From Smog to Silence
I am writing this from a closed room in West Delhi. The air filter hums tirelessly beside me, an N95 mask still clings to my face, and yet there is that never-ending smoky odour, the annual perfume of our national capital. While my throat continues to remain sore with a persistent cough not daring to step out. But as you step outside, you find the majority of the commuters red-eyed, many congested, clutching handkerchiefs or wearing masks. In hospitals, paediatric wards are overflowing. NGOs warn that children’s lungs are being scarred for life. Doctors speak of reduced immunity, heart ailments, and long-term respiratory distress. Yet, outside these sealed rooms and clinics, Delhi continues to choke, and nobody seems truly accountable.
The Air Quality Index (AQI) crossed 400 this week, officially “severe.” In some pockets, monitors recorded an unimaginable 600. The air, according to AQI.in, is equivalent to smoking 13.9 cigarettes a day. PM2.5 levels hover around 398 micrograms per cubic metre, twenty-six times the World Health Organisation’s safe limit. The Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) has enforced Stage III of the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP), banning non-essential construction, restricting BS-III petrol and BS-IV diesel vehicles, and halting industrial operations using unapproved fuels. Schools have been shut for younger children, and the rest have moved online. Diesel trucks have vanished from the roads. Yet, the smog remains unmoved, mostly dense, grey, unrelenting.
Each year, this crisis unfolds like a well-rehearsed tragedy. Around October, the winds slow, farmers in Punjab and Haryana burn leftover paddy stubble, and the capital transforms into a gas chamber. Meteorologists can predict it. Doctors can warn about it. Governments can plan for it. But they do not. Instead, they react, always late, always in panic, and always as if surprised. And by February, as winter recedes and the winds shift, the outrage fades. The air clears, our conscience clears with it, and we go back to our old routines until the next November. This is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made failure of policy, of governance, and most dangerously, of civic sense.
Delhi’s air crisis is not new. It has persisted for over a decade, worsened by rapid urbanisation, unplanned expansion, and sheer administrative lethargy. Each government. at the Centre and State in Delhi, and in neighbouring states has promised “long-term solutions.” Yet, none has built the political will to implement them. Policies are announced with much fanfare and forgotten with equal ease. Whether it is Delhi’s much-hyped odd-even vehicle scheme, the push for electric buses, or the introduction of GRAP, all have been cosmetic, episodic, and reactionary. This year, there was talk of “cloud seeding” artificial rain to wash away the smog. The environment minister in Delhi went on air promising that Delhi’s air would soon be “cleaned.” The two attempt in collaboration with IIT Kanpur failed, but nobody knows why it happened? What is the next step? The GRAP, too, though well-intentioned, remains a blunt instrument. Banning construction and diesel vehicles every winter is not environmental governance; it is an annual emergency brake on the city’s economy. What Delhi needs is not reactive shutdowns but proactive transformation: year-round enforcement of emission standards, investment in clean public transport, and strict control over industrial pollution and waste burning.
The Blame Game
Every winter, the political blame game resumes its predictable cycle. The Delhi government blames Punjab for stubble burning. Punjab blames the Centre for not providing incentives to farmers. The Centre blames weather patterns. And citizens blame everyone else. In this theatre of excuses, no one emerges accountable. Satellite data this week showed over 1000 farm fires across Punjab, Haryana, and western Uttar Pradesh. Stubble burning contributes roughly 10 percent of Delhi’s PM2.5 on any given day, but its psychological weight is far larger. It is the visible villain in a story that conveniently obscures Delhi’s own emissions: vehicular traffic, construction dust, and rampant waste burning within the city. The truth is, even without stubble smoke, Delhi’s air would still be toxic. The city produces enough of its own poison.
A Public Failure Too
It is easy, and often justified, to blame the government. But we, the residents of Delhi, are not innocent victims. We are active contributors to the smog we breathe. We drive diesel SUVs for two kilometres. We burn garbage in back lanes. We insist on Diwali fireworks despite warnings. We leave construction debris uncovered. We keep gardens green in December using groundwater pumped by diesel generators. Our civic sense, much like our air, is in decay. Until citizens internalise that clean air is not a privilege but a collective duty, nothing will change. Environmental discipline cannot be legislated; it must be lived. When we talk of “the government,” we forget that governance begins with individual responsibility, segregating waste, using public transport, reducing private emissions, and holding officials accountable not only in crisis but year-round.
The tragedy of Delhi’s pollution is that it’s both visible and invisible. You can see the smog, but not the slow damage it inflicts. The Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago estimated last year that residents of Delhi are losing nearly 10 years of life expectancy due to air pollution. That’s not an abstract statistic. it means an entire generation will live shorter, sicker lives because of the air they breathe. Hospitals are already reporting spikes in respiratory infections, asthma, and COPD.
The symbolism of Delhi today is chilling. Citizens walk in masks, not to protect themselves from disease but from their own environment. Air purifiers have become household essentials, a symbol of survival. Yet, these gadgets offer no real protection. They merely create micro-bubbles of breathable air in a city suffocating itself. We cannot purify our way out of this. it needs a lasting solution that lies in accountability of the violators as well as structural change like cleaner energy, electric mobility, strict emission control, and long-term reforestation. But these require continuity, not crisis-driven governance. They demand coordination among multiple states, consistent funding, and a public that refuses to accept suffocation as normal.
Former Jammu and Kashmir DGP Shesh Paul Vaid wrote recently after a short visit to Delhi: “My family and I returned to Jammu after 15 days in New Delhi, and we are all in bad shape — severe throat pain, running noses, a constant burning sensation as if we’ve inhaled a thousand cigarettes. If this is what short-term visitors experience, imagine the suffering of Delhi’s children and elderly. If this humanitarian crisis doesn’t jolt the governments into action, what will?”
That question must haunt not only policymakers but every Delhiite. Where is the accountability? Why have Supreme Court orders, environmental fines, and public outrage yielded so little? Why has Delhi, the seat of India’s political power, become its environmental embarrassment? Every winter, Delhi becomes a cautionary tale. The world watches in disbelief as Delhi turns unlivable. We have grown used to this gas chamber, treating it as a seasonal inconvenience rather than a national shame, as many foreign tourists, citizens, including some embassy staff, want to skip Delhi in winter or smog months. Clean air is not a luxury, nor an impossible dream. It is a constitutional right, and it demands a moral awakening from citizens who care enough to act and governments that care enough to plan. Until civic sense prevails and governance shifts from rhetoric to reform, we will keep writing this same editorial, behind closed windows, in rooms that smell faintly of smoke, wondering if next winter will be any different.
