India's pollution mess

 India’s urban air pollution crisis is no longer a policy failure. It is an institutional disgrace.

What Indian cities are experiencing year after year is not an unavoidable by-product of growth, nor an unfortunate seasonal aberration. It is the predictable outcome of systemic government paralysis—central, state, and municipal—wrapped in performative seriousness, empty targets, and politically convenient scapegoating. Delhi merely exposes the rot; the disease is nationwide.

The government’s favourite fig leaf is BS6 emission standards. Yes, BS6 is technically superior. Yes, cleaner fuels matter. But treating BS6 as the cornerstone of India’s clean-air strategy is either economic illiteracy or deliberate deception. BS6 applies only to new vehicles. India’s vehicle fleet turns over painfully slowly. Two-wheelers, old diesel trucks, and ageing commercial vehicles remain on the road for 15–20 years. Are Indian citizens genuinely expected to inhale poison for another decade and a half while policymakers congratulate themselves for “world-class norms”?

This is not transition management; it is abdication. Any serious government would have paired BS6 with aggressive, compulsory scrappage, meaningful incentives, and punitive disincentives for high emitters. Instead, scrappage remains voluntary, toothless, under-funded, and conveniently unenforced. Why? Because enforcing it would anger voters, disrupt informal resale markets, and require administrative spine. So the costs are outsourced to public lungs.

Public transport tells the same story of hollow intent. India builds metros like prestige monuments, then refuses to fund the unglamorous but essential last mile. A metro station that requires a private vehicle to reach is not public transport; it is an emissions amplifier. People do not “refuse” to use public transport out of stubbornness—they respond rationally to time, comfort, reliability, and safety. When feeder buses are absent, sidewalks are broken, and work destinations are unreachable, private vehicles win. Every time.

Electric buses are paraded as proof of progress. In reality, deployment numbers are laughably inadequate relative to urban demand. Cities announce tenders, float pilot projects, hold press conferences—and then stall. Charging infrastructure lags. Bus lanes remain politically inconvenient. Fleet utilisation stays low. Electrification without scale and priority corridors is nothing more than green theatre.

Meanwhile, the most obvious pollution sources—road dust, construction debris, uncovered trucks, and poorly regulated logistics—are treated as peripheral irritants rather than core contributors to PM2.5. Municipalities sit on funds allocated under national programs, using a fraction of them, while cities remain visibly filthy. Mechanical sweepers break down. Construction norms are ignored. Enforcement officers look the other way. The economic cost—in health expenditure, lost productivity, and premature mortality—never appears in budget speeches.

And then comes the most cynical manoeuvre of all: the ritualistic vilification of farmers.

Every winter, governments suddenly discover crop burning. Crackdowns are announced. FIRs are threatened. Television debates erupt. This is not environmental governance; it is seasonal political optics. The same state machinery that cannot enforce dust control, scrappage, or construction norms magically discovers coercive capacity when it is electorally convenient to target a politically weak group. The economic reality—that farmers lack viable alternatives at scale, and that governments failed to provide them—is quietly buried.

This selective toughness exposes the truth: pollution control in India is not about outcomes; it is about narratives.

The National Clean Air Programme itself has become an emblem of this failure. Targets exist. Funds exist. But utilisation is abysmal, accountability nonexistent, and consequences for non-performance nil. Cities miss targets, air quality worsens, and yet no official loses office, budget, or credibility. In any functioning system, such persistent failure would trigger institutional reform. In India, it triggers another committee.

The uncomfortable conclusion is this: India’s air pollution crisis persists because pollution is cheaper than competence. The health costs are diffuse, delayed, and borne by citizens. The political costs of decisive action are immediate and concentrated. Rational governments, facing weak accountability, choose inaction dressed up as concern.

This is why India increasingly resembles a banana republic in environmental governance—not because it lacks technology or money, but because it lacks enforcement integrity. Rules exist only until they inconvenience power. Programs exist only until they require delivery. The public is fed slogans, timelines, and dashboards while breathing some of the world’s most toxic urban air.

Clean air will not come from another standard, another app, or another press release. It will come only when governments accept that pollution is an economic liability, not a public relations problem—and are forced to pay a political price for ignoring it.

Until then, Indian cities will continue to suffocate under a thick fog of official denial, seasonal outrage, and permanent inaction—while being told, yet again, that progress is just around the corner.