In Delhi, More Now Die From Air Pollution Than From Obesity Or Diabetes; Protest AQ And You'll Go To Jail

As a familiar smoky evening haze gathered over Delhi, the crowd began to assemble in their hundreds. Mothers and children, students, retirees and environmentalists were all united by a basic but desperate demand: the right to breathe safely in India’s capital. “Delhi is not a liveable city any more, it’s a death trap,” said Radhika Aggarwal, 33, an engineer who joined the protest on Sunday. "As I stand here, I’m breathing air that I know is killing me. But we see nothing but a failure by the government to do anything to stop this and clean up the pollution. No policies, no real action. So I’m here to fight for my city.”

For the past decade, Delhi has held the inglorious title of being the world’s most polluted city. Pollution season has become as normalised as the monsoon, as it rolls over the city in a suffocating smog that begins in October and can last for more than four months. In the past weeks, Air quality index (AQI) measurements have regularly soared to more than a hundred times higher than is deemed safe by global heath bodies and residents routinely describe the city as akin to a gas chamber. Pollution now kills more people in Delhi than obesity or diabetes.

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The seeming inevitability of the pollution, and the failure by successive state governments to do anything about it, means it has often been met with apathy by residents. But on Sunday, as a rare protest against the increasingly woeful air quality erupted in the Delhi’s political centre, anger and frustration were rife. The call for Sunday’s protest had been to gather at India Gate, the country’s famed memorial to its fallen martyrs. But in the days prior to the protest, the police had made hundreds of calls and homes visits to those amplifying the protest to pressure them to call it off, even threatening legal action against them; the latest crackdown on any form of dissent in India.

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On Sunday police shut down India gate to prevent the protest and within hours, officers had aggressively cleared the nearby site, detaining almost 100 protesters at police stations until late into the night, with elderly people, mothers and children among them. The next day, a police case was filed against the organisers.

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/11/delhi-air-pollution-protest