Delhi cannot leave its air to the weather

Every winter, we return to a familiar argument about individual behaviour, festive practices and temporary restrictions.

There is something deeply unsettling about the fact that each year, Delhi enters Diwali, a festival that celebrates the triumph of light over darkness, under a sky through which even sunlight struggles to penetrate. The irony is difficult to ignore. Yet the more troubling question is not what the festival does to Delhi's air, but why the city's atmosphere is already so compromised even before the celebrations begin.

A view of a metro train moves along the tracks near NH-24, shrouded in dense smog as air pollution continues to grip the area (RAJ K RAJ /HT PHOTO)

On November 6, two days before Diwali, Delhi's Air Quality Index had reached 382, prompting the imposition of Stage III restrictions under the Graded Response Action Plan. By Diwali morning, several monitoring stations had crossed into the 'severe' category. The deterioration preceded the fireworks. This distinction matters, not because firecrackers are environmentally inconsequential, but because our public discourse has developed a peculiar habit of treating the most visible episode of pollution as though it explains the entire crisis.

Every winter, we return to a familiar argument about individual behaviour, festive practices and temporary restrictions. These are legitimate concerns, but they often obscure a less convenient reality. Delhi's pollution is accumulated through decisions made long before winter arrives, in planning offices, municipal contracts, transport policies and the ordinary administration of the city.

The scientific evidence makes this difficult to dispute. A February 2026 review of source-apportionment studies considered by the Commission for Air Quality Management estimated that secondary particulates contributed 27% of winter PM2.5 pollution, transport 23%, biomass burning 20% and dust 15%. Secondary particulates are especially significant because they form through atmospheric reactions involving gases emitted by vehicles, industries, power generation and combustion. Much of what ultimately harms our lungs is not directly visible at its source.

Diwali fireworks introduce an additional burden into an atmosphere that has little capacity to absorb it. Their contribution should neither be dismissed in the name of tradition nor exaggerated into a comprehensive explanation of Delhi's predicament. An honest environmental conversation must be capable of holding both positions.

There is a broader cultural question here. Diwali has endured across generations because its significance extends beyond any particular form of celebration. Its associations with light, renewal, prosperity and the restoration of order belong to a civilisational imagination that has continually adapted to changing circumstances. To suggest that environmental responsibility is somehow incompatible with cultural continuity underestimates the resilience of tradition itself.

But cultural responsibility cannot become a substitute for institutional responsibility.

Consider the physical condition of Delhi's streets. An arterial road may be resurfaced while its shoulders remain exposed, its pavements broken and its utility trenches inadequately restored. Each passing vehicle resuspends dust into the atmosphere. The same road may be widened to accommodate more traffic while the pedestrian journey to the nearest bus stop remains unsafe or impractical. We regard these as separate failures of road maintenance and transport planning. In environmental terms, they are inseparable.

This is where urban planning must enter the pollution debate more forcefully. The environmental performance of infrastructure cannot be measured solely by the efficiency of its construction or the capacity it creates. It must be evaluated through the patterns of movement, energy consumption and maintenance it produces over decades.

A residential development that requires its inhabitants to drive for every ordinary necessity may be energy-efficient within its boundaries and environmentally burdensome beyond them. A metro network cannot deliver its full potential when reaching a station involves navigating an inhospitable pedestrian environment. These contradictions rarely appear in the annual discussion surrounding Diwali, although their consequences remain suspended in the air throughout the year.

Nor can Delhi's pollution be addressed within its administrative boundaries alone. The atmosphere belongs to a regional airshed in which agricultural burning, industrial emissions, freight movement and meteorological conditions interact across states. The geography of pollution bears little resemblance to the geography of government.

This creates an accountability problem that is more serious than any shortage of emergency regulations. One agency monitors air quality, another maintains roads, another regulates construction and another plans transportation. Each may fulfil its individual mandate while the city experiences their collective failure.

We need to reconsider what environmental accountability actually means. Infrastructure contracts should carry enforceable obligations for dust control and road restoration beyond project completion. Land-use approvals should examine the journeys a development will generate, not merely the floor area it accommodates. Public authorities should be assessed on the condition of pedestrian networks, construction compliance and the long-term environmental consequences of their decisions.

There is also a question of equity. Pollution does not distribute its consequences equally. Those who work outdoors, travel on foot or inhabit the edges of heavily trafficked roads cannot retreat into filtered interiors. When the atmosphere becomes hazardous, public space itself becomes exclusionary. Clean air cannot be allowed to become another privilege of private consumption.

Perhaps the greatest danger of making Diwali the centre of Delhi's pollution debate is that the conversation acquires a convenient beginning and an equally convenient end. Once the celebrations conclude and the weather eventually improves, the urgency begins to recede. The roads, transport systems, construction practices and institutional arrangements that helped produce the crisis remain largely unchanged.

Delhi certainly needs restraint during periods of acute pollution, including during festivals. But it needs something considerably more demanding: the discipline to prevent pollution through the everyday governance of its built environment.

The real measure of our environmental commitment will not be how vigorously we respond to Diwali's smoke, but how seriously we confront the pollution that was already there before the first firecracker was lit.

(The views expressed are personal)

This article is authored by Dikshu C Kukreja, architect, urban planner and Honorary Consul General, Republic of Albania to India.