As India and the Indian diaspora celebrated Diwali on Monday, residents of New Delhi and much of north India also gasped through the start of air pollution season.
Despite a yearslong ban on Diwali firecrackers, which exacerbate the seasonal increase in pollution, a drop in temperatures at this time of year creates a blanket of smog so thick that many historical sites in New Delhi, India’s capital, become invisible. The city’s residents choke on its air, with the air quality index soaring past 350 on Monday.
Some resort to wearing masks, and the affluent have air purifiers working overtime. This Diwali, for the first time in five years, the firecracker ban was modified to allow Delhi residents to set off “green” firecrackers that produce fewer pollution particles.
But for the Indian government and bureaucracy, pollution does not appear to be an emergency. Comprehensive action plans and research into the effects of pollution are poorly implemented. In a report filed in India’s Parliament in March, the ministry responsible for pollution control said it had used less than 1 percent of the $100 million allocated to it last year.
While cities like Beijing have fundamentally fixed similar problems, New Delhi remains such a persistent chamber of toxic winter air that some political leaders have questioned its suitability as India’s capital. “It is unconscionable that our government has been witnessing this nightmare for years and does nothing about it,” Shashi Tharoor, an opposition minister, said last year on X. “Should it even remain the nation’s capital?”
What causes New Delhi’s pollution?
The sources of noxious air in New Delhi are well known: vehicles, construction, demolition, heavy industry and seasonal events including the burning of crop waste and fireworks set off during the festival season around Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights.
The air quality nose-dives to “severe” levels only in the winter because atmospheric conditions make it harder for these pollutants to be dispersed.
In recent years, stubble burning — a farming practice of setting fire to crop residue after harvesting to make way for sowing the next crop — has received a lot of attention as a source of Delhi’s pollution. Northwesterly wind carries smoke from stubble burning in two heavily agricultural neighboring states, Haryana and Punjab, to Delhi, adding to the city’s concentration of particulate matter.
Delhi sits in a landlocked plain, with mountains and plateaus on all sides. Its bowllike topography traps pollutants, unlike in other big cities in India, such as Kolkata and Mumbai, which are flanked by the sea, which helps disperse them.
But according to emissions studies conducted from 2015 to ’18 by multiple research organizations, stubble burning contributed less than 21 percent of the overall concentration of the smallest particulates, which are harmful to human health. Transport, industry, power plants, construction and demolition were much more significant sources.
What experts recommend to fix it
The Commission for Air Quality Management, which monitors and manages air quality in New Delhi and adjoining areas, has suggested a road map for using clean fuels and electric mobility, as well as for controlling municipal solid-waste burning and crop-residue burning. It has also called for strengthening air quality monitoring It also sometimes recommends emergency measures, from school closures to banning construction work, limiting commercial vehicles or mandating that offices work at half of capacity.
The obstacle, experts say, is the inefficient execution of the agency’s recommendations, partly because of a lack of personnel to enforce them and a lack of coordination. More than 15 agencies must work in tandem to carry out the proposals effectively, according to Arvind Nautiyal, a former member secretary of the group.
“The implementing agencies don’t do enough, the inspections for compliance are poorly conducted, and there is no enforcement deterrence,” he said.
The lax enforcement of the firecracker ban is a case in point. In October 2024, the Delhi government tried to crack down on the production, sale, storage and use of firecrackers just ahead of Diwali, a ban that has been in place since 2020. But with only 377 enforcement teams spread across a city of 20 million people, the ban was widely flouted.
This month, India’s Supreme Court modified the ban, allowing the use of “green crackers,” which are considered 30 percent less polluting than regular ones. But monitoring this change requires even more officials to scan the QR codes that show whether the crackers are green or not.
The lack of personnel affects other pollution control efforts, as well.
Shambhavi Shukla, a program manager at the Center for Science and Environment, says there is only one person to audit the more than 900 centers in New Delhi that grant certificates to vehicles after checking them for emission levels.
How politics gets in the way
The work also gets caught up in India’s cutthroat politics. While Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (B.J.P.) have been in power at the national level for more than a decade, the government of the capital region has been largely in the hands of one of its rivals, the Aam Aadmi Party.
Each party blames the other for New Delhi’s air-quality issues, and neither has taken responsibility. After the B.J.P. came to power in New Delhi in 2025, the capital’s new government pushed for the complete ban on firecrackers to be eased. Rekha Gupta, Delhi’s chief minister, said she wanted to balance the tradition of bursting crackers during Diwali with environmental protection.
The two parties, as well as others, have also held power in neighboring Haryana and Punjab states. Both states have laws banning stubble burning but have not complied with requests from the country’s top court for the bans to be carried out.
Persuading farmers not to practice stubble burning will require subsidies for mechanized alternatives. The Aam Aadmi Party government in Punjab has blamed the B.J.P. for not allocating enough funds.
To address vehicular pollution, successive New Delhi governments have adopted cleaner compressed natural gas for buses and trucks, phased out 10-year-old diesel and 15-year-old gasoline vehicles, and imposed charges on heavy-duty vehicles that pollute more.
But reducing pollution from cars faces a larger hurdle: public transport. The capital has 45 buses per 100,000 people, according to the Center for Science and Environment, about half those of London.
There has been some progress. The concentration of the smallest pollutants has been reduced in recent years by about 7 percent. But that is a small fraction of what’s required to achieve a meaningful improvement in air quality.
“Delhi needs another 60 percent reduction to meet the National Ambient Air Quality Standards,” Ms. Shukla said.
When will New Delhi winters see clean air?
“Please don’t ask me that question,” Mr. Nautiyal, the former pollution board official, said. “Even the gods will not be able to answer this.”
Pragati K.B. is a reporter for The Times based in New Delhi, covering news from across India.
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