For the first time in India, hundreds of citizens gathered on Sunday to protest the national capital’s dangerously polluted air.
It followed weeks when the lung-clogging particulate matter hovering over Delhi reached levels 20–30 times higher than the World Health Organization’s safe limit.
The smog thickened after the protest. On Tuesday, it was declared ‘severe’—the most alarming of the six categories recognised by the Central Pollution Control Board.
The next day, Delhi and three nearby towns were the only four among 249 urban centres where every monitor continued to flash red.
Under the emergency measures in place since 2020, schools have switched to hybrid classes, vehicle use has been restricted, and non-essential construction suspended.
A decade ago, the horizon had looked brighter. India had negotiated the hard-wrought Paris Agreement to cap emissions, announced the Solar Alliance, and set ambitious clean-energy targets. Yet, action since then has not matched the ambition.
This year, India’s total renewable capacity touched 220.1 gigawatts—commendable progress in drawing half its power from non-fossil sources.
But consider this: China added 277 GW of solar capacity in 2024 alone. On the other side of the planet, delegates at COP30 in Brazil’s Belém were reminded of the scale of the crisis when torrential rains flooded the very venue of the climate summit.
Meanwhile, in Delhi, the state pollution control committee’s X handle retweeted recent Air Quality Index readings when the city was merely ‘very poor’—on a scale artificially capped at 500, rendering the numbers globally incomparable.
It is impossible to glimpse a clearer future through the opacity of an official machinery that seems to have given up, content to pull levers of a clearly inadequate control system.
On Sunday, it was heartening to see that most of the protestors were young—as if pointing an accusatory finger at the indifference of older generations who have clouded their future.
Weighing votes by climate action may be the most effective way to clear the smog of incompetence.
If it draws more young voters to the booth, the politics of some of the world’s most polluted cities could finally begin to change.
