India’s capital, Delhi, has ordered all primary schools to cease in-person classes until further notice because of an air pollution crisis that has also prompted Pakistan’s Punjab province to declare a health emergency and ban construction, shut schools for another week and move universities online.
Delhi and the surrounding metropolitan area, home to more than 30 million people, consistently tops world rankings for air pollution in winter. It is estimated to reduce life expectancy for the capital’s residents by up to seven years.
Smog has become an annual source of misery in Delhi, with various piecemeal government initiatives failing to measurably address the problem.
“Due to rising pollution levels, all primary schools in Delhi will be shifting to online classes, until further directions,” Delhi’s chief minister, Atishi, announced on the social media platform X on Thursday.
The annual smog crisis caused numerous other disruptions across the city and throughout northern India, including delays and cancellations to flights and trains. Hospitals reported a surge in patients coming in with breathing and gastrointestinal issues linked to the pollution, which doctors say is driving a health crisis in the city.
Air pollution in Multan, Pakistan. Photograph: Quratulain Asim/Reuters
The government on Thursday also banned all non-essential construction and appealed to citizens to use more public transport and avoid using coal and wood for heating, without saying how long the measures would be in place.
Air quality across northern India has deteriorated over the past week. Levels of PM2.5 pollutants – dangerous cancer-causing microparticles that enter the bloodstream through the lungs – were recorded as more than 50 times above the World Health Organization’s recommended daily maximum on Wednesday.
More than 100 miles (160km) away from Delhi, the smog was so thick it obscured the Taj Mahal monument.
Smog has also choked Punjab for weeks, sickening nearly 2 million people and shrouding vast areas of the province in a toxic haze. A senior provincial minister, Marriyum Aurangzeb, declared the health emergency at a press conference and announced measures to tackle the growing crisis.
Time off for medical staff has been cancelled, all education institutions are shut until further notice, and restaurants are to close at 4pm – takeaway is available until 8pm. Authorities are imposing a lockdown in the cities of Multan and Lahore and halting construction work in both places.
“Smog is currently a national disaster,” Aurangzeb said. “It will not all be over in a month or a year. We will evaluate the situation after three days and then announce a further strategy.”
Average air quality index readings in parts of Lahore, a city of 11 million, exceeded 600 on Friday. Anything over 300 is considered hazardous to health.
The smog in both countries is primarily blamed on stubble burning by farmers to clear their fields for ploughing, as well as factories and traffic fumes. Cooler temperatures and slow-moving winds worsen the situation by trapping deadly pollutants each winter, stretching from mid-October until at least January.
Thick smog in Delhi. Photograph: Rajat Gupta/EPA
India’s supreme court ruled this October that clean air was a fundamental human right, ordering both the central government and state-level authorities to take action. But critics say arguments between rival politicians heading neighbouring states – as well as between central and state-level authorities – have compounded the problem.
Politicians are accused of not wanting to anger key figures in their constituencies, particularly powerful farming groups.
Delhi authorities have launched several initiatives to tackle pollution that have done little in practice.
A scheme announced this month, which would use three small drones to spray water mist, was derided by critics as another sticking plaster solution to a public health crisis.
The choking smog across Delhi came as researchers warned that planet-warming fossil fuel emissions would hit a record high this year, according to findings from an international network of scientists at the Global Carbon Project.
With Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters
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