NIFT UG 2016 Question Paper with solutions

  The Union Government’s decision to accelerate its vehicular emission norms process is as ambitious as it is audacious. Making the shift from Bharat Stage IV to VI by 2020, skipping BS-V altogether, will be a huge challenge; and it almost borders on the impossible. But before listing the many difficulties that lie ahead, it is important to properly contextualise the situation: India has no choice but to make the shift, and quickly so, towards clean energy (and green vehicles). The national capital is already the world’s most polluted city, and a dozen other Indian cities feature in the World Health Organisation’s list of 20 most polluted urban centres of the world. The situation will progressively worsen as the country develops further — adding more cars to our roads, skyscrapers to our cities, and factories to our national landscape. There is also the looming threat from climate change which puts India’s poorest and most vulnerable communities on the frontline of the environmental war. In short, these are desperate times and desperate times call for desperate measures. Unless there is a gargantuan effort to innovate and incorporate clean technologies, adopt and adapt to clean fuel, schemes, such as the current odd-even road rationing policy being tried out in Delhi, will become the norm across the country. The new policy will face two main problems: First, oil producing and marketing companies may not be able to fast track their technologies quickly enough to meet BS-VI standards and, second, automobile producers may also not be able to do the same in the reduced timeframe. For example, even four years after the introduction of BS-IV norms, the BS-IV motor spirit (petrol) and BS-IV high speed diesel are available only in 24 per cent and 16 per cent of the domestic market respectively. Similarly, auto-makers are already arguing that the new timeline is not feasible as the green technologies and designs currently in use in the US, Europe and Japan, where the equivalent of BS-VI norms are in effect, cannot be copy-pasted into the Indian system because of different local requirements. For example, Indian cars travel at much lesser speeds than their Western counterparts, making it difficult to achieve the 600 degree Celsius temperature necessary to burn the soot in the diesel particulate filters (DPF), which will be mandatory under BS-VI. Also, the DPF's will have to be re-designed to fit into the small bonnet space of most Indian cars; as a bigger car will attract greater excise duty. Then there are safety concerns about fast-tracking new technologies without properly testing them or synchronising them with existing systems. Finally, all technological upgrades will require huge sums of money, and the public will have to bear some of the cost at least in the forseeable future. These are serious challenges, and let there be no doubt that implementing the accelerated programme will be an uphill task. However, India needs to make this work. If it succeeds, it will be well worth the effort.