Opinion To clean Delhi’s air, change the way it moves
If Delhi is serious about addressing air pollution, it must treat public transport not as a supplementary option but as the backbone of urban life.
Cleaner air will not come from asking people to stay home for a week, but from making it easier and more desirable for millions to move together every day. Each winter, as the skies turn white and we reach for our shawls and mufflers, Delhi’s dismal air quality is framed as an emergency requiring short-term fixes: Odd-even schemes, school closures, construction bans. But the air we breathe is shaped less by these stop-gap measures and more by our year-round, everyday habits of movement, and the infrastructures that support them. How we get around — by bus, bike, metro, car, or on foot — is not a personal choice so much as a structural imposition. For this reason, the Delhi government’s recently announced plan to add more buses, revamp routes, and increase the budget for regional rail and metro lines deserves serious attention.
Transport is one of the main causes of Delhi’s air pollution, and it is also one of the few areas where policy can create real change. The current government proposals, which include electric buses and improved coordination with the Metro, are not just technical fixes. They are social interventions that shape who moves easily through the city, who bears the burden of pollution, and whose lives are constrained by distance and time.
Over 12 years of riding and researching the Delhi Metro, documented in my book Metronama: Scenes from the Delhi Metro (Roli, 2022), I came to see public transport not only as infrastructure but as a transformative social space that led to a new culture of commuting in the city. The Metro also reorganised the urban landscape, compressing distance and creating a standard experience of travel from centers to peripheries. It allowed a college student from Badarpur to imagine a future beyond her neighbourhood, a barber from East Delhi to get to work in a dignified manner, and countless women to claim mobility in a city that often restricts or even shames their presence in public space.
Yet the Metro alone cannot bear the weight of urban mobility needs or pollution burdens. Buses still move far more people across shorter and more irregular routes. And when buses fail, due to overcrowding, lack of a predictable schedule, or by their very absence, people are pushed toward two-wheelers, autos, and ride-hailing cabs, intensifying congestion and emissions.
This is why a renewed emphasis on and investment in DTC buses matters. Electric buses are often lauded because of carbon reduction, but their social implications are just as important. Clean buses running frequently and on predictable schedules make public transport desirable rather than a chore. A state-of-the-art bus system signals that public transit is not a residual service for those who cannot afford private vehicles, but a civic good worthy of investment.
The key is integration, which, if the government is serious about its investment, will create a new structure where transport options work in concert with one another. Metro stations often sit amid chaotic streetscapes, disconnected from bus stops, pedestrian infrastructure, and last-mile services. This interface or “seam” between systems is where many commuters give up and turn to private cars, motorbikes, or Ola cabs. Once the word gets out about how good or bad a system is, people plan accordingly, routines are made, habits hardened. Meanwhile, particulate matter accumulates not just from long commutes in motorised vehicles but from these fractured transitions.
There is also a larger political question. Delhi’s urban development has long privileged roads, flyovers, and car-oriented visions of progress. Road infrastructures benefit a minority while spewing pollution onto the majority, especially those who live near arterial roads or work outdoors. The air pollution crisis highlights how social and health outcomes are intertwined across class, caste, and locality. Where cars emit and take up space, public transport redistributes urban benefits by sharing space and offering affordability. It makes the city accessible by translating transport mobility into social mobility.
If Delhi is serious about addressing air pollution, it must treat public transport not as a supplementary option but as the backbone of urban life. This means sustained funding, not pilot projects; fare policies that prioritise affordability; and a cultural shift away from equating mobility with private ownership. It also means resisting the temptation to see electrification as a silver bullet. Electric buses running in traffic-choked corridors still waste time and energy.
The air pollution crisis demands multi-pronged structural rather than magical thinking. Cleaner air will not come from asking people to stay home for a week, but from making it easier and more desirable for millions to move together every day. Delhi already has the beginning of such a system for sustainable mobility. The task now is to make it seamless, equitable, and central to how we imagine and enact the city’s future.
Sadana is a professor of anthropology at George Mason University and the author of Metronama: Scenes from the Delhi Metro and English Heart, Hindi Heartland: The Political Life of Literature in India
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