Category: Op-ed

Yes, China massively reduced urban air pollution. Some of its strategies are worth studying. But an authoritarian govt can implement changes a democracy can’t. And India can’t spend as much as China did. We need our own solution

There is a Hindi idiom – chutki lena – that loosely translates as teasing, trolling, mocking or putting someone down. Social media today is full of people taking chutki over air pollution in Delhi. The recent tweet by Chinese Embassy spokesperson, offering a “step-by-step guide” on how Beijing tackled air pollution, falls into this category. It is unsolicited, overly generic and not helpful regardless that the Chinese capital on Thursday suffered a rare smog (AQI climbed to 214) after years of pollution clean-up efforts.

Researchers in India, including myself, have followed Beijing’s air quality journey closely for years. We have studied the “Beijing model”, examined its successes and understood its limitations. One must first recognise a basic reality about information coming out of China:it is tightly controlled and never complete.While general descriptions of actions taken and headline pollution reductions are widely available, crucial information is missing.

Data on regulatory enforcement, economic costs, public expenditure, private sector liabilities, worker displacement, compensation and social costs are largely absent. Without this information, simply lifting the Beijing model and superimposing it on Delhi is neither feasible nor responsible.

That said, there is no denying Beijing has achieved remarkable improvements in air quality in a relatively short period. India can – and should – learn from their experience. But learning does not mean copying. We must clearly distinguish between what can be replicated, what cannot, and what is unique to India and therefore requires additional solutions beyond anything Beijing did.

What to learn from Beijing
Value of a regional action plan. The Beijing-Tianjin- Hebei (BTH) regional framework enabled coordinated action across an airshed, leading to significant emission reductions. However, it is important to understand the administrative simplicity behind it.

BTH region covers about 2.2L sq km under two centrally administered municipalities Beijing and Tianjin – and a single province, Hebei, with 11 cities. Coordinatingaction across this region, while challenging, was administratively manageable.

Replicating this approach for Delhi is far more complex. A meaningful regional plan for Delhi would need to cover areas within a 150km radius, spanning six states (Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, UP, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan), urban local bodies and cantonment areas. Delhi is governed by three authorities – Centre, state and municipal corporations, cantonment aside. So, we’ll require an entirely new administrative and governance model to make regional action work.

Public transport and vehicle electrification are other areas where Beijing offers important lessons. Many measures Beijingadopted-stricter emission standards, cleaner fuels, and scrapping old vehicles-are also being attempted in Delhi, but with limited success.

A key difference is that Beijing actively curtailed the growth of private vehicles; Delhi has not. But like Beijing, we need to build world-class public transport across all of NCR. Similarly, rapid electrification of transport is essential.

In many ways, Beijing’s air pollution crisis helped catalyse China’s rise as the world leader in electric vehicles. China converted an environmental crisis into an economic opportunity; India should aim to do the same.

Reduction of coal use and strict regulation of power plants and industries is another critical lesson. While Delhi has shut down its thermal power plants and shifted many industries to the outskirts, coal use within the broader airshed remains substantial. Beijing not only reduced coal consumption by nearly 90% but also enforced extremely stringent emission standards. For example, the particulate matter standard for coal power plants in China is 10 mg/m³ or lower; in India, the standard is 30-100 mg/m³-3 to 10 times higher.

China’s SO2 standard is 35 mg/m³, whereas in India even relaxed limits of 100-600 mg/m³ were exempted for nearly 75% of coal-based power plants. Without enforcing strict pollution norms, meaningful air quality improvement is impossible. This is one of Beijing’s clearest lessons.

What won’t work here

Shutting down or relocating more than 3,000 heavy industries, as Beijing did, would effectively de-industrialise the entire region. Such an approach would be economically disastrous, socially destabilising and politically untenable in India.

Then there is the question of cost. While exact figures are unavailable, it is clear that Beijing spent billions of dollars to clean its air. That scale of expenditure is simply not feasible for India. Any clean air plan for Delhi must work within the country’s fiscal constraints.

Finally, Delhi faces challenges Beijing never had to confront. The most prominent is stubble burning. Beijing’s air quality was not affected by seasonal agricultural fires in the way Delhi’s is. Any serious clean air plan for Delhi must directly address this problem. Similarly, clean cooking fuel was never an issue for Beijing.

China transitioned most households to gas by the early 2000s and launched a Clean Heating policy in 2013 to move residential heating away from biomass and coal. In contrast, biomass use for cooking and heating remains a major source of pollution in Delhi-NCR and must be tackled head-on. Lastly, the Delhi airshed also faces a major challenge from pollution generated by lakhs of informal micro and small enterprises – from jaggery and confectionery makers to small metalworkers and many others. These enterprises must be supported to shift to clean fuels.

In sum, while Delhi can and should learn from Beijing-andfrom other cities around the world-itmust develop its own clean-air strategy and make it work in Indian conditions. From a researcher’s perspective, it is clear Delhi’s air pollution challenge is far more complex than Beijing’s ever was. Social media chutki may earn likes and retweets, but cleaning Delhi’s air requires far more than a step-by-step guide.

