india air quality

Spent a week in New Dehli a year or so ago. In some areas the air was so thick you'd swear you could measure the density of it with bathroom scales

 

Sounds very appealing.

 

Looked terrible.

My wife has been hearing on NPR that they paved over a lot of valuable farming land in order to build the track facility.

 

Define "valuable."

 

May be small change but supported a number of small farming families.

 

I've been to India more than a dozen times and big cities are as bad as it looks. Iirc Delhi has one of the worst, if not the worst air quality in the world.

 

Was it typical industrial air pollution or was it dust? I kept hearing them refer to all the dust and cleaning it off of the track?

 

I read a comparison once that said one day in Delhi is similar to smoking 40 cigarettes

 

Nope, land is very valuable there right now. One of the more expensive areas in New Dehli.

 

What odds that the original owners got paid that premium?

 

Actually the owners were government which gave the land to Jaypee development company. It was part of deal where Jaypee is building a road from Dehli to Agra through Noida for nothing and in return government gave them a big portion of land to develop the whole area, which the F1 track was part of. Farmers are pissed off because they sold the land so cheap to the government. I know land in the area is going anywhere from 300-400k an acre, so imagine how much the land is worth. I have no idea how much land was used for the track, but I am sure its quite a bit.

 

When you have 1.2 billion people and it is your custom to immolate your dead on funeral pyres, the air is not going to be great. "Look, Grand dad is here in spirit....and a bit more....in fact he is all around us!"

 

I can tell you it wasn't smoke from BBQ's.