Opinion From the Opinions Editor: Citizens are protesting Delhi’s toxic air. The issue is much deeper than ‘severe’ AQI
The protests in Delhi are a sign – nebulous perhaps – of the sensitivity of the city’s residents towards the national capital’s clean air problem. It’s now the turn of administrators to take the next step
The tendency to treat pollution as an emergency militates against the spirit of the SC rulings. 
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Why Delhi Can’t Breathe
On Thursday, November 13, as Delhi’s Air Quality Index (AQI) breached the 400 mark for the third consecutive day, the Supreme Court issued a warning – toxic air can “permanently damage” people’s health. The Court was echoing what the Central Pollution Control Board’s (CPCB) yardsticks underline – AQI more than 400 is severe; it affects even healthy people and “seriously impacts” those with existing diseases. The SC’s warning wasn’t the first such expression of anguish. In October last year a two-judge bench said, “Time has come to remind the Union and state governments that there’s a fundamental right vesting in every citizen under Article 21… to live in a pollution-free environment….Government will have to address how they are going to address the rights of citizens to live with dignity”.
It was this language of rights that was to the fore as people gathered at India Gate in the capital last Sunday to hold the government accountable for the unbreathable air. “Parents came because their children were unable to breathe. Journalists came because they felt the same pain. Citizens came because the silence of the state had become unbearable. What united them was not ideology but the common experience of living in a city where every breath feels uncertain — where children, elders, and even the healthiest among us are slowly losing a fight we never chose,” Bhavreen Kandhari, one of the protestors, and an advocate for clean air, wrote in this newspaper (Clean air is the vaccine, every child deserves, IE, November 11).
The Delhi government reacted by detaining some of the agitators. Its answer to their demands was patently similar to responses to previous crises. Stage 3 of the Graded Response Action Plan – a mixture of bans and punitive measures – came into force.
The tendency to treat pollution as an emergency militates against the spirit of the SC rulings. It shows that the Delhi government has not given a keen ear to what the protestors were saying. As Kandhari wrote, Clean air “should be guaranteed by design – through governance that is transparent, health-centred and continuous”.
To be fair to the current Delhi government – and its predecessor – there’s been a modicum of recognition in recent years that Delhi’s air needs year-round attention. However, almost every year, there seems to be a sense of relief – even complacency – once pollution levels touch “moderate” levels. This year, the average AQI in the first nine months of the year was 164 – or moderate – the cleanest it has been since 2018, excluding the lockdown years.
But let’s scrutinise this “clean” phase. Despite ample rains, Delhi has not had a single good air day this year. It came close to having one in 2024, when the monitors registered 53. According to CPCB, an AQI below 50 poses no risk, and people can enjoy normal outdoor activity. In the first eight months of the year, Delhi also had 65 satisfactory air days – an AQI between 50 and 100 – which according to CPCB could result in “minor discomfort” for sensitive individuals.
In other words, before the emergency set in, the city experienced at least 170 days when the AQI was moderate or poorer. What does that mean in health terms? CPCB notes that when an area has an AQI in the range of 100-200, sensitive people living there may experience breathing difficulties. An AQI of more than 200 affects the “general public”, and beyond that it affects even healthy people. Square all this against the country’s well-known non-communicable disease burden, and it’s apparent that Delhi’s air quality is a health challenge even when the situation apparently does not take crisis proportions.
In recent times, policy has begun to forge links between health and the environment. But they remain sketchy. Quantifying well-being might not always be an easy task. What is needed, however, is a sensitivity to the fact that the pollution load, even when the situation is not “serious,” is inimical to people’s health.
Such sensitivity should be one step towards the “transparency” that Kandhari talks about. Empathy should foster adherence to the most basic of the transparency criteria – monitoring pollution. Report after report, including several in this newspaper, have highlighted that many of Delhi’s pollution monitors do not work, even during crisis times, or are placed at the wrong locations.
Cities that have improved air quality – London, Beijing – have done so not by implementing a singular set of measures, but by treating it as a continuous challenge. In the last three years, for instance, the Breathe London Project has mapped air quality across the city using low cost sensor systems. An important feature of London’s long fight with poor air has been the inclination of administrators, especially after the great smog of the 1950s, to take people along, especially when the situation has demanded sacrifices.
The protests in Delhi are a sign – nebulous perhaps – of the sensitivity of the city’s residents towards the national capital’s clean air problem. It’s now the turn of administrators to take the next step – they have to be vigilant through the year with a keen eye for people’s health.
Till next time
Stay safe
Kaushik Das Gupta
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