Why India’s Air Pollution Crisis Persists: Fragmented Governance and Flawed Policy Approaches

Air Pollution Latest News

• Every winter, Delhi sinks into its usual toxic smog, and India reaches for the same short-term fixes — cloud seeding, smog towers, water sprinkling, odd-even rules, and festival crackdowns. 
• These highly visible measures create an impression of action but barely change actual air quality.
• Public discourse deteriorates just as fast: scientists are accused of weak solutions, politicians of lacking resolve, and administrators of copying Western models without local adaptation. 
• While each criticism holds some truth, none captures the full systemic failure.
• This year, frustration spilled into small but peaceful public protests near India Gate. 
• Around 50–60 people gathered on November 24, only to face heavy police presence, and five protesters were detained — reflecting both civic desperation and administrative defensiveness.

Fragmented Governance Fuels India’s Pollution Crisis

• India’s repeated reliance on short-term pollution fixes stems from a deeper structural flaw: air-quality management is fragmented across numerous agencies.
• Responsibilities are split among the Environment Ministry, CPCB, SPCBs, CAQM, DPCC, municipal bodies, and sectoral departments such as agriculture, transport, industry, and energy. 
• With each institution overseeing only a slice of the problem, no agency has full authority or accountability for clean air.

Governance Constraints and Institutional Weaknesses

• Environmental powers are constitutionally shared, budgets and manpower vary widely, and judicial pressure prioritises quick actions over long-term planning. 
• With many actors involved but none empowered to lead, sustained progress becomes difficult.

Short-Term Measures Dominate

• The dominance of quick fixes is also rooted in political incentives. 
• High-visibility measures — cloud seeding, smog towers, anti-smog guns, odd-even rules — allow governments to show immediate action without challenging powerful polluting sectors like construction, transport, and agriculture. 
• They cost little, fit easily into annual budgets, and avoid political backlash.
• These interventions respond to headlines rather than the science of pollution control, providing momentary relief while doing little to improve public health.

Political Optics Over Public Health

• Short-term measures help officials signal responsiveness during pollution spikes but fail to address structural issues such as waste burning, fuel quality, industrial emissions, and crop residue management. 
• As a result, the air remains hazardous, and winter pollution keeps returning, exposing systemic gaps that require long-term, coordinated reform rather than symbolic actions.

‹ ›

Why India’s Pollution Policies Fail: The Intellectual and Western Traps

• India’s pollution strategies are often shaped by elite institutions, think tanks, and top scientific bodies. 
• While analytically strong, these actors are frequently removed from the lived realities of municipal governance — understaffing, limited budgets, informal economies, and political constraints.
• As a result:
  • Policies look good on paper but falter in execution.
  • Strategies underestimate enforcement challenges and administrative gaps.
  • Many remain pilots, unable to scale due to lack of institutional support.
• This trap prioritises what should work in theory over what can work in practice.

The Western Trap: Copying Global Models Without Local Adaptation

• India routinely imports “best practices” from Europe, East Asia, and the West, assuming they can function the same way here.
• However, India’s conditions differ sharply:
  • High-density neighbourhoods
  • Informal construction and transport sectors
  • Weak regulatory credibility
  • Limited institutional trust and administrative coordination
• When applied without contextual redesign, global models collapse under India’s resource constraints and socio-political complexities. 
• The issue isn’t foreign ideas — it’s the lack of localisation.

Building India-Specific Clean-Air Solutions

• To overcome the intellectual and Western traps, India must adapt global ideas to its own administrative, political, and social realities. 
• Even strong solutions need redesign to fit local constraints.

Need for Clear Leadership and Accountability

• India’s air-quality governance lacks clarity on:
  • Who leads,
  • Who coordinates, and
  • Who is accountable across national, State, and municipal levels.
• A modern clean-air law with explicit mandates could streamline roles, reduce jurisdictional overlaps, and ensure steady implementation.

Strengthening Institutions Through Stable Systems

• Effective air-quality management requires:
  • Multi-year funding to build staff and maintain equipment
  • Public access to compliance data to build credibility
  • Visible enforcement to ensure rules matter
  • Consistency across election cycles, avoiding policy resets
• These foundation blocks enable long-term progress rather than episodic, crisis-driven interventions.

The Missing Link: Science Managers

• India needs a professional cadre of science managers who can:
  • Understand both science and governance
  • Translate expert knowledge into workable policies
  • Help ministries navigate complex transitions
  • Maintain coherence despite bureaucratic turnover
• Without them, India’s scientific tools and models remain disconnected from actual policymaking.

Aligning Ambition with Capacity

• India’s main gap is not ideas but alignment:
  • Policies often assume levels of staffing, coordination and public compliance that vary widely across cities and States.
  • Solutions must start from Indian constraints—informal economies, uneven urban capacity, budget limits, and diverse regional priorities.
  • Policies should be implementation-first, built around what agencies can realistically enforce and what communities will accept.

Source: TH