The Foreign Service Journal, September 2015

38 SEPTEMBER 2015 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL further up the decision-making food chain and press for a change of approach. For any individual, how that tension plays out depends on a host of different factors ranging from personal relations with colleagues and supervisors and the frankness with which you feel you can convey your views, to the importance you attach to getting a policy right. Looking back on the past two years of my work in New Delhi, it has been very satisfying to see the U.S. policy approach I advocated on air pollution move from one of dissent to one of high-level support and action. I have drawn some lessons from this experience. If you feel you are right on principle, stand up for your view, listen to those who don’t agree, find ways to address their con- cerns, build alliances with those who are likeminded, make sure the facts are on your side and choose your timing wisely. When all those pieces come together, you really can make a difference. Identify the Problem and Decide to Speak Up As anyone who has flown into New Delhi will tell you, one of the first things you notice as you land is a thick cover of smog that envelops the city most days. Those first impressions provide an initial inkling of the scale of New Delhi’s—and, more broadly, India’s—air pollution problem. Thanks to extensive coverage over the past year by the New York Times, other international media outlets and, increasingly, the Indian media; sobering reports from the World Health Organiza- tion and other bodies; and an expanding body of research by scientists from a host of eminent universities, we now know that Indian cities suffer from some of the worst levels of air pollution ever recorded. WHO’s Global Burden of Disease 2010 study, released in 2012 and considered the gold standard in global epidemiology, estimated that air pollution is the fifth greatest risk factor for premature death in India, claiming more than 630,000 lives each year. When I arrived in New Delhi with my family in August 2013 to start our assignment, the U.S. mission—thanks to the hard work of those who had preceded me at post—had already installed five EPA-standard air quality monitors (AQM) at our embassy in New Delhi and at the four U.S. consulates in Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Hyderabad. New Delhi’s bad air was already an increasingly distressing issue for many in the embassy community, as well as for many Indians. Samuel Kotis (far left) shows Embassy New Delhi’s air quality monitor to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Indian government air quality experts during the EPA team's March 3-7 visit to New Delhi. The EPA visit was a direct follow-up to President Barack Obama’s January trip to India in which he and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi agreed to cooperate on air quality. COURTESYOFU.S.EMBASSYNEWDELHI One of the major daily papers started an air pollution box that included Embassy New Delhi data every day, and the level of discussion among Indians and expats alike continued to rise.