India urges Australia to address students' difficulties due to travel restrictions
New Delhi, Sep 11: India on Saturday urged Australia to sympathetically address as soon as possible the difficulties being faced by Indian students due to the travel restrictions put in place by that country in view of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The issue was taken up during deliberations when External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh held the inaugural 'two-plus-two' dialogue here with their Australian counterparts Marise Payne and Peter Dutton.
"I specifically took up with Minister Payne the problems faced by Indian students in Australia and those wishing to go to Australia as well as the Indian origin community that is resident there," Jaishankar said at a press event after the talks.
Jaishankar said during the talks he urged that the difficulties faced by students due to travel restrictions be sympathetically addressed as soon as possible.
"I think their (students') frustrations, their feelings are completely understandable. Many of them would like to be at the institutions that they are already studying or want to study. So we discussed it in some detail today. Minister Payne shared with me what is Australia's thinking about when students will be able to come," he said.
Jaishankar said that the Indian government has taken up the issue of problems being faced by students due to travel restrictions not just with Australia but with other countries like the US and Canada.
"So I do want the students of the country and the parents of the students to know that it is something we take as very high priority and take up very vigorously with our foreign partners," he said.
Australian Foreign Minister Payne said she understands the desire of students and their families that are not able to be in Australia for education and their desire for on campus experience.
The COVID-19 restrictions have impacted travel to and from Australia, not just for students, but for Australians themselves and even for ministers, she said.
"We (ministers) are required to comply with the same sort of quarantine restrictions and health requirements as all incoming travellers as you would expect. So our approach in Australia has been based on research and modelling commissioned by the government from the eminent Doherty institute and that gives us a four-phase pathway in terms of our response to COVID-19 and our progression through and out of the restrictions that have been in place," Payne said.
She said her country is on the way to vaccinating Australians to a level which will give Australia the confidence to begin the sort of reopening that will enable students to return in phase three and then in phase four, a much more opened environment for international travel.
"There is shared desire on both sides to see that travel resume between our countries as soon as it is safe to do so. I look forward to being one of the people at the airport to welcome the first arrivals of Indian students coming back to Australia," she said.
Earlier, Jaishankar said he and the other ministers came together for the first time and also discussed their experiences and further collaboration in responding to the COVID-19 challenges.
Decentralised globalisation, strategic autonomy and sharper sense of national security are some of the relevant outcomes, he noted.
"We also underlined our commitments to creating secure and resilient global supply chains. We welcomed the renewed vigour with which both sides are now engaging on trade issues to fully expedite the complementarities between us," Jaishankar said.
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Cong slams govt on rising pollution, demands review of National Ambient Air Quality Standards
New Delhi (PTI): Expressing concern over rising pollution levels, the Congress on Sunday demanded an urgent review and upgradation of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards, 2009, and asserted that they must be enforced as well as monitored more effectively everywhere.
Taking a swipe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh said, "PM 56-inch has been exposed, PM 2.5 is for real."
Ramesh also said the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) itself needs a laser-like focus on PM2.5.
"PM2.5 that is, particulate matter with a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometers or lower measured in micrograms per cubic meter of air as emerged as the cause for a severe environment-public health crisis across the country," the former environment minister said on X.
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A study published in The Lancet Planetary Health in December 2024, based on data from 655 districts over 2009-2019, found that every 10 microgram per cubic metre increase in PM2.5 concentration leads to an 8.6% increase in mortality, Ramesh pointed out.
The 2025 Lancet Countdown estimates that about 17.2 lakh Indians die every year from exposure to PM2.5, a 38% increase since 2010, he said.
The Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change has repeatedly told Parliament in 2024, 2025 and again in 2026 that deaths on account of air pollution "cannot be conclusively established", he pointed out.
Meanwhile, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), the Health Ministry's own research body, has endorsed the Lancet findings, attributing 12.4 lakh deaths in 2017 to air pollution, that is 12.5% of all deaths that year, Ramesh said.
Now, the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) has done a detailed analysis of the data generated by the continuous ambient air quality monitoring stations operated by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), he said, adding that the data covers the period October 1, 2025 to February 2026 for 238 cities.
The conclusions are very disturbing and should be yet another wake-up call to all those who are in denial mode, he said.
Citing the analysis, Ramesh said none of the 238 cities complied with the WHO safe guidelines for PM2.5.
"In 204 of the 238 cities PM2.5 concentrations were above the levels set by the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) that were promulgated way back in November 2009. Subsequently, the WHO announced its updated safe guideline in September 2021," Ramesh said.
The Indian standard for the annual average concentration of PM2.5 is now 8 times weaker than the WHO guideline, he said.
The National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) launched in 2019 has made very little impact on PM2.5 concentrations, he claimed.
PM2.5 concentrations complied with the NAAQS, 2009 safe level only in 12 of the 96 NCAP cities, Ramesh pointed out.
"Over Rs 13,400 crore has been released under NCAP and XV Finance Commission grants since inception, with 68% spent on road dust management.The NCAP benchmarks itself against PM10, the coarser and less lethal pollutant, not PM2.5," he said.
While the top polluted cities are in the National Capital Region covering Delhi and parts of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, other states like Punjab, West Bengal, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Bihar, Odisha and Madhya Pradesh have a very high proportion of polluted cities that exceed the standards, Ramesh said.
There are 50 cities where continuous data availability is less than 80%, while there are some monitoring stations where no data was available for even a single day, Ramesh said.
"The National Ambient Air Quality Standards, 2009 need urgent review and upgradation. They also must be enforced and monitored more effectively everywhere. In addition, the NCAP itself needs a laser-like focus on PM2.5," the Congress leader asserted.
