CRACKERS, CROPS AND CHAOS

The irony of Delhi's Diwali grows darker with each passing year.

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The festival of lights, meant to celebrate victory over darkness, now ends in a choking shroud of grey. This Tuesday, Delhi recorded its worst post-Diwali air quality in four years, with PM2.5 concentrations peaking at an alarming 675 micrograms per cubic metre-a figure over ten times the safe limit. Fireworks that once symbolised joy and renewal have become the sparks that ignite a toxic fog of negligence, politics, and apathy. By Tuesday morning, the city was wrapped in a thick haze, its skyline reduced to silhouettes of sorrow. The Air Quality Index (AQI) crossed into the "red zone", the air acrid with sulphur and soot. Hourly readings through the night revealed little reprieve-AQI levels hovered well above 350 even past noon. Hospitals braced for an influx of patients wheezing for breath, while emergency calls poured into fire control rooms. Yet, amid the crisis, what echoed louder than sirens was political noise. The BJP-led Delhi government blamed stubble burning in AAP-ruled Punjab, while the AAP accused the Centre of failing to ensure artificial rain and regulate firecracker use.

Both found comfort in scapegoating, neither in accountability. Environmental policy was reduced once again to a regional blame game, where facts suffocated under layers of partisan rhetoric as thick as Delhi's smog.