Opinion India’s pollution crisis is also about inclusion

The Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change estimates that air pollution contributed to over 1.7 million deaths in India in 2022, a sharp increase over the past decade. Yet the Union government told Parliament last week that there is no conclusive data to establish a direct link between air pollution and mortality, effectively disputing the crisis even as evidence mounts.

Into this vacuum steps a more palatable narrative. A recent viral video about a young entrepreneur who built a low-cost air purifier applauded him with the line: “Instead of protesting, he took matters into his own hands.”

That single sentence captures a troubling shift in public thinking. Protest is portrayed as inefficiency, private innovation as virtue. Clean air is reframed not as a shared public good, but as a personal responsibility, accessible primarily to those who can afford it. This is where India’s air crisis becomes an inclusion crisis.

Air pollution is often discussed as an environmental problem. In reality, it is one of the country’s most exclusionary public health failures. Those with resources can seal themselves indoors, install filters, and work remotely. Those without, like street vendors, sanitation workers, construction labourers, traffic police, schoolchildren, and daily commuters, breathe the worst air, all day, every day. Weak enforcement of emission norms, unregulated construction dust, inadequate waste management, stubble burning driven by policy gaps, and congested transport systems are not problems a room-level device can solve. They are structural, political, and administrative failures.

Public health experts are unequivocal. The World Health Organisation and global research bodies consistently emphasise that the most effective way to improve air quality is to control pollution at its source. Cleaner energy transitions, strict industrial and vehicular emission standards, reliable public transport, regulated construction practices, and robust municipal waste systems reduce pollution before it reaches human lungs. Air purifiers do not.

Yet purifiers are increasingly framed as solutions, even though they filter air only within a single enclosed space and do nothing for roads, buses, schools, offices, markets, or construction sites where millions spend most of their day. No consumer appliance can purify a city effectively sealed off by toxic air.

Even the claim of “affordability” collapses under scrutiny. Forbes Advisor India projects an average monthly income of Rs 28,000 for an Indian by 2025. From this, households must cover rent, food, transport, utilities, healthcare, and education. A purifier costing as low as Rs 4,000, clubbed with Rs 1,500-2,000 annually, including maintenance and electricity, is beyond reach for most. Millions earn Rs 8,000–15,000 a month. If breathing safely depends on money, inequality turns into a health risk.

India has normalised this pattern. Water purifiers compensate for unsafe water. Air purifiers now compensate for unbreathable cities. We celebrate individual workarounds while quietly absolving institutions. Over time, survival is mistaken for innovation.

The consequences are already visible: High-grade masks, indoor air monitors, sealed classrooms, and even oxygen bars. All of these signify adaptation to failure. Without decisive policy action, a future where children commute in industrial-grade masks is no longer the stuff of dystopia.

Celebrating young innovators matters, but private ingenuity cannot substitute public responsibility. Clean air requires regulation, enforcement, interstate coordination, investment in clean mobility, and sustained public pressure. When citizens are shamed for protesting and applauded for buying devices, the logic of democracy is inverted.

Delhi’s pollution is a public-health emergency and a policy failure. Clean air must be treated as a non-negotiable, inclusive public good rather than a privilege reserved for those who can afford it.

The writer is an advocate at the Delhi High Court