The Hindu pageant of Diwali is historically a time for households to get collectively, however for the previous seven years, Vamika Grover, 32, has fled her house in Delhi as firecrackers ship the town’s air high quality spiraling into hazardous ranges. Even every week later, she returns house to the lingering style and odor of acrid air.
“I’ve been feeling a way of breathlessness these previous few years, and I might really feel my lungs must do lots of heavy lifting,” mentioned Grover, a Hodgkin lymphoma most cancers survivor. “Earlier than, I felt the firecrackers throughout Diwali worsened the air high quality, however it’s polluted all year long now, and it’s creating well being points for everybody.”
India’s capital has reported alarming air air pollution since October, with the air high quality index (AQI) routinely crossing 300—3 times above the commonly protected threshold of 100—which is equal to smoking about 11 cigarettes a day. In late October, a high Indian pulmonologist suggested individuals with continual lung or coronary heart illnesses and people who can afford it to “go away Delhi” for six to eight weeks.
Worldwide monitoring platforms have often recorded hazardous ranges exceeding 1,000 in components of Delhi over the previous few months, although the federal government app caps the air pollution readings at 500, a restrict set when the nationwide index was launched in 2014.
The scenes of smog-wrapped buildings echo Beijing a decade in the past, when the Chinese language capital’s air pollution disaster grabbed worldwide headlines. However whereas China handled that second as a nationwide embarrassment and moved aggressively to enhance air high quality within the capital, India has largely normalized the disaster. The federal government continues to downplay its severity, questioning world AQI requirements and information on air pollution-related deaths.
But it’s not simply the capital the place persons are choking. Ghaziabad ranked as probably the most polluted Indian metropolis in November, adopted by Noida, Bahadurgarh, and Delhi, in accordance to the Centre for Analysis on Vitality and Clear Air (CREA), a world impartial analysis group.
“Residential biomass, industries, energy vegetation, transport, and development mud are the principle sources of air pollution in Delhi and surrounding areas,” Manoj Kumar, an air air pollution and energy sector analyst with CREA’s India group, informed International Coverage. “Air air pollution is distinguished in winter in north India because of a number of meteorological components, however the remainder of the seasons are additionally polluted because of excessive baseline emission masses. It’s not a seasonal difficulty however a year-round difficulty throughout South Asia.”
South Asia is house to a few of the world’s most polluted international locations. Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, and Nepal had been among the many high 10 international locations with the worst focus of PM2.5—tiny particulate matter dangerous to human well being—in 2024, in accordance to the Swiss air-monitoring agency IQAir.
Air air pollution causes an estimated 2 million untimely deaths yearly within the area, and efforts to enhance the air high quality may save greater than 750,000 lives every year, in accordance to a 2023 World Financial institution report. Some 60 % of the inhabitants lives in areas the place “mud particles exceed the least stringent World Well being Group (WHO) air high quality commonplace.”
Ashish Tiwari, who leads the air group on the Worldwide Centre for Built-in Mountain Improvement (ICIMOD), a Nepal-based intergovernmental group, mentioned air pollution from residential cooking with stable gas, reminiscent of wooden and coal; waste burning; industrial and vehicular emissions; and occasional wildfires are the foremost contributors to air air pollution in South Asia. He added that native emission sources, meteorology, and airshed impacts create a regional impact, driving episodic spikes in PM2.5 and worsening air pollution.
“Cities are extra polluted due to outmigration from rural areas and related anthropogenic actions,” he mentioned. “The air over the last decade wasn’t cleaner—air pollution ranges noticed a steep rise, and it’s extra seen at present due to higher monitoring and extra consciousness.”
Main South Asian cities have added monitoring networks over the previous decade, although analysts be aware that many stations are principally clustered in city areas. India has 966 working stations in 419 cities however solely 26 in rural areas. Nepal’s roughly 30 stations present partial protection.
Bangladesh has 31 stations, with simply 16 offering common information, whereas campaigners in Pakistan say displays lack a nationwide attain. The excessive prices of putting in displays with exact readings proceed to restrict a complete community in lots of cash-strapped South Asian cities.
Authorities in Delhi and Pakistan’s Punjab province have confronted accusations of manipulating air pollution information, with viral movies from the Indian capital displaying water sprinklers aimed toward monitoring units to decrease readings.
“There aren’t any funds being earmarked, and no matter cash is being spent is being spent on mist or smog cannons, that are completely ineffective and demonstrably not working,” mentioned Ahmad Rafay Alam, a Pakistani environmental lawyer and clear air campaigner.
Smog cannons spray mist to disperse pollution, although consultants doubt their effectivity in curbing air air pollution.
South Asia’s air pollution itself is transboundary, shifting throughout cities, states, and international locations. Research present the area is mired by long-range pollution, largely transported from inside South Asia itself, together with smoke from crop residue burning and industrial emissions. Researchers additionally be aware the area’s huge mountains act as a barrier, blocking contemporary winds and trapping pollution, turning the Indo-Gangetic Plain and the Himalayan foothills right into a “large, slender bowl” of air pollution.
In Kathmandu, 17 % of air pollution comes from different components of Nepal and 14 % from different international locations, in accordance to a 2025 World Financial institution examine. Within the Terai area bordering India, PM2.5 pollution from high-emission international locations within the Indo-Gangetic Plain account for about 68 % of its air pollution.
