The Aam Aadmi Party has conceptualised a brand new strategy to combat rising air and water pollution levels. The Delhi government, in partnership with the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools will fund 2 crore Rupees into start-ups that can help curb the rising pollution levels in the city with ingenious ideas.
The Government had hence opened up the ‘Urban Labs Innovation Challenge: Delhi’ for prospective start-ups early yesterday. The Delhi Dialogue Commission started by AAP, will work together with the Energy and Environment Lab at University of Chicago, Urban Labs and the Energy Policy Institute at University of Chicago’s Centre in Delhi (EPIC-India) to implement the project.
AAP founded the Delhi Dialogue Commission to promote ideas that can make a difference. Start-ups can propose their ground plan to the Government of Delhi before March, 2016.
Organizations, agencies, students, and researchers across India with promising programs or interventions that address energy and environmental challenges in Delhi.
The Delhi government has also set up a panel comprising of eminent leaders, policy makers, and experts from the field of environment protection and sustainable energy sector. The jury will evaluate the ideas put forth by the start-ups and recommend them to a committee comprised of representatives from University of Chicago and Delhi Dialogue Commission, who will finalise the best idea and choose the winning start up that will receive 2 crore rupees investment.
With the technical and financial help from University of Chicago, the Government of Delhi will open a challenge for all citizens of the country to come forward and pilot their ideas to solve major problem of pollution on a big scale.
The AAP government even took to twitter to promote the challenge and tweeted :
Delhi Government will provide seed funding of Rs 2 crores for the best idea, test it and scale it up across Delhi to combat pollution.
Once the winner is decided by the committee, the start-up will be working together with Energy and Environment Lab to physically manifest their idea. The start-ups and the research team at the lab will be designing ways to implement the idea and test the project on a trial basis.
The team from University of Chicago had earlier come to the aid of Gujarat and helped in reducing pollution levels in the capital by a margin of as much as 28 per cent.
This announcement by the Delhi Government comes amid growing health concerns caused by hazardous pollution levels in the national capital. The US Embassy’s pollution-monitoring stations registered a new record for the levels of pollution recorded in the city on November 27.
The data gathered showed that the pollution levels stood at 999 on the Air Quality Index designed the pollution monitoring team. This came as a warning to the residents of the city and was followed by an outcry by the media, prompting the Delhi government to take drastic measures.
In a separate report compiled by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2014 India is ranked among the most polluted nations of the world, with 13 of its cities featuring in among the top 20 polluted cities of the world.
FEATURED IMAGE : FLICKR // CC 2.0 // Jean-Etienne Minh-Duy Poirrier
