The police came before the protesters. In the days leading up to Sunday’s demonstration against Delhi’s toxic air, officers knocked on doors and flooded phones with warnings. Organizers were told to stay home or risk arrest.
Saurav Das, 26, was one of the many who refused to back down. Diagnosed with allergic bronchitis from the city’s filthy air, he told The Guardian that he had used social media to call for peaceful action at India Gate.
While nearly 400 citizens turned out in droves, including mothers with strollers, retirees in masks, and students clutching handmade signs, police had already cordoned off the memorial.
Within hours, nearly 100 protesters, including children and the elderly, were detained and held late into the night. By Monday morning, a criminal case had been filed against the organizers.
“We wanted to gather peacefully at India Gate to send a message, loud and clear, that people are fed [up] by failed policies and government apathy that have failed to combat air pollution. Instead, we were met with unnecessary brute force.”
Delhi’s government has changed, but the air hasn’t. Earlier this year, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) took control of the Delhi state government after years of opposition rule. Many hoped the new alignment with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s national administration would finally bring unified action against the crisis. Instead, Delhiites say the air has only worsened.
Critics accuse the BJP of downplaying pollution data and weakening restrictions. During Diwali, officials allowed “green” fireworks — a decision that triggered one of the most polluted festival seasons in years.
Opponents claim authorities even halted air-quality reports and sprayed water on monitoring stations to artificially lower the numbers. The BJP denied tampering, calling the charges “politically motivated,” and blamed its predecessors for the smog.
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Its most expensive experiment, a multimillion-rupee attempt to seed clouds and make it rain, failed to yield results. Meanwhile, the government’s public message has remained largely unchanged: stay indoors, buy purifiers, and wait for the weather to improve.
“We have reached severe and hazardous levels of pollution, but the GRAP measures have not been implemented,” said Delhi-based environmental activist Bhavreen Kandhari.
GRAP refers to the Graded Response Action Plan, which was partially put into place to address air pollution in Delhi and its suburbs. Currently, the second level of the action plan is in place, which reduces the use of diesel generators and the burning of coal and firewood.
Despite worsening air quality, the third stage of the action plan, GRAP III, has yet to be implemented. It would also prohibit all non-essential building activity and the use of diesel vehicles in Delhi.
“This is about our children…My children will live 10 years less than their cousins [in other cities] who breathe cleaner air. We still have hope, and that’s why we are here.”
Delhi’s annual suffocation has become a ritual. For over a decade, Delhi has carried the grim distinction of being the world’s most polluted city. Every autumn, as temperatures drop and the wind dies, a familiar haze rolls over the capital. The so-called pollution season can linger four months or more, turning the skyline into a ghostly blur.
The culprits are no mystery: car exhaust from tens of millions of vehicles, crop-burning by farmers in neighboring states, coal-fired power plants, and open fires used to burn trash or simply keep warm.
In November, air quality readings climbed to more than 100 times the safe limit set by global health agencies. Pollution now kills more people in Delhi than diabetes or obesity.
“Any other city breathing this air would have declared a health emergency by now,” said Gopesh Singh, 58.
“How many more millions of people have to die for the government to act?”
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Sunday’s protest was one of the few public demonstrations over Delhi’s air crisis in years and was meant to be symbolic. The India Gate location honors India’s fallen soldiers, but the irony wasn’t lost on participants who found themselves fighting a different kind of war.
By dusk, the famous monument had vanished behind an opaque brown curtain of smog. The Air Quality Index hit 500, ten times the threshold considered hazardous. “Delhi is not a liveable city anymore, it’s a death trap,” said Radhika Aggarwal, 33, an engineer.
“As I stand here, I’m breathing air that I know is killing me. But we see nothing but a failure by the government to do anything to stop this and clean up the pollution. No policies, no real action. So I’m here to fight for my city.”
Children stood beside their mothers, holding signs that read, “Breathing Is Killing Me.” Nearby, birds flew low through the haze — one of the few visible signs of life against the fading orange light.
Delhi’s 30 million residents have learned to adapt to the unthinkable. Those with money seal their homes with air purifiers or flee to cleaner states. Everyone else simply copes. Clean air has become a luxury commodity, as inaccessible to most as a beachfront vacation.
“I can’t breathe in this city anymore, I can’t take a walk without getting a terrible headache,” said Sofie, 33. “It feels like there aren’t enough masks in the world to make this air breathable.”
For many, the suffocation is both physical and psychological. Pollution has become so normalized that outrage often gives way to fatalism. This year, however, something cracked.
Delhi’s minister of environment, Manjinder Singh Sirsa, stated that the government was taking all possible steps to address the issue.
“We have installed anti-smog guns in all high-rise buildings, dust mitigation is being done across the city through water sprinklers, all construction sites are being monitored, and we have increased electric vehicles in Delhi’s fleet of public buses.”
Regardless, as the crowd at India Gate dispersed under police watch on Sunday night, the sense that Delhi is running out of time hung in the air thicker than the smog.
Moumita Basuroychowdhury is a Contributing Reporter at The National Digest. After earning an economics degree at Cornell University, she moved to NYC to pursue her MFA in creative writing. She enjoys reporting on science, business and culture news. You can reach her at moumita.b@thenationaldigest.com.
