It's bizarre to say the least!

The pollution in Delhi remains choking; last year there was the odd-even strategy but this year, maybe the Govt thinks that the air quality is good and really, no steps have been taken. Everyone is probably so caught up in the demonetization impact that air quality is the last thing on their mind! But if one may recollect, the pollution blame was laid fair and square on the farmers of neighbouring Punjab and Haryana for their paddy burning.

Well, Chinese state media seems to have come out with its own unique and bizarre reasoning too. It has said that the greasy stir-fry is causing pollution. The editorial warned people that fumes from cooking with oil were a major cause of air pollution in urban cities. They have even corroborated this with some facts - test done in Changsha, a western Chinese city known for its spicy cuisine, a plate of stir-fried chilli peppers cooked at high heat could send PM2.5 readings off the charts. The article claims that cooking fumes make up some 13% of PM2.5 in Beijing’s air, 6% in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Metropolitan Region, and 14% in Guangzhou.

This is worse than ridiculous and jokes have started spanning across the world. Does this the Chinese were eating raw meat for so many years and now only now started cooking? Maybe the household kitchens in China should adopt the odd-even formula of cooking?

As an energy campaigner rightly put it - air pollution problem originates from China’s reliance on coal, which needs a long-term solution. Traffic and cooking restrictions might temporarily help reduce the peak level of pollution, but it cannot ultimately solve the problem.

Somewhere this rings true for India too – not the cooking part but surely the dependence on coal part.