Every winter, Delhi descends into its now familiar public health emergency. As temperatures drop and the winds weaken, a heavy gray blanket settles on NCR, bringing daily life into crisis mode – schools close, construction stops, and citizens track AQI readings as regularly as during daylight hours. Yet this seasonal panic obscures a deeper truth: pollution in Delhi is not an anomaly of winter but rather a structural failure throughout the year. Meteorology only highlights what the regime has failed to fix.
After working within the Delhi government ecosystem and now leading a data and AI center, it is clear to me that the science of the problem and our response strategy remains misaligned. To move beyond temporary relief, capital needs system-level interventions that address the roots of emissions – not just their winter manifestations.
A misdiagnosis crisis
Most of the public discourse reduces Delhi’s air problem to a single culprit: burning wrinkles in Punjab and Haryana. There is truth in this – data from the Ministry of Earth Science shows that during peak episodes, crop residue fire can contribute a quarter of PM2.5 load in Delhi. But this is only one part of a very broad emission scenario. The more uncomfortable reality is that pollutants suffocating Delhi in winter are present throughout the year. The change that occurs in October and November is the atmosphere: cold air sinks, moisture traps particles, and stagnation prevents spread. Vehicles, industry, waste combustion and construction dust continue to produce the same pollutants in summer and monsoon – but the conditions of inversion in winter season increase their effect. This is why emergency measures such as smog guns, cloud seeding or rushed implementation of graded response action plans (GRAPs) provide limited relief. They treat symptoms, not disease.
Grape contradiction
GRAP was designed as a last mile emergency protocol, not the primary strategy. Its annual call indicates a governance gap: if baseline emissions were low, winter conditions would not put Delhi in the “out of seriousness” category so quickly. Even when fully implemented, GRAP gives only minor improvements. Preventing the entry of trucks or closing schools hinders daily life, but barely changes average air quality as the underlying emission load remains unchanged. GRAP is, at best, a turnicade – useful during bleeding, but not an alternative to long-term treatment. Real work should focus on three structural areas: mobility, industry and waste.
Mobility: Move people, not cars
Vehicles remain one of the largest contributors to Delhi’s internal PM 2.5 load. The adoption of BS-VI fuel— was a significant achievement to dramatically reduce sulfur content. But this benefit is being eroded by sheer volume: Delhi registers about 2,000 new vehicles a day, far more than any technological improvement. A transformative mobility strategy should include the following Statewide logistics for residue collection and processing, combined with strict enforcement at the community level modern waste-to-energy and composting capacity. Without addressing biomass and municipal waste, Delhi cannot permanently reduce its particle load.
Lessons from Beijing
Cities like Beijing demonstrate that clean air is not an impossible aspiration. Their benefits came not from symbolic measures but from structural changes:
Moving industries from coal to natural gas Staging old vehicles through aggressive scraping schemes, building with strict, technology-driven enforcement and managing road dust Creating an integrated regional governance system approach
Pollution in Delhi is not a local issue; it is the problem of regional systems related to meteorology, agriculture, mobility, fuel economy and governance architecture. Therefore, the solution should be structural and coordinated, not reactive. The sustainable roadmap should include the following for integrated action, a regional clean air council integrating Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, UP and Rajasthan, responsive to weather forecasts and residue-management capacity, year -round mobility improvement, GST reform, enabling industries to switch economically by micro-monitoring and transparency dashboard. When policy, science and the public are aligned, Delhi’s air can improve dramatically – as other global megacities have shown. way forward
The pollution crisis is often portrayed as unavoidable. It is not. This is the result of fragmented planning, delayed decisions and reactive governance. But just as smog reveals the consequences of inaction, it also shows a way forward. Clean air is not a seasonal aspiration – it’s a constitutional right and collective responsibility. Transition demands structural honesty, regional cooperation and a desire
Dr. Vijay Garg
Retired Principal
Educational Columnist
Thursday, January 8, 2026