Choking in the Shadows of Smoke: Delhi's Battle Against the Annual Stubble Haze

In 2009, a policy in India's capital worsened air pollution, harming citizens' health through industrial emissions, dust, and vehicle exhaust.

People commute along a road amid smoggy conditions in New Delhi I Source: India Today.

As Delhi's skies turn toxic, a deadly alliance between urban sprawl and rural practices sends a cloud of crisis over the city. Delhi seems to be fighting an invisible battle with the annual suffocating smog. This has caused several crises in the city, ranging from health to environmental, as the city is choking from the shadows of smoke.

The largest number of deadly crashes involving a vehicle type occurred in 2021 with 176 cars/taxis, accounting for 15 per cent of all fatal crashes, according to the official Delhi Traffic Police data. Delhi's declining air quality is to blame, among other factors. When pollution blankets the city, PM 2.5 levels can rise to seven to eight times the threshold, typical during winter when they are three to four times higher. In 2017, a twenty-four-vehicle pileup on a motorway close to Delhi was caused by a blinding haze. These circumstances occur annually when air pollution in Delhi reaches extremely high levels. When one person in this country is dying from air pollution every two minutes, this issue can no longer be ignored.

Every November, a toxic fog affects close to 30 million individuals in this country. According to scientists, spending a day outside in these circumstances is equivalent to smoking fifty cigarettes. In an interview, the founder and trustee of the Lung Care Foundation, Dr. Arvind Kumar, described how he now hardly ever sees a typical pink lung during an operation. The city is completely covered in dust on the ground, and in the air, a thick layer of pollution obscures features that are visible the rest of the year. Delhi has always been a large, crowded, and dirty city. But over the past ten years, something has made it worse.

Delhi's population has increased by more than 7 million during the past ten years. The metropolis is currently the second-largest in the world and one of the most polluted. More traffic means more vehicles, releasing pollution and dust into the air. As Delhi expands, more buildings are being constructed, creating dust. More and more industries are harming the ecology. The average air quality in Delhi is poor all year round due to these factors. But when Delhi's air pollution peaks in October and November, something else is going on. It raises air pollution levels to a level that is fifty times more toxic. The air quality levels are out of control. Many of the devices are not designed to measure the standards Delhi meets. The smog is even visible from space because it is that awful.

But Delhi isn't the source of this smog cloud. It originates from Punjab and Haryana, popularly called "India's Breadbasket." They are a crucial area for the nation's agriculture. To grow rice, local farmers need a lot of water. As the area's rice farming industry expanded in the 2000s, local farmers began consuming so much water that the groundwater level in the area began to decline. Authorities, therefore, passed a new law in 2009 to conserve water. Before mid-June, rice planting is prohibited. So, until the monsoon season, when rains arrive to replace the groundwater, farmers cannot cultivate rice. Due to the later timing of rice harvesting, farmers have less time to prepare their fields for the following crop. Therefore, many farmers have started setting their crop stubble on fire to clear their fields more swiftly. Every year, in the months of October and November, a massive cloud of smoke is produced by all those stubble fires. And it makes a direct course towards Delhi.

A farmer burning paddy stubble in Amritsar I Source: The Hindu

There are two reasons why the smoke in this area worsens Delhi's conditions. Location is the first. The Himalayan mountains serve as a sort of barrier, sending the smoke in the direction of Delhi. The second is the weather. In the winter, a dome-like structure is formed over Delhi as cold mountain air rushes down from the Himalayas and arrives below a layer of warm lowland air. With nowhere to go, the warm air keeps pollution confined to the ground. As a result, when the smoke from stubble fires reaches Delhi, it combines with the city's pollutants to create a poisonous haze that covers the entire city. These are all the factors that contribute to the most dangerous air pollution.

In a decision from November 2019, India's Supreme Court mandated that Northern states prohibit farmers from burning agricultural residue. However, the decision hasn't been put into practice yet. These spikes will return each year, worsening the city's already hazardous pollution and endangering the lives of millions of people until India's prohibition on burning crop stubble is fully implemented.