NEW DELHI: Residents in India’s capital again woke under a blanket of choking smog on Friday, a day after authorities closed primary schools and imposed measures aimed at alleviating the annual crisis.

New Delhi and the surrounding metropolitan area, home to more than 30 million people, consistently top world rankings for air pollution in winter.

The smog is blamed for thousands of premature deaths every year and is an annual source of misery for residents, with various piecemeal government initiatives failing to measurably address the problem.

All primary schools were shut by government order on Thursday night with young pupils _ particularly vulnerable to smog-related ailments due to their age _ instead moving to online lessons.

“I have an eight-year-old kid and he has been suffering from a cough the past couple of days,” Delhi resident Satraj said on the streets of the capital.

“The government did the right thing by shutting down schools.”

Thursday’s edict also banned construction work, ordered drivers of older diesel-powered vehicles to stay off the streets and directed water trucks to spray roads in a bid to clear dust particles from the air.

Delhi’s air quality nonetheless deteriorated to “hazardous” levels for the fourth consecutive day this week, according to monitoring firm IQAir.

Levels of PM2.5 pollutants _ dangerous cancer-causing microparticles that enter the bloodstream through the lungs _ were recorded more than 26 times above the World Health Organization’s recommended daily maximum shortly after dawn on Friday.

Thousands of fires

Critics have consistently said that authorities have fallen short in their duty to tackle a crisis that blights the city every year.

“We haven’t responded to the emergency with the same intensity with which we are facing this crisis,” Sunil Dahiya of New Delhi-based advocacy group Envirocatalysts said.

Published in Dawn, November 16th, 2024