Ahmad Kamruzzaman Majumder, the chairman of the Dhaka-based Middle for Atmospheric Air pollution Research, mentioned polluted air flowing into Bangladesh from different international locations considerably worsens its air high quality. Stubble burning in northern Indian states will increase air pollution in northwestern Bangladesh, together with Dhaka, whereas emissions from energy vegetation within the Indian states of West Bengal, Jharkhand, and Odisha add to the issue. Sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and heavy metals reminiscent of lead, arsenic, and mercury attain Bangladesh even from 1,200-1,900 miles away in China’s coal-based industrial areas.
“When air air pollution in neighboring international locations will increase, the air air pollution in Dhaka additionally will increase comparatively. Our analysis exhibits that no less than 10 to fifteen % of Bangladesh’s annual air air pollution comes from neighboring international locations,” Majumder mentioned.
Air pollution threatens all the ecosystem of the area, contributing to atmospheric brown clouds, containing pollution reminiscent of nitrate, mud, fly ash particles, and black carbon.
Research present that black carbon—additionally known as a “tremendous pollutant”—has larger warming energy than carbon dioxide and may pose critical threats to the Himalayan ecosystem. When black carbon settles on snow and ice, it darkens their floor, inflicting them to soak up extra daylight and soften quicker. Consultants warn that it accelerates the dangers of glacial lake outburst flooding, loss in agriculture manufacturing, and different environmental penalties, reminiscent of disrupting monsoon precipitation, for downstream communities.
Tiwari from ICIMOD, which collaborates with governments of eight international locations within the Hindu Kush Himalayan area, says a transboundary method is essential to addressing the area’s air air pollution disaster.
“International locations have to construct sturdy nationwide air high quality administration plans, institutional strengths, and financing mechanisms,” he mentioned. “Then we will speak about regional cooperation.”
Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan all have their very own nationwide mechanisms to fight air air pollution, however analysts say a paradigm shift in institutional capability and governance is required to attain actual progress. Within the 2025 Good Authorities Index, printed by the Singapore-based nonprofit Chandler Institute of Governance, all 4 South Asian international locations scored poorly—Pakistan ranked the bottom of the 4, adopted by Nepal, Bangladesh, and India.
Pakistan’s 2023 Nationwide Clear Air Coverage aimed to improve gas high quality, management industrial emissions, and ban crop burning, however Alam says implementation has been minimal. He added that air air pollution continues to be handled as a region-specific—restricted to Punjab or cities reminiscent of Lahore and Karachi—relatively than a nationwide difficulty and environmental administration has but to be acknowledged as a governance precedence.
“Federal insurance policies are being made once we don’t even have air air pollution information in locations like Balochistan and huge components of Sindh province,” Alam mentioned. “The cities we stay in are attempting to kill us, and so long as we misdiagnose the issue—see it as a regional and never a nationwide difficulty—no matter coverage initiatives we take will fail.”
In Bangladesh, the Clear Air Act, drafted in 2019 to tighten air pollution controls, has but to be authorized. Majumdar says this is because of low political precedence, weak institutional coordination, stress from industrial and financial teams, and finances constraints.
In the meantime, Nepal launched its first Nationwide Air High quality Administration Motion Plan in late August as a extra complete effort to fight air air pollution nationally. Since 2008, the nation has levied a air pollution management charge on the sale of each liter of petrol and diesel, however there was little transparency on how the $160 million collected up to now has been utilized.
Rejina Maskey Byanju, an air air pollution skilled and a professor in Tribhuvan College’s Central Division of Environmental Science, says the charge may assist fill funding gaps for clear air measures. Nevertheless, air air pollution has not been a high coverage precedence regardless of its severity and rising public consciousness.
“We don’t have coordination between completely different sectors which are the foremost culprits of air air pollution,” Maskey Byanju mentioned. “We additionally lack correct supply research or set targets to cut back air pollution in devoted sectors. We formulate air air pollution administration plans with a laundry checklist of measures, however they solely find yourself changing into like a want checklist relatively than taking concrete steps.”
In India, the 2019 Nationwide Clear Air Programme set clear targets, together with as much as 40 % reductions in PM10 ranges by 2025-26. Nevertheless, a 2025 CREA report confirmed that of the 253 cities with 80 % or extra PM10 information, 206 nonetheless exceeded the nationwide air high quality commonplace. Authorities are deploying applied sciences reminiscent of anti-smog weapons, water sprinklers, and cloud seeding for synthetic rain, however consultants reminiscent of Kumar say these measures are clearly inefficient, with little being executed to curb vehicular and industrial air pollution in and round Delhi.
“We will need to have accountability as a result of with out accountability there can be no progress,” Kumar mentioned. “If solely we implement all of the motion factors from the Nationwide Clear Air Programme, Delhi could have clear air. It’s not unattainable.”
However till complete measures are carried out, hundreds of thousands of residents will proceed to choke on poisonous air, whereas some briefly flee, changing into “air pollution refugees.”
Grover, who moved to Singapore together with her accomplice in October, says respiration clear air now not appears like a luxurious, nevertheless a lot she misses house.
“Even when I’m away, I can’t take away myself utterly from Delhi,” she mentioned. “However even when now we have to maneuver again to India, we wouldn’t be shifting to Delhi. If I had been to decide on my life and well being, I wouldn’t choose Delhi.”
