Delhi's Winter of Discontent

Delhi’s worsening winter pollution is not a meteorological accident but a systemic, political failure—one that demands structural reforms instead of seasonal theatrics

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A city already gasping for breath, Delhi now faces worsening pollution as volcanic activity in Ethiopia adds to the haze

Delhi’s winters were once a civic pleasure—crisp air, long afternoons in the sun and the seasonal abundance of fruit, vegetables and conviviality. ‘Today, it is a season of avoidance. Those who can afford it escape; those who cannot barricade themselves indoors behind purifiers and masks. Still poorer struggle through. A city that once revelled in winter now merely endures it.

The sources of Delhi's seasonal smog are by now drearily familiar: construction dust, tailpipe emissions, industrial effluent, regional crop-burning and the city’s misfortune of sitting in a geographic basin where cold air traps pollutants close to the surface. Equally predictable are the coping mechanisms—air purifiers, retrofitted windows, N95 masks— an indirect tax private citizens are paying for the state’s failures. Governments, in turn, wheel out the annual theatre of GRAP stages, school closures and odd-even announcements. ‘They educate us with jargon. All promise urgency; none alters the trajectory.

What Delhi lacks is not knowledge but resolve. After decades of accumulated neglect—built on rising population, rising prosperity and the perverse comfort of incremental policymaking—its air cannot be cleaned with technocratic tinkering or atmospheric gimmicks rain which was most natural in its silliness. ‘The problem has long outgrown cosmetic fixes.