Everyone wants to live in the arms of Mother Nature under the soothing and relieving green environment. But with so many industries and vehicles emitting poisonous gases it is difficult to get a pollution free environment especially in metro cities. Industrialization and urbanization have led to disastrous air pollution. At one end, when the country’s GDP (Gross domestic product) rose to 2.5 times over the last two decades, in the other end vehicular pollution has seen a growth of eight times sharing 70% of the total air pollution.

Shockingly, this has put India's capital city New Delhi in the top 10 list of most populated cities in the world. Government's effort to control the air pollution could not help much due to unsupportive nature of Indian public. This was reflected by public agitation in 2001 against Supreme Court’s policy that implements all public transport vehicles in New Delhi to switch to compressed natural gas (CNG) engines. Similarly in 2000, government's attempt to ban all public vehicles that were more than 15 years old was unsuccessful due to a lack of enforcement at the local level. Continuous efforts are being made by the government to control auto emission which is the only way to check the ever rising vehicular pollution due to increasing car ownership.

Many research studies have proved that the contribution of car industry to environment pollution is immense. Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), an independent Delhi-based public interest research and advocacy organisation reveals that the Indian car industry is not up to the mark in terms of eco-friendliness. Even the leading car manufacturers scores less than 45 percent in the scale of green rating.

CSE is an organisation that started its Green Ratings project in the year 1996. It is supported by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Indian Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MOEF). According to the study done by the organisation, the automobile industry holds 35 production facilities countrywide that manufactures 80 per cent products. Total of 29 manufacturers were approached by the organisation, out of which three of them did not participated.

These comprehensive rankings are based on the engine design, the pollution control equipment, and the emission test data supplied by test agencies. Some of the interesting facts unveiled by CSE regarding the involvement of car industry in environmental pollution are mentioned below.