New Delhi’s smog needs a long-term solution

There ought to be a better fate in store for India’s capital than worrying sick about breathing toxic air

With schools closed, residents asked to stay home, medical experts reeling under the onslaught of patients seeking remedies for a host of ailments including breathing difficulties, allergies and respiratory problems, the authorities are juggling an assortment of emergency measures to tackle the unprecedented air pollution that has gripped the Indian capital. For what it is worth, here is just one fact on the smog in New Delhi: Particulate Matter, which is pegged at 60 micrograms as a tolerable level, has been peaking at 663mcg over the last few days.

At other times in the year too, these levels have been off the scale. Clearly, Delhiites are breathing their way towards an epidemic of poor health. How did it come to this? Lax governance over the decades and an unchecked population growth along with scant regulation of entities that contribute to pollution such as transport, construction, power plants, poor agricultural practices, industries and civic dereliction of duty have led to an environmental disaster of unprecedented proportions for the Indian capital. In this stunningly opaque atmosphere, the recent decision of the Supreme Court to ban firecrackers during Diwali remains the most clearsighted policy that the city has witnessed in some time.

The Delhi government has drawn up an emergency 10-point plan to deal with the immediate pall of gloom, but beyond such short-term responses to the choke-grip that nearly throttles New Delhi each year, long-term solutions are the only devices that will happily knock the metropolis off the world’s rankings of the most polluted cities. There needs to be a better fate in store for the population of New Delhi than to be worried sick, literally, of breathing the city’s toxic air.