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Behind air crisis: High baseline pollution, multiplicity of factors

Delhi's pollution remains severe, with AQI at 441. Reducing sources won't suffice; a unified effort beyond politics is crucial for improvement.

Updated on: Nov 22, 2024, 08:48:51 IST
By Abhishek Jha
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New Delhi Both pollution and the political blame game around it have become toxic cliches in Delhi. What would it take to actually bring down pollution in Delhi to permissible levels? According to the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) this would work out to an AQI (Air Quality Index) reading of up to 100.

PREMIUMVehicles ply on a road as the sky is enveloped with smog after Delhi's air quality worsened due to air pollution, in New Delhi, India, on Wednesday. (REUTERS)
Vehicles ply on a road as the sky is enveloped with smog after Delhi's air quality worsened due to air pollution, in New Delhi, India, on Wednesday. (REUTERS)

Building a quantitative correspondence between pollution levels and its causes requires the use of a modelling exercise. For Delhi, these estimates are given by

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Abhishek Jha

Abhishek Jha is Assistant Editor-Data at Hindustan Times. He uses statistical programming to generate newsworthy insights from large datasets. He is part of the team that produces Number Theory, a daily data story feature of the paper’s print edition. Since March 2024, he has been writing Weather Bee, a weekly column for the Hindustan Times website. He is a chemical engineer by training, who specialises in stories related to weather, climate, and the environment. Jha has been at HT since 2018, where he offers data-driven perspective and analysis on politics, environment, weather, climate, economy and society. His work includes data coverage of elections in India and abroad, including the 2019 and 2024 Lok Sabha elections; the disasters and extreme weather resulting from changing climate, such as floods, droughts, heat waves, cold waves, and dwindling snow cap in the Himalayas; the factors that drive poor air quality in northern India; the changing patterns of land use; the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on labour market conditions; the changing pattern of consumer spending seen in the new consumer spending surveys; and social norms seen in the surveys such as the National Family Health Survey.

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