Anurag Verma in The New York Times:
After the long, torturous summers that bake northern India in 40-degree Celsius (104 degree Fahrenheit) heat, winter should be welcomed as a reprieve. Instead, it is our season of sadness. The annual pollution emergency faced by hundreds of millions of Indians is upon us — three months of physical and emotional suffocation. I live in Delhi, one of the most polluted major cities in the world, which is wrapped during winter in a dull sepia more befitting a vintage photograph than a place alive in the present. The air smells toxic, leaves a metallic burn in the throat and stings the eyes.
This health crisis has become a built-in feature of life, as predictable as the annual choreography of public fear and government paralysis that comes with it. Once again, Delhi’s pollution levels have repeatedly blown past the upper limits of the government’s air quality index into hazardous territory, or more than a hundred times what global health bodies say is safe.
More here.
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