As soon as the smog descended, the political mudslinging began.
For over a week, pollution levels in Delhi have consistently remained in the “severe” category and its 33 million residents have been forced to breathe toxic air that exceeded healthy limits of pollutants by more than 100 times.
“Pollution season” as it is now darkly referred to by those living in India’s capital, has become an annual event as the weather turns colder and pollutants get trapped over the Indo-Gangetic plain, which is cocooned by the Himalayan mountains.
Cars, factories, construction and power plants are all to blame but so too is the seasonal wheat stubble burning in the neighbouring states of Punjab and Haryana, when farmers set fire to their fields to quickly make way for new crops, despite the practice being outlawed. According to the Centre for Science and Environment, stubble burning has accounted for up to 38% of the pollution levels in Delhi over the past week.
Yet though the murky grey skies arrive every year without fail and a recent study found that pollution was shortening the lives of Delhi residents by almost 12 years, still no one among the state and central governments has been willing to take responsibility. Instead, over the past week, a familiar political blame game has ensued, as politicians from opposing parties, state governments and the ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) government have attempted to shift responsibility on to each other.
“Governments have been promising that they will make Delhi a better place but nothing has happened,” said Ravi Shankar, 31, as he sold tea at his roadside stall, often outside for 14 hours a day. “My eyes feel a burning sensation and my head feels like it is spinning. I am worried about my future.”
As the air quality levels plummeted, a row swiftly escalated between the BJP and the opposition Aam Admi party (AAP), which governs Delhi and Punjab. Virendra Sachdeva, BJP state president for Delhi, accused Delhi’s chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, of “inaction and insensitivity” and turning Delhi into a “gas chamber”.
“Delhiites are complaining of itching and breathlessness and children are falling ill. Only Kejriwal is responsible for all this,” he said.
BJP national spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia also chimed in, accusing Kejriwal of making false promises and being “more dangerous to people than the stifling air endangering them”.
AAP hit back, arguing that Delhi was not to blame for most of the problems. Instead it accused the central government of being “asleep” when it came to tackling air pollution, and said it was failures of neighbouring BJP-controlled states that were the main culprits.
“These conditions are against us,” said Delhi environment minister Gopal Rai. “If other states like Haryana and Uttar Pradesh were active, like Delhi, then the situation could improve.”
AAP also accused the government of worsening air pollution by cutting funding for one of the £2m smog towers that AAP built in the city centre designed to help clean the air. Yet scientists widely agree that these smog towers are almost completely ineffective and have been described as nothing more than an expensive public relations exercise.
At a supreme court hearing this week that took state governments to task for the hazardous and unrelenting pollution levels, judges Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Sudhanshu Dhulia expressed their exasperation. “There cannot be a political battle every time,” they said. “We are at zero level patience on this issue now.”
Among scientists and experts, there was deep frustration at pollution being treated as a localised issue to be batted away between states, and that more energy appeared to be spent on absolving responsibility than tackling the major causes.
“All these states contribute to each other’s pollution; governments need to realise that no city can be an individual oasis of clean air,” said Vivek Chattopadhyay, programme manager for the clean air programme at Delhi’s Centre for Science and Environment.
“This should be a collective political responsibility and unless they work together, there will be no solution. The central government should be coordinating this action and working with all the states.”
Shibani Ghosh, an environmental lawyer, said at both state and central government levels there was a failure to acknowledge that pollution was not just a temporary issue, but one that required a long-term substantial overhaul of regulation, laws and institutions, both on a state and national level.
“As soon as the smog descends, the political blame game starts and it’s this short-sightedness that is a big part of the problem,” she said. “This isn’t an issue that just begins in November, it’s a year-round problem and needs to be addressed as such. While state governments have failed to take several necessary measures, and continue to blame each other, where is the central environment ministry in all this?”
For those living in Delhi, many whose livelihoods relied on them remaining outdoors in the toxic air, there was both anger and resignation that they faced weeks, probably months, of poisonous air ahead.
Sunil Kumar Panday, 55, a security guard at a restaurant, said he felt dizzy constantly and everyone around him was suffering from headaches, coughs, fevers and nausea.
“You can clearly feel by breathing that we are inhaling something really toxic,” he said. “We are in a city where breathing, which is the basic human need, feels terrible. I struggle to imagine what the future will look like.”
Aakash Hassan contributed reporting
