NEW Delhi wakes up to toxic smog and goes to sleep in the same harmful conditions.
In the hours between, the 30 million residents of India’s capital region trudge along with chronic headaches and itchy eyes, symptoms of this rising superpower’s failure to provide its people with a most basic need: breathable air.
The problem persists in New Delhi, even while other once-polluted capitals, like Beijing, have succeeded in cleaning their skies.
As the air grew so hazardous that the government was forced to order half of its workers to work from home recently, journalists for The New York Times travelled around the city, from the predawn hours to midnight, to chronicle the struggle with bad air.
A daily PM2.5 level of 15µg/m³ is considered the standard for safe breathing, as this measure indicates the concentration of the most harmful particulates in the air.
To assess the air quality, we utilised an air quality monitor to gather our own PM2.5 measurements at various key locations, which we subsequently cross-referenced with official data.
What we found was a city with no escape from severely toxic air, and a population resigned to a public health emergency as its everyday reality.
6am, at India Gate
Joggers began arriving before dawn. They went through warm-ups and began to run down the central avenue that separates two New Delhi monuments – the India Gate and the president’s house.
Even at this early hour, the smog was so thick that each was invisible from the other.
Not far away, Dinesh Kamath, 72, was out for his hour-long morning walk in a public park. For older residents like him, the winter, when pollution is at its worst, brings the same dilemma every year: to stay home and miss health-affirming exercises or to stretch their legs outside at the cost of their lungs.
7.30am, at Safdarjang Road
We sighted the first of many “anti-smog guns” – sprayers that are attached to water tanks and deployed around the city, including near key landmarks like the prime minister’s residence and major embassies.
The guns have been a matter of political debate. Many experts say the government is trying to deceive the public by spraying water around the more than three dozen air-quality monitoring stations, to lower their readings.
Opposition leaders have accused the government of an even more brazen manipulation, saying data from several of these stations has gone missing during the worst hours of pollution.
8am, outside a secondary school
As children arrived for classes at the DTEA Senior Secondary School, the level of dangerous pollutants at the high school’s entrance was more than 20 times the recommended daily average for safe breathing.
Education in New Delhi is disrupted every year by pollution emergencies, when the government tells students to stay home and take classes online because of peak contamination levels.
10.30am, outside a public hospital
Doctors at All India Institutes of Medical Sciences, India’s most prestigious health institution, have reported a 30% to 40% increase in patients arriving with respiratory complaints.
“This is a public health emergency, and it should be treated like a public health emergency now,” Dr Anant Mohan, the head of the pulmonary department, told local news media.
At LNJP Hospital, one of the most crowded in New Delhi, attendants and families of patients were resting on blankets in the hospital yard, where the PM2.5 was about 17 times the recommended for safe breathing.
Inside the hospital’s crowded halls, it was about 10 times the guideline.
12.30pm, outside the income tax office
Shailendra Chauhan, 49, was getting a shave at a roadside barber stall. He works as the driver of an official in India’s tax authority.
“Breathing is difficult, and the eyes become itchy,” he said.
Chauhan said his boss had recently installed a small air purifier in the car. That made him wonder about the ways the rich clear the air in their homes.
5.30pm, at Chandni Chowk market
At opposite ends of a crowded market area in Old Delhi, we found a telling contrast. At one end, traffic on the Chandni Chowk area’s main road has long been limited to cycle rickshaws and electric rickshaws.
Because of a festival at a nearby Sikh temple, the traffic was further restricted, and the sidewalks were washed twice a day for three days.
Near the temple, we measured the PM2.5 at a little more than 10 times above the level for safe breathing. But a kilometre down the road, where the traffic restrictions ended, the reading was nearly double.
8pm, at Anand Vihar Bus Station
Deepak Rawat, 31, makes a living at one of Delhi’s busiest bus stations by working at a chai and biscuits stall.
A native of the eastern state of Bihar, he said he opens his tea stall at 4am and goes home at 10pm. On most days, he earns US$5 to US$6. The tang of smog mixed with the pungent rot of the large open sewer behind his stall.
“My eyes burn all the time. Some days, I get tired very early,” he said, trying to suppress a frequent cough.
He said he wanted to save a bit and go back to his village. He and his wife dread every winter because their children, six and eight, fall ill frequently.
“It won’t work out here,” he said. “Every year, it is the same.” — ©2025 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times
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