Core causes of India’s air pollution crisis have been clear for 25 years: burning of biomass and coal.
Still, the bickering continues. And the Delhi problem spreads to Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad

Every winter, Delhi’s air pollution debate follows a familiar script. We look for villains, argue over blame, ignore science and solutions. This year has been no different – except that it has bordered on the absurd.
Pollution season opened with the Supreme Court allowing “green crackers”, followed by Delhi govt’s failed cloud-seeding experiment. Soon after came official data claiming a 90% reduction in stubble burning in Punjab and Haryana. Overnight, stubble burning was declared “not a problem”. Even though scientific evidence told a very different story.

A paper from ISRO and an independent analysis by my colleagues showed that stubble burning continued widely across Punjab. Haryana, UP, and MP, significantly contributing to pollution in Delhi-NCR. Real issue was not theabsence of fires, but the failure of monitoring. Govt agencies rely largely on polar-orbiting satellites that pass over India in the early after- noon. As farmers simply shift the burning to late afternoon and evening, a large proportion of farm fires is no longer being detected.

Instead of fixing the monitoring system, we wasted weeks in tu-tu main-main over whether stubble burning or Delhi’s local sources were to blame. Lost in this noise was a far more important question: how prepared were institutions such as MCD. Delhi Pollution Control Committee, and Commission for Air Quality Management for the pollution season? As usual, we forgot to demand real solutions or hold institutions accountable.

All this is particularly frustrating because the core causes of India’s air pollution crisis have been known for at least 25 years. In 1999, more than 200 scientists from across the world participated in the Indian Ocean Experiment, led by the renowned atmospheric scientist V Ramanathan. Thisstudy identified a massive brown haze which they called the “Asian Brown Cloud” – stretching over the Indian subcontinent and the Indian Ocean from Oct to Feb.

Their findings were unequivocal. This haze was largely caused by the burning of biomass in homes and fields, and fossil fuels (especially coal) in industry and power plants. Pollution travelled thousands of kms, altered rainfall patterns, reduced agri productivity, and caused widespread respiratory and cardiovascular disease

When UNEP published the findings in 2002, some prominent Indian scientists questioned the terminology and intent. The phenomenon was renamed the “Atmospheric Brown Cloud with a focus on Asia”, while the warnings were largely ignored by govts.

A quarter century later, air pollution has become a pan-India crisis. Cities such as Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad, which once had relatively clean air, now routinely fail to meet national air quality standards. This deterioration is not accidental. It is the direct result of our persistent failure to address the primary sources of pollution identified decades ago.

What pollutes India? | Over the last five years, Indian scientific institutions have produceda growing body of research that policymakers have largely ignored. A 2024 study involving researchers from prominent institutions, including earth sciences ministry found that about 50% of PM10 and PM2.5 in Delhi during the peak pollution season comes from biomass-burning sources. Another study from IIT-Kanpur, published in 2023, showed that biomass burning (especially residential heating) is the main driver of intense and frequent night-time haze in Delhi during Janand Feb.
Similar findings have emerged from other parts of the country Together, they point to a clear conclusion: open burning of biomass (whether for cooking and heating in homes, in small industrial and commercial establishments, or in agricultural fields) is the single largest source of air pollution in India. Without sharply reducing biomass burning, we simply cannot clean the country’s air.

The second major source of pollution is coal use in industries and power plants. A 2023 study by my colleagues estimated that around 37% of India’s PM2.5 emissions come from industry and power generation. Vehicular pollution is the third largest source, especially in cities.
Basically, what we burn the most, pollutes the most. India burns around 220cr tonnes of fuel and waste every year. About 85% of this iscoal and biomass; petrol, diesel and gas together account for only 15%. Unsurprisingly, most of our pollution comes from coal and biomass. Add dust from roads, construction sites and barren land, and the picture becomes even clearer.

No short-cuts | Solving India’s air pollution crisis requires a clean energy transition and an “all-of-the-above” approach.

• Biggest gains will come from the residential sector. Transitioning households to LPG, biogas or electricity for cooking and heating would eliminate a large share of PM2.5 emissions and prevent nearly 800,000 premature deaths each year from indoor air pollution. This is difficult, but achievable through targeted policies such as a strengthened PM Ujjwala programme that provides adequate incentives for low-income households to abandon biomass completely
• Industry must be the next priority Encouraging MSMEs to adopt cleaner fuels and technologies, such as electric boilers and furnaces, combined with strict monitoring, can substantially Teduce emissions. For large industries and power plants, enforcementof strict emission standards must be non-negotiable.
• Eliminating stubble burning remains essential to reducing severe pollution episodes in Oct and Nov. In just 45 days, stubble burning emits as much PM2.5 as all vehicles in India do in an entire year. The solutions- technology, market access, incentives, penalties – are well-known and proven.
• Scaling up electric vehicles and public transport will steadily reduce urban pollution, but this requires ambitious targets and serious investment, not slogans. Finally, local sources (dust, construction, garbage burning, congestion) must be tackled by empowered and accountable urban local bodies.

Real progress on the above action plan will only begin when we stop bickering over science. So, acknowledging the true impact and sources of our pollution crisis is the first step towards meaningful action.