Since my early visits to India in the mid 1990s it is true to say that there has been something of a revolution in air quality in many of the cities here. In my last blog I mentioned the Taj Mahal. Vehicles are now banned from within 0.5 km of the fragile marble structure lest pollution destroys its beauty. This ban is complete and even the surrounding lawns were being cut by oxen pulling an industrial sized mower, instead of the usual noisy and dirty petrol-driven contraptions.

Polluting vehicles are banned from the Taj Mahal, so mowing green is the order of the day.
Photo © copyright Bob Spicer

However in Delhi in 1998 I remember literally choking on black soot-laden air in the evening rush hour. Most of the pollution was coming from the small three-wheeled autorickshaws or “tuk-tuks”. These ran on low-grade fossil fuel that was inefficiently burned in unsophisticated engines. Now all that has changed. In a draconian move, at the time unpopular but necessary, such vehicles were banned from the road across India and replaced with tuk-tuks running on compressed natural gas (CNG). This burns cleaner without the sooty particulates and can be made from renewable sources such as farm waste.

In Agra I saw what must have been close to a hundred tuk-tuks waiting in line to be filled with CNG. These vehicles, and their slightly larger cousins the Vikrams (which also run on CNG) provide a valuable public service in that for the modest sum of around 8 rupees (approximately 10p) you can be taken across town some 4km. This is often an exciting ride dodging in and out of the traffic, going the wrong way up dual carriageways and careering around the inevitable cow, buffalo or even elephant. However in a Vikram almost always you are sharing the experience with up to ten others crammed into a space about the size of the interior of a smallest of UK family cars - friendly, but very efficient.

Upon my return to Lucknow I went to the BBC News website to catch up on world events only to find an email there from someone recently returned from India. They had been stunned by the apparent road chaos here and complained that any attempt by the government to encourage “green” behaviour in the UK would be entirely negated by traffic growth in countries like India.

This is an often-used excuse for us in the more affluent parts of the world to do nothing in respect of tackling climate change. However it betrays a misunderstanding of the nature of traffic here. In India per capita private car ownership is a mere fraction of what it is in the UK, the cars are, on the whole, much smaller, and the vast majority of vehicles are, like the tuk-tuks and Vikrams, public service vehicles.

In Lucknow at least 20% of road vehicles are pedal rickshaws operated by farmers who rent the rickshaws by the day for around 30 rupees and make a living between sowing and harvesting taking people around the city in a low pollution, low carbon, way. Scooters and small motorcycles also abound. Although not very clean, they have a far better fuel consumption than the average UK car which on the commute runs tend to carry only the driver.

To be sure, as the Indian economy grows the car manufacturers will do their best to encourage the new Indian affluent to indulge their fantasies of the great green outdoors by driving all over it and destroying it further. TV ads here show a big, bright, shiny 4x4 charging across pristine wetland wilderness churning it into a quagmire, all in the name of appreciating “the environment”.

If only one in a hundred Indians bought such a vehicle, and did as the ads suggest, it would mean 10 million of them trashing the countryside. The antisocial consequences of owning such vehicles for purely leisure purposes, whether in the countryside or in towns (where, if you are interested in going anywhere, or even parking, small is practical), are becoming obvious here just as they are in the UK.

In cities and towns like Lucknow the smart money is on the status quo in that it represents high fuel efficiency per capita and low cost. However things are far from perfect. If only people here would obey some kind of highway code things would operate even better. As it is, it appears to be the one in front who has the right of way and it seems that nobody ever signals, looks left, right, or in their mirror before manoeuvring! At times it just seems like survival of the fittest.

About the author

Bob Spicer is Professor of Earth Sciences at the Open University. Founding Director of the OU's Centre for Earth, Planetary Space and Astronomical Research (CEPSAR) his interests are broad. However he is most at home when studying how plants can be used to tell us about ancient climates, and how that information can help us plan for managing our planet in the future.

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It was 11.30 pm at Lucknow railway station and it was still hot – around 30 °C. As I gazed out of the train window I saw crowds milling on the next platform, a sort of human Brownian motion, in the middle of which was a cow placidly oblivious to all the frantic activity. Chewing as only cows chew. Then I realised that that particular platform is only accessible by footbridge….

