Tackling Delhi’s air pollution: A Systems problem demanding a systemic reform

Each winter, Delhi descends into its now-familiar public health emergency. As temperatures fall and winds weaken, a heavy grey blanket settles over the NCR, pushing daily life into crisis mode — schools shut, construction halts, and citizens track AQI readings as routinely as the time of day. Yet this seasonal panic obscures a deeper truth: Delhi’s pollution is not a winter anomaly but a year-round structural failure. Meteorology merely exposes what governance has failed to fix.

Having worked within the Delhi government ecosystem and now leading a data and AI centre, it is clear to me that the science of the problem and the strategy of our response remain misaligned. To move beyond temporary relief, the capital needs systems-level interventions that tackle the roots of emissions - not only their winter manifestations.

A Misdiagnosed Crisis

Much of the public discourse reduces Delhi’s air problem to a single culprit: stubble burning in Punjab and Haryana. There is truth in this - data from the Ministry of Earth Sciences’ Decision Support System shows that during peak episodes, crop-residue fires can contribute up to one-fourth of Delhi’s PM2.5 load. But this is only a part of a much broader emissions landscape. The more uncomfortable reality is that the pollutants choking Delhi in winter are present all year. What changes in October and November is the atmosphere: cold air sinks, moisture captures particulates, and stagnation prevents dispersion. Vehicles, industries, waste burning and construction dust continue producing the same pollutants in summer and monsoon — but winter’s inversion conditions magnify their impact. This is why emergency measures such as smog guns, cloud seeding or the hasty implementation of the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) offer limited relief. They treat symptoms, not the disease.

The GRAP Paradox

GRAP was designed as a last-mile emergency protocol, not a primary strategy. Its annual invocation signals a governance gap: if the baseline emissions were lower, winter conditions would not plunge Delhi into the “severe” category so quickly. Even when fully implemented, GRAP yields only marginal improvements. Halting truck entry or shutting schools disrupts daily life but barely shifts average air quality because the underlying emission load remains unchanged. GRAP is, at best, a tourniquet - useful during haemorrhage, but not a substitute for long-term treatment. The real work must focus on three structural sectors: mobility, industry and waste.

1. Mobility: Move People, Not Cars

Vehicles remain among the largest contributors to Delhi’s internal PM2.5 load. The adoption of BS-VI fuel — reducing sulphur content dramatically — was a significant achievement. But the gains are being cancelled out by sheer volume: Delhi registers nearly 2,000 new vehicles daily, a figure that overwhelms any technological improvement. A transformative mobility strategy must include:

Fleet Replacement: A targeted, time-bound scrappage and replacement programme is essential — particularly for ageing commercial vehicles, which are big emitters. Incentivising transitions to electric, CNG or compliant engines is far more effective than periodic bans.

Public Transport Revitalisation: No city can fight pollution while expanding private vehicle dependence. Delhi’s public transport — buses, metro, last-mile services - needs capacity expansion, better frequency and integration. The policy focus must shift from “restricting cars” to “enabling people to not need cars”.

2. An Economics Problem

A persistent misconception is that Delhi has minimal industrial activity. In reality, the NCR’s industrial belt — Ghaziabad, Faridabad, Gurugram, Bhiwadi - burns large volumes of dirty fuel. The barrier to clean energy adoption is economic, not technological. Natural gas, the cleaner alternative, becomes prohibitively expensive due to high taxation outside the GST regime. As long as dirty fuels remain cheaper, compliance will remain sporadic. Bringing natural gas under GST would be one of the most impactful policy reforms for clean air. By aligning economic incentives with environmental goals, industry will transition voluntarily instead of under coercion.

3. The Missing Scale

Crop burning persists not because farmers prefer it, but because alternatives lack the scale, infrastructure or economic reward. Technologies exist — baling, in-situ decomposition, biogasification, ethanol production - but deployment remains fragmented. Similarly, within Delhi, waste burning often continues because segregation at source remains inconsistent. Landfills routinely smoulder, and municipal systems struggle with volume.

Addressing this requires:

• Assured procurement and incentives for biomass-based fuels,
• Statewide logistics for residue collection and processing,
• Strict enforcement coupled with community-level waste segregation,
• Modern waste-to-energy and composting capacity.

Without addressing biomass and municipal waste, Delhi cannot sustainably lower its particulate load.

Lessons from Beijing     

Cities like Beijing demonstrate that clean air is not an impossible aspiration. Their gains did not come from symbolic measures but from structural transitions:

• Shifting industries from coal to natural gas
• Phasing out old vehicles through aggressive scrappage schemes,
• Managing construction and road dust with strict, technology-driven enforcement,
• Creating a unified regional governance

Systems Approach

Pollution in Delhi is not a local issue; it is a regional systems problem involving meteorology, agriculture, mobility, fuel economics and governance architecture. Solutions must therefore be structural and coordinated, not reactive.

• sustainable roadmap should include:
• A regional clean-air council integrating Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, UP and Rajasthan for unified action,
• Adaptive agricultural policies responsive to meteorological forecasts and residue-management capacity,
• Year-round mobility reforms prioritising public transport and fleet renewal,
• GST reform for clean fuels, enabling industries to switch affordably,
• Community-level participation supported by micro-monitoring and transparency dashboards. When policy, science and public will align, Delhi’s air can improve dramatically - just as other global megacities have shown.

The Path Ahead

Delhi’s pollution crisis is often portrayed as inevitable. It is not. It is the result of fragmented planning, delayed decisions and reactive governance. But just as the smog reveals the consequences of inaction, it also reveals a path forward. Clean air is not a seasonal aspiration - it is a constitutional right and a collective responsibility. The transition demands structural honesty, regional cooperation and a willingness to move  to systemic reform.  India has the knowledge, the institutions and the civic energy to achieve this. What remains is the resolve to treat clean air not as an annual headline, but as a national mission.

The writer is a tech and social entrepreneur from IIT Kharagpur; views are persona; views are personall