 pc or 2.4 million of the seven million premature deaths caused by household and ambient air pollution together globally every year.

Is there cash in the ATM? 6 months later, India shakes off note-ban blues

‘Is there cash at the ATM?’ is a question many still ask Bir Singh, posted outside an automated teller machine on Lodhi Road in the Capital. After weeks of going through the tedium of standing in queues for cash, and often coming away disappointed, many have got used to asking this question before entering an ATM.

“People still think there is a shortage. However, we have refills twice a day on weekdays and once on Sundays,” says Singh. Cash is back in full force in the National Capital Region and lining up to take out a little cash is a thing of the past. If an ATM is empty, it is mostly because of technical glitches, not due to no cash being available.

The situation in other parts of the country is very similar. Prime Minister Narendra Modi shocked the nation on November 8, 2016, by freezing 86 per cent of the cash in the system. He declared the existing Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes paper, albeit preserving their economic value if deposited in banks. The entire nation queued up outside ATMs. Bank branches worked overtime and on holidays as people stood in line to deposit the scrapped notes. Some even died while standing in the queue. Banks had parked Rs 6 lakh crore of their excess money with the central bank, at which point the Reserve Bank (RBI) resorted to extraordinary measures for absorbing the deluge. Neither the government nor the RBI has yet stated how much of money was deposited with banks till the window closed on December 30 for banks and by March with designated branches of the central bank, for no clear reason.

“Cash is available a lot more freely at ATMs now and the queues at banks have come down drastically. The situation has returned to normal but there’s still some odd days when there’s a shortage, especially on weekends,” said Nikhil Infant, who works at Garden City College in Bengaluru as head of social media and digital content.
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