As I pondered the cow’s presence the train started to move, imperceptibly at first, and then itslowly gathered speed. I was on my way to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. The overnight three tier AC compartment was crowded and I climbed on to my pre-assigned top bunk. There was not quite enough room to sit up below the carriage roof. It was a clear drop of two metres to the floor. Combined with the swaying of the train it was enough to generate the unlikely combination of vertigo and claustrophobia. Amazingly I slept well.

Just after dawn the train rattled over the Yamuna River Bridge and through the open carriage door I peered down to where people were washing clothes on the river banks. By 7 am I had arrived at the Taj Mahal and, as it hung in the soft morning light, it lived up to all that has been said about it, and more.

The rest of the day I travelled all over Agra taking in the sights. There was so much to see within the city but I took the time to travel the 40 km out to Fatehpur Sikri. This magnificent red sandstone complex was built by the Mughal Emperor Akbar who briefly made it his capital. Fortunately the Jama Masjid mosque is in good repair and is one of the finest examples of Indo-Islamic architecture. Much of the rest of the complex is largely in ruins now, the victim of water shortages that became apparent soon after it was completed around 1571. Water, or rather the lack of it, has been a constant issue for the northwestern part of India and is likely to remain so under foreseeable future climate change scenarios.

The 54 metre high Buland Darwaza Gate at the entrance to the Jama Masjid Mosque.
[Photo © copyright Bob Spicer]

The persistence of this problem and the dependency on the monsoon rains was brought home to me recently during a talk given by a PhD student, Vartika Singh, who was reporting on her work as part of the Quaternary Research Group here at BSIP. This group has made detailed studies of climate change in northwestern India over the past ten thousand years using, alongside the more conventional studies of fossil pollen, diatoms and dinoflagellates, magnetostratigraphy and radiocarbon dating techniques, and things called grass phytoliths.

Phytoliths are made of silica (like sand) and are secreted within and between cells. Amongst other things they serve as a deterrent against browsing. To counter this, grass-eating animals like the cow on Lucknow station, have developed teeth that constantly grow as they are worn down by the abrasive action of the phytoliths. Incidentally we see the same plant/animal “arms race” towards the end of the Cretaceous Period of geological history when similar dental replacement systems evolved in herbivorous dinosaurs. Grass-like phytoliths have been found in fossil dinosaur dung. Because there is no evidence in the Cretaceous for extensive grasslands the dinosaurs may well have also been feeding on the ancestors of modern horsetails or scouring rushes (Equisetum). These appear just about everywhere in the Cretaceous. Equisetum also possess phytoliths, which is why they can be used to scour pots and pans.

A dumbell-shaped grass phytolith. 100 placed end-to-end would measure 1 mm.  Image © copyright Bob Spicer ]

It turns out that phytoliths have shapes that are specific to particular kinds of grasses and, unlike the organic remains of the grasses, they preserve well in dry and semi dry environments. This means they are ideal for recording changes in vegetation in such drought-prone regions.

The work of Vertika Singh and colleagues shows that there have been significant changes over the last ten thousand years in the strength of the monsoon winds coming on to northwestern India from the Arabian Sea. These have affected the distribution of rainfall throughout the year. A weakened monsoon results in lower summer rainfall but wetter winters. A stronger monsoon leads to wetter summers but drier winters.

A weak monsoon and a more even distribution of rainfall coincided with the rise of the world’s earliest . Weakening of the monsoon occurred gradually from around 5,500 years ago and the weakening became more marked between 3,600 and 3,400 years ago. Thereafter, a strengthening monsoon led to winter drying and a decline in the Indus Valley agriculture and society.

Remembering that the Indus Valley agriculture supported the world’s first large scale cities and was the source of many aspects of Indian and global culture today, the influence of the monsoon on human history has been profound. However at present the interpretation of phytolith and other data in terms of monsoon dynamics necessarily remains a little speculative.

The next stage in this fascinating research is to apply the same techniques to the area that drives the monsoon - the Tibetan Plateau. Here aridity and a mainly grass-dominated vegetation favour phytolith studies. If changes in vegetation and climate on the plateau can be accurately characterised and dated, they can be compared to coincidental changes in northwestern India. By understanding better the Tibetan Plateau/monsoon links in this way it should be possible to predict more reliably future rainfall patterns upon which so many people in Asia depend.

About the author

Bob Spicer is Professor of Earth Sciences at the Open University. Founding Director of the OU's Centre for Earth, Planetary Space and Astronomical Research (CEPSAR) his interests are broad. However he is most at home when studying how plants can be used to tell us about ancient climates, and how that information can help us plan for managing our planet in the future.

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