On November 18, India officially announced a national emergency. Gray smog, what Oxford Languages defines as “fog or haze combined with smoke and other atmospheric pollutants,”obscured the capital of India, New Delhi, choking even the most prepared mask-wearing citizens. The toxic gas was deemed to be a hazard due to scientific and obvious measures.
“The air quality index (AQI) in its capital Delhi touched a peak of 494 on a scale of 500…, forcing authorities to restrict vehicle movement and construction activities, and order schools to conduct classes online,” Annie Arif, a writer for Reuters, reported. What had already been the lifestyle of towns near coal mines and other smog-filled places was extended to the lives of all the Northern Indian citizens, as many of them proved nearly unable to breathe in the smog. This phenomenon is known to have been lethal, taking numerous lives annually.
“Delhi’s hazardous air quality claims around 12,000 lives annually, with short-term PM2.5 exposure linked to 11.5% of deaths in the city,” Sushim Mukul and Yudhajit Shankar Das of India Today wrote. They also described symptoms of the gas-solid hybrid, including “no sighting of the sun for days… wheezing and burning throats.” In addition, the view of many drivers has been obscured in the traffic-heavy busy capital, causing numerous accidents, and some drivers have even been arrested on possible counts of murder. For example, “At Bulandshahr, a speeding truck hit a bike from behind, leading to the biker’s death,” Saikat Kumar Bose of NDTV said. “Mainpuri resident Mansharam died after the truck rammed his bike due to low visibility on National Highway-34. Police have taken the truck driver into custody.”
The dangerous gray haze is thought to be caused by many different factors. For example, although illegal, crop burning has been a popular method of farming conducted by farmers to get rid of excess crops. The practice has always been common around this time of year, because if the fields are not fully cleared, the farmers would potentially be at a financial disadvantage. “Farmers in Punjab and neighbouring Haryana and Uttar Pradesh states say they have a small window to clear the earth between the paddy harvest and sowing the winter wheat crop,” Arif said. “Efforts to persuade them to use machines to chop the stubble or chemicals to dissolve them have failed due to the high costs involved with the machinery, and low success rate of the chemicals.” As many farmers also realized that using the government’s advised method would also lead to financial losses causing a vast amount of desperate farmers to continue their behavior.
Furthermore, coal energy plants are another source of air pollution with them releasing poisonous ash and dust through the air. Only a mere 3 weeks prior had the companies pushed the government to repeal their newly-established laws regarding pollution of the air with the ash byproduct produced. “In their correspondence with ministries, they argued that high fines for non-compliance with waste disposal rules were a risk to their financial sustainability and raised the prospect of coal-fired power plants being shut down, triggering a power crisis in the country,” Akshay Deshmane of Climate Home News said. He explained how these companies had been able to be exempt from the previous laws because of certain loopholes, despite the government’s panic at the inevitable crisis. The harmful smog effects on local citizens have been seen even as far back as in 2017. Photos showing ash clinging to citizens as well as the use of masks were documented by Deshmane as well.
Aside from crop burnings and coal plants, vehicle emissions play a large role, too. India has a staggering amount of motor vehicles operating daily, carrying citizens to their desired destinations quickly. “There are around 260 million two-wheelers and 50 million cars on Indian roads,” Abhishek Waghmare of Data For India reported in September of 2024. Hence, it’s no surprise that they do their fair share of pollution, especially as Reuters reported that most vehicles in India run on gasoline and other nonrenewable energy sources.
Lastly, not only has the smog affected Northern India, but it is present in Pakistan as well. “Lahore, the capital of Punjab, the most populous province in Pakistan, regularly ranks among the world’s most polluted cities,” Zia ur-Rehman of The New York Times reported. “According to IQAir, a Swiss climate monitoring group, Lahore has hit record smog levels in recent weeks, reaching a reading of 1,100 on the Air Quality Index on Thursday.” In fact, the Pakistani government had responded to the problem before India, as Pakistani officials have imposed curfews and recreational lockdowns. “On Friday, the provincial government declared smog a health crisis, saying that nearly two million people had already been sickened,” ur-Rehman added. The contributors to the crisis are relatively the same. However, the Pakistani farmers seem to feel more innocent than guilty and instead blame the other factors, such as brick kilns used for construction, which have been promptly destroyed.
With the increase of alarming signs from around the world about climate change (such as smog), humanity must take notice of the disasters that are plaguing everywhere, especially in India and Pakistan. The smog in Southern Asia serves as a reminder and a desperate plea for something to be changed. National governments cannot continue down this path anymore. As this problem of smog continues to expand across the continent with seemingly no signs of slowing down, humanity must join together to solve this problem for the betterment of global society.
