Every winter, Delhi doesn’t just brace for smog — it rehearses a ritual. Governments blame each other. Ministers hold sudden press conferences. Schools shut for two days (as if children inhale only on weekdays). Neighbouring states trade barbs about farm fires as if pollutants respect state borders. Citizens protest on Instagram, cough for a week, and move on. Then repeat.
This year, the smog arrived earlier, thicker, and deadlier. AQI levels crossed 1,000 in some pockets — a number so obscene it mocks the very index meant to warn us. Yet the political response has been identical to the smoke itself: opaque, suffocating, and directionless.
Let’s start with the theatre of protest. Students, climate collectives, and resident welfare groups marched choking on air so toxic it should qualify as attempted homicide by public policy. Their demands? Clean air. Accountability. A liveable city. This should be the bare minimum in any democracy. Instead, these protests were treated like background noise — one level below VIP convoy sirens but far below election slogans.
Then comes the government — multiple governments, actually — because Delhi is the only place where power is so shared that responsibility can be endlessly divided. The Centre blames stubble burning. Punjab blames historical lack of crop management support. Haryana adds a data point, Delhi adds a counterpoint. Meanwhile, a child in Anand Vihar is inhaling particulate matter that will live in his lungs far longer than any neta will stay in office.
The irony is toxic but obvious: stubble burning contributes to pollution but does not exclusively own Delhi’s winter lungs collapse. Construction dust management is a joke, vehicles still crawl bumper to bumper like diesel-powered caterpillars, public transport expansion crawls slower than an Outer Ring Road traffic jam, and the city keeps building as if breathable air is optional infrastructure.
Governments also love emergency optics. Ban construction for 72 hours. Shut primary schools for a week. Seed clouds — sometimes literally. These are not solutions. These are political inhalers — temporary relief mechanisms that treat symptoms, never the disease.
Policy paralysis here is not accidental. It is convenient. A structural cleanup demands long-term planning, political consensus, and spending real money on public transport, crop residue management, urban planning, and enforcement — none of which deliver applause as fast as free electricity, loan waivers, or pre-election cash transfers. Clean air has no cut-out banners. It doesn’t win rallies. It only saves lives.
The protests were dismissed too easily. Not because they were weak, but because oxygen deprivation rarely makes for dramatic politics. Yet history will mock today’s leaders when it notes that while a capital city gasped, its governments vested their energy in accusation, not action.
Delhi is not asking for Scandinavian air. It is begging for basics — air that doesn’t burn lungs or shave years off lives. A system that is less interested in smoke signals of blame and more in the unglamorous business of governance.
The tragedy is simple. Delhi isn’t dying of pollution. It’s dying of politics. And unlike smog, this one doesn’t clear by March.