For advertisement on our platform, do call at +91 6377460764 or email us at [email protected].
Just as winter descends over North India, so does the smog, the poisonous mixture of automobile airings, factory fumes, burning crop waste, and seasonal spurts of festival lights such as Diwali. In 2024 Air Quality Index (AQI) in Delhi regularly reached highs of 400 and above and highs of 732 µg/m 3 of PM 2.5 – 146 times the 5 µg/m 3 safe level recommended by the World Health Organization.
There is no saving grace this year: the 2024 World Air Quality Report has included 74 of India’s cities in the list of 100 worst-polluted cities in the world, with Delhi being the smogiest capital with 91.6 µg/m 3 /year.
The countries in the north bear the most, with Stubble burning being the largest contributor of up to 30 percent of the haze in Northern states such as Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan, making the respiratory diseases even more severe claiming over 2.1 million lives in the country in 2021.
However, when this is occurring against the backdrop of a national health disaster, there is a sharp irony of position when Prime Minister Narendra Modi, surrounded by luxury air purifiers in his official home, and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) encourages people to release firecrackers in the name of tradition. It is a story of high-end seclusion versus commonplace suffocation, the gap between rhetoric and reality in the fight of air pollution in India.The Elite Bubble: Air Purifiers to the Few That is the Philips AC1217/20, which is a premium air purifier that costs approximately INR 14000 and has a HEPA filtration that traps 99.97% of the 0.003 micron or smaller particles.
It supports 1000 scans per second with smart sensors and a clean air delivery rate that is 260 m 3 /h, which is ideal in rooms as small as 62 square meters, ideal in executive suites.
When only one can be seen in pictures in the streets, consider the weapons laid down training in 340 rooms of the Presidential Palace, or the home of Modi in 7 Lok Kalyan Marg. Dozens? Hundreds? INR 14,000 per unit, that is a fortune, filtered bliss, but still a drop in the ocean when compared to the annual budget of the government. In the slums of Delhi, where the smog is so severe that it is striking air you breathe, the families are cooking on open fires, which causes them to inhale PM2.5 levels that are to the extent of a cigarette pack per day. An Artha Centre of Rapid Insights survey of 2025 revealed that 56% of families in polluted north states reported respiratory problems caused by pollution and that 70% of them missed work or school days- and young adults aged 18-30 were the worst affected at over 60%.
Air purifiers are the new standard of the BJP leaders who are enjoying their stay in the Lutyens bungalows around Delhi, and the 1.4 billion rest of Indian society are left to dream about air purifiers as prices skyrocket and salaries remain stagnant.Firecrackers Over Fresh Air: Tradition or Toxic Neglect?Enter the festival season and BJP rhetoric collides with the pleas of the mass of people to breathe clean air: a dream of an air cleaner. Although the Supreme Court regulations restricted the use of green crackers to two hours windows (8-10 PM on Diwali), party leaders have continually linked any attempts to restrict them as an attack on Hindu culture.
Union Minister Pralhad Joshi in October 2024 dismissed the eco-friendly requirements of Karnataka by saying that it was a mere piece of paper and that people who wished to burst firecrackers will still do so no matter what.
BJP vice-president Kapil Mishra also went ahead and rejoiced Diwali 2023 defiance as voices of freedom and democracy against an unscientific, illogical, dictatorial ban, even as AQI in Delhi shot up to 999+ overnight.
This isn’t isolated. In 2024, BJP criticised the ban on the blanket use of crackers in Delhi citing it as an insult to sentiments whereas the party criticised other parties like AAP who are taking the same action.
Now that BJP is in power in Delhi, they relaxed further and gave green crackers during October 18-21 when despite the AQI already passing 300, the green crackers were given.
The hypocrisy was nailed by Trinamool Congress MP Saket Gokhale: BJP is strangling you and your children with their Hindu pride… These affluent netas cohabit surrounded by several air purifiers in Lutyens houses.
Firecrackers, including green, emit barium nitrate and sulfur dioxide, aggravating the haze, which keeps trapping the bowl-shaped topography of North India.
Plans on Paper, Smog in the StreetsWhere the grand strategy is? In 2019, the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP) was initiated and was to be implemented by reducing PM10 by 40 percent by 2025-26 in 132 cities with support of INR 9,000 crore.
share.america.gov
However, as the CREA Progress Report (2025) shows, the picture is rather foggy: 47 out of 253 cities under surveillance are up to standard in 2024, and PM2.5, which is even more deadly than PM10, is barely touched upon.
energyandcleanair.org
The Winter Action Plan 2025-26 of Delhi boasts of 25 initiatives, including 200 road sweepers to electric vehicle charging stations, but analysts scoff at it as medicine to a patient nearing death without addressing the cause such as coal plants or transboundary smog.
Adaptation is central to the Economic Survey 2024-25, which instead makes fossil fuel efficiency a priority, despite the cost of pollution being 5 percent of GDP and the fact that it is associated with 3.8 million excess deaths each year.
Such innovations as the emissions markets in Gujarat have potential, but expansion of such innovation also demands the abandonment of the “Licence Raj” bureaucracy.
In the meantime, stubble burners in Punjab are desperate, industries are rogue, and traffic is jamming the roads, not because of unstoppable air pollution, but because the system needs to be fixed.A Call for Breathable ChangeThis is not the air crisis in India, but the air pollution crisis created by the lack of action. Whereas Modi inhales, lakh-worth of clean air, millions of other humans puff in the open. When the BJP fortifies against the culture of its affluent, it solidly puts the masses in harm’s way. That is real leadership, grit all year round: impose NCAP stricter, pay off purifiers who can afford it, prohibit crackers with barium in them, and invest in alternatives to stubble burning in the country. With the 2024-25 season of smog approaching, North India should not just be subject to a view through the window, but clear air should be enjoyed by everyone.
