If China can cut its pollution, why can’t India?

Despite years of policy interventions, air pollution in India is rapidly getting worse. By the middle of this month, cities including the capital New Delhi were seeing air quality readings at hazardous levels. A 2024 IQ Air report found India’s particulate matter (PM2.5) levels to be more than 10 times the World Health Organization’s safe limit.

In the north, pollution mainly comes from traffic, construction dust, industry and seasonal stubble burning. What began as an environmental issue is now a major health emergency, prompting advisories for masks, limited outdoor exposure and air purifiers, especially for vulnerable groups.

In fighting pollution, China provides an awkward but useful analogy. Beijing reduced PM2.5 levels by about 35 per cent between 2013 and 2017 thanks to measures including legally mandated targets, vigorous industrial clean-ups and clean energy use. It made its biggest air-quality improvements by cracking down on coal-based heating, shifting households to cleaner fuel options, shutting down heavily polluting local industries and tightening vehicle emission rules.

By contrast, India is still piecing together scattered policies. These include the Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP), which outlines emergency steps to control severe air pollution in New Delhi. The National Clean Air Programme (NCAP), launched in 2019, is India’s long-term strategy to cut particulate pollution nationwide, targeting a 20-30 per cent reduction in particulate matter levels.

Yet, India has responded to the problem only after it became unbearable. This approach simply won’t work for a problem of this scale. These programmes have major issues: GRAP responds only when pollution spikes and doesn’t tackle year-round sources of pollution, while NCAP focuses more on monitoring than major structural changes. With pollution crossing state borders, fragmented city-level action leads to blame-shifting.

Real progress on cleaner transport, electric vehicles, industrial upgrades and clean heating remains slow. Many steps also clash with people’s livelihoods, causing pushback and delays. NCAP focuses largely on cutting pollution within cities but overlooks the fact that much of the particulate matter comes from outside them.

  

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