Title	Urban air quality issues in India
Collaborators	Milind Kandlikar (CMU), Gurumurthy Ramachandran (Minnesota)
Keywords	India, energy, pollution, human health, air quality
Abstract	Environmental quality is rapidly becoming a major issue in urban India. Indian cities suffer from some of the worst air quality problems in the world, and water pollution continues to be a major public health issue. Further, if the urbanization and rapid industrialization foreseen in the next decade materialize, the technology and environment nexus will only assume greater importance. This project includes analyzing the drivers of urban pollution (the key pollutants, their sources), the social dimensions (health risks, economic issues), the technological dimensions, the political-legal framework (what laws are in place, what is enforced, what is not, and why not), and the relevant institutional dimensions (the networks of industry and multinationals, citizens groups, politicians, world bank, NGOs). Kandlikar (CMU) and Ramachandran (School of Public Health - Minnesota) are performing a preliminary scoping study on this topic. Study of urban air pollution is one example of targeted and potentially "high-payoff" efforts. The broader point here is that identifying key technology related studies and targeting intellectual resources towards them is a strategy that center might wish to adopt.