Winter has arrived in Delhi and with it, a familiar feeling of gloom. The sky here is gray and there is a thick, visible layer of smog or smog.
If you stay outdoors for more than a few minutes you can almost taste the ash. And if you try to run or even walk briskly on the street in a matter of minutes you will be out of breath.
Newspapers have once again used words like “toxic,” “deadly,” and “poisonous” in their headlines.
Most schools are closed and people are advised to stay home, although those whose livelihood depends on outdoor work cannot afford to do so.
The air quality index in Delhi was between 1,200 and 1,500 on Monday and Tuesday, according to different monitoring agencies. The acceptable limit is less than 100.
These scores measure the levels of fine particles (called PM 2.5 and PM 10) in the air. These small particles can enter the lungs and cause a whole series of diseases..
On social media, people express disappointment and anguish over the fact that everything is happening again.
Along with sadness, there is a strong feeling of déjà vuas if we had experienced the same thing many times in the last 15 years.
A problem that cannot be solved
Back in 2017, I had recorded a video of my car ride to the office, when smog had reduced visibility to less than 2 m.
This Tuesday my commute to work seemed even worse.
At the BBC’s Delhi bureau we have reported on every turn of this story over the past two decades.
We have reported on how pollution is making people sick and reducing their life expectancy.
If all of India reduced particle pollution to meet World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines, Residents of Delhi, the country’s most populous city, would gain 7.8 years of life expectancyaccording to the August report of this year’s Air Quality Index from the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC).
We also report the Supreme Court’s order to the government every year to take urgent action on pollution. The court issued the same order this year.
We have investigated how pollution affects children the most.
We’ve written about how politicians blame each other for the problem every year.
We’ve discussed the root cause of the problem and we’ve also talked about solutions, both those that worked marginally and those that failed miserably.
We have also reported on how pollution affects the poorest the most and how many people have no choice but to go to work in the middle of smog.
Covering this story is like living (and being trapped in) the same dystopian movie year after year, a movie that always has the same ending: nothing changes.”
The parks are empty again: people, especially children and the elderly, have been asked to stay at home.
Those who must work, such as construction workers, truck drivers rickshaws (hand-pulled two-wheelers) cough but keep coming out.
Hospitals are watching an increasing number of people with respiratory problems.
And in the midst of all this, we return to the same question: why does nothing change?
The simple answer is that solving the pollution problem in Delhi requires monumental efforts and coordination.
The origin of the problem
The sources of the problem are many. One of them is the practice of farmers burning crop remains to clear their fields and sow seeds for the next harvest.
This is mainly in the neighboring states of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. Smoke from agricultural fires envelops Delhi every winter and settles low in the atmosphere when wind speeds reduce during winter.
But farmers cannot be entirely blamed for this, because it is the cheapest way for them to clear the fields.
Different governments have talked about providing machines and financial incentives to stop crop burning, but very little has happened in practice.
Delhi itself produces a large part of the pollution through emissions from vehicles, buildings and factories.
Every year in the winter months people feel angry, journalists write articles, politicians blame each other and the courts rage, until we do it again the following year.
A public health emergency like this would spark mass protests in most democracies. But the anger in Delhi is mostly limited to social media.
Activists say the reason is that for most people, pollution doesn’t cause immediate problems but rather long-term problems.
Inhaling high levels of PM 2.5 causes health to slowly deteriorate. A study in the Lancet medical journal found that Pollution caused more than 2.3 million premature deaths in India in 2019.
And then there is the factor of class division. People who can afford to temporarily leave the city do so, those who can afford air purifiers do so, and those who can only vent on social media do so.
The rest, those who do not have these options, simply continue with their lives.
So far, collective angst has not resulted in mass protest, and as the Supreme Court once observed, politicians are simply “passing the buck” while waiting for winter to end.
Experts say governments at the federal and state levels must put their partisan differences behind them and work together to solve this problem. They need to focus on long-term solutions.
Citizens must hold politicians accountable and courts must pass decisive orders months before pollution worsens.
Temporary measures, such as a ban on construction work, were announced this year.
But can these actions bring back Delhi’s elusive blue skies? The evidence of recent years does not give much hope.
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