How to fix Delhi's air pollution disaster

Openness to diverse sources of expertise and rigorous testing of ideas before scaling up might be the key to fix Delhi’s hazardous air

- NIRVIKAR SINGH Professor of Economics, University of California, Santa Cruz

WHY HAS DELHI'S air pollution problem persisted? Is there a way to fix it? For at least a decade, Delhi’s air has been hazardous for several months each winter.

The problem is visible, palpable, and pervasive. It has led to multiple government reports, many research papers, and global news stories. But this winter, the conditions faced by Delhi’s residents were no better than in previous years. And this is in a place which includes all the institutions of the world’s largest democracy. Why has progress been so difficult?

Some years ago, Amartya Sen suggested that democracies are better at some forms of accountability than others—they will not tolerate famines, but will allow widespread, chronic malnutrition. Delhi’s problem is acute for a period, but then it goes away. So, while it is more visible than something like malnutrition, that visibility is temporary. Flooded roads in the monsoon season suffer from the same lack of persistence as a continuous problem. In the case of air pollution, like malnutrition, the health impacts are hidden and cumulative, which reduces the salience of the problem for politicians trying to manage accountability to voters to their own benefit.