Delhi Trudges Through Another Air Pollution Nightmare

On Tuesday morning, the air quality in India’s capital under a widely used index stood at 485. While that is almost five times the threshold for healthy breathing, it felt like a relief: The day before, the reading had shot up to 1,785. Infinitesimal air particles were still clogging lungs and arteries, but it was possible to see sunlight again, and to smell things.

“My eyes have a burning feeling during these periods of pollution,” said Vikram Singh, 58, an auto-rickshaw driver in central Delhi, who noted that he also tires more quickly. “I don’t know what else is happening to my body, on the inside.” He earns less, too, just $6 per day instead of his usual $8.30.

Every year this suffocating smog accompanies the drop in temperatures as the plains of north India shed their unbearable heat for wintertime cool. And like clockwork, political leaders roll out emergency measures intended to quit making the problem worse. Yet India seems powerless to reduce the effects of this public health catastrophe, as its politicians stay busy trading blame and trying to outmaneuver one another in legal battles.

The haze was so shocking this week that Delhi’s chief minister, Atishi, who goes by one name, declared it a “medical emergency” endangering the lives of children and older people. The Supreme Court, whose members also live in the capital, chided the national government for responding too slowly and ordered special measures: halting construction work and blocking some vehicles from the roads. Schools were closed indefinitely to protect students.

For middle-class Delhiites, the emergency measures have taken on an uncanny resemblance to life during Covid-19 lockdowns. There was a familiarity to the work-from-home mandates, idle children cooped up in the house and spare surgical or N95 masks rummaged from drawers.

But only a small proportion of Delhi’s citizens can afford such luxuries. Debu Jyoti Dey, the finance director at a nonprofit in the development sector, wore a handkerchief tied below his eyes as he trudged between a subway station and his office. At least, he said, he was going indoors.