This week India’s capital city, Delhi has been hit with extreme air pollution – so extreme that the city’s Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal described it as a gas chamber. The city’s Air Quality Index has been in the range of 700 to 1,000; the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers anything over 300 to be hazardous. The index measures the concentration of particulate matter, microscopic particles that can harm the lungs, causing cancer, exacerbating asthma, and damaging organs.
In response, the city is taking extreme measures. Delhi government closed schools for the week. The National Green Tribunal has banned construction, one source of particulate pollution, in the region truck and car travel has also been limited.
Why this spike in pollution? There are two answers. The simplest is the physical answer: Farmers in the neighboring states are burning straw from their last rice crop to clear fields for planting the wheat crop. The more complicated is the political answer: Politicians are wary of trying to prevent crop burning lest they antagonize the powerful farm lobby, lose electoral support and set off political turmoil among regional and ethnic interests.
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