Sushma Devi is often spotted riding her electric two-wheeler, in and around her village Parjoria in the coal mining belt of Dhanbad, in Jharkhand. She was married off just after she wrote her 10th board examination. But today, the 43-year-old mother of two sons, is on a mission to monitor air quality and document air pollution in rural Dhanbad.
Sushma is a Paryavaran Sakhi (a friend of the environment). There are nine others like her who are involved in this unique initiative of recording the prevalence of air pollution in Dhanbad and Bokaro districts of the state in eastern India.
The 10 women using portable air quality monitors have identified 26 air pollution hot spots. They have generated bottom-up data on air quality in 10 Panchayats of the two districts. They have also mapped local healthcare facilities and identified gaps in their health systems.
Their field-based study has recently been documented as a report titled "Impact of Air Pollution on Health: A Neighbourhood Level Study led by Grassroot Women Leaders in Rural Jharkhand."
ASAR, which focuses on research with direct societal implications, and Deshaj Abhikram, a Ranchi-based community organisation, have put the study together.
“When we began monitoring air quality in and around our villages, we found that some of the most polluted locations were the Anganwadi [early learning centres of the central government] and the local health centres. There are very young children who spend the entire day at the Anganwadi. On the other hand, there is a constant stream of unwell people visiting the health centres. Both the children and the ailing are already vulnerable, and they must contend with the polluted air, too,” Sushma told Kashmir Times.
“Living in the coal belt of the country, we know the air is polluted. There is black dust everywhere. But this is the first time we have monitored and mapped it. We now know exactly how bad our air quality is,” she added.
The joint study is a rare effort to monitor and collect data on air pollution in rural India by training and involving village women.
Urban vs Rural Bias in Air Quality Monitoring
India is amongst the topmost polluted countries of the world with very high Particulate Matter 2.5 levels (PM 2.5 indicates fine inhalable particles, with diameters below 2.5 micrometers). They settle deep inside the lungs and increase the risk of heart diseases, asthma, and low birth weight. But most data around air pollution in the country is urban and limited to some cities.
This was reflected in an analysis by the New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), which found that of India’s 4,041 census cities and towns, a mere 12 per cent have air quality monitoring systems. And, only 200 of these cities monitor all six key criteria pollutants.
The CSE analysis released in July 2023, highlighted that nearly 47 per cent of the country’s population remains outside the maximum radius of the air quality monitoring grid (manual and real time combined), while 62 per cent is outside that of the real time monitoring network.
CSE pointed out that the current monitoring network also faces the challenge of inadequate data generation, lack of data completeness and poor-quality control of monitoring. The current urban monitoring grid is concentrated in a few big cities and there are vast areas in other regions with no monitoring whatsoever.
“The bottom-up work of monitoring air quality by the rural women in Jharkhand is commendable. This is one of the ways of involving local communities in issues of health and environment that directly impact them,” said Sunil Dahiya, Founder and Lead Analyst of EnviroCatalysts, which aims to drive impactful change through data and research.
Dahiya felt the research methodology and data collection by these women could be further refined, but as it is now, it provides a good base. “It can take forward the work on creating the demand for better people-centric and action-oriented monitoring of air quality in rural parts of the country,” he said.
This study by community women is a departure from the technical, top-down models of research on air pollution and health. It employs a community-perspective to the problem, its symptoms, impacts and solutions, locally. The study bridges the gap between the academic understanding of the issue and how the communities perceive and relate to it.
Key Findings of the Rural Women-Led Study
Each Paryavaran Sakhi collected data from different spots in and around 2-3 villages in the Panchayats. They identified 26 hot spots of air pollution which had the highest average PM2.5 and PM10 readings amongst all the mapping sites. They Sakhis collected the air quality data on PM2.5 and PM10 from October to December 2022 when air pollution in the Indo-Gangetic Plains is high.
Before they did that, they were trained to handle the portable monitoring devices and monitor and record air quality and record air pollution levels.
The women followed a community research methodology. They co-designed the research tools and followed a three-stage process to track air quality in their respective areas. They recorded people’s perceptions of air pollution, tried to locate the source of the pollution and the impact it had on health, and examined the responsiveness of the health system to health ailments linked to it.
Their findings indicated that the sites in Bodiya South and Jaridih South Panchayats in Bokaro, Hathudih and Padugora Panchayats in Dhanbad, were more polluted than other places.
At least one, if not more hot spots, in these Panchayats recorded very severe concentrations of PM2.5, greater than or close to 200. All the three reading places in Bodiya South - Bokaro (bazaar, main road and colliery) recorded PM2.5 levels greater than 200.
In Hathudiha, Dhanbad, at an anganwadi centre the average PM10 values reached 290 and PM2.5 values were 174 (in November 2022); and in front of the anganwadi the levels were 365 for PM10 and 212 for PM2.5 (in December 2022).
PM2.5 levels of 0-30 are considered ‘good’, 31-60 is ‘satisfactory’, 61-90 is ‘moderate’, 91-120 is ‘poor’, 121-250 is ‘very poor’, and more than 250 PM2.5 is ‘severe’.
For PM10, levels between 0-50 are ‘good’, 51-100 ‘satisfactory’, 101-250 ‘moderate’, 251-350 is ‘poor’, 351-430 is ‘very poor’, and more than 430 is ‘severe’.
“Having air quality data has empowered us. Now we do not hesitate to ask the staff at the health centres about the health services in our area,” said Rekha Devi, a Paryavaran Sakhi from Bokaro.
Overall, the Paryavaran Sakhis identified 26 air pollution hotspots in the 10 Panchayats of Dhanbad and Bokaro districts. These included local health centres, anganwadis, community halls, and pond sites where women go to wash clothes and fetch water.
During focused group discussions with villagers, almost 80 per cent of the respondents traced the pollution in their areas to dust due to mining, transportation of coal, power plant emissions, poor waste management and cooking on coal stoves.
Mapping of health services
The Paryavaran Sakhis mapped their local health centres. They recorded the distances between the villages and their Primary Health Centres (PHC), the Community Health Centre (CHC), and the district hospitals.
In Dhanbad, they found that the average distance between a PHC and a village was between 1 km and 4 kms. The average distance between a village and the CHC was anything between 14 and 18 kms while the distance between the village and the district hospital was anything between 21 and 28 kms.
In Bokaro, the distances were greater. The average distance from a village to the PHC ranged between 5 kms and 16 kms. The average distance from the villages to a CHC was between 3 kms and 13 kms and the distance to the district hospital was anything between 40 and 45 kms.
(Nidhi Jamwal is a Mumbai-based journalist who works on environment, climate, and rural issues.)
Have you liked the news article?