MAXIMUM TOXI-CITY

Delhi breathed an AQI of 494, the second-worst ever recorded, due to more farm fires, lower temperature

- Jasjeev Gandhiok

Delhi was smeared in a morbid grey on Monday as the air quality index (AQI) surged to 494, the city's second-highest reading ever and just shy of the maximum of 500, as the Capital's calamitous pollution crisis plumbed new depths, with more than 20 million people held hostage in a sea of poison by the weather and an apathetic administration.

Delhi's AQI was this bad on November 3, 2019, when the official 4pm reading was also 494. It was only topped, marginally, on November 7, 2016, when the number was an even more grim 497.

The AQI inched up through the evening and touched 495 at 11pm.

Worse still, the AQI at 15 of E the city's 36 active monitoring stations hit 500 at 4pm, when the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) logs its daily reading.

And even as residents across the Capital took in laboured breaths, struggled with prickly throats, irritable eyes and all the trappings of a fever, local authorities did their best to deflect blame.

All the usual excuses were thrown around. But in the deep end of the "severe" zone, none of them matter.

It doesn't matter that the AQI turned severe later in the year than it usually does; it doesn't matter if it lasts for just a day or two; it doesn't matter that the reading came on the back of reportedly fewer farm fires in Punjab; it doesn't matter that the state government has deployed ineffective gimmicks like smog guns to tackle a deep-rooted but predictable problem.

Delhi's hourly average concentration of PM2.5 (a microscopic pollutant with a diameter between 1 and 2.5 micron) on Monday touched a peak of 820 micrograms per cubic metre (ug/m3) at 12pm. This was around 14 times the national 24-hour standard of 60µg/m3 and 164 times the World Health Organization's (WHO) daily limit of 5µg/m3.

At these levels of pollution, it only matters that millions have been crippled by years of administrative ineptitude and left to fend for themselves.