When Sri Lankan cricketers stopped play briefly during the third cricket test at New Delhi’s Feroz Shah Kotla ground last December complaining of severe pollution and worse, resumed play wearing a mask, we felt hurt, humiliated and angry at the visiting team for exposing our dark underbelly.

The country’s reaction was one of denial as exemplified by BCCI’s reaction then: “20,000 people in the stands did not have a problem…”. The Sri Lankan players were trolled on social media for making a big fuss. A few days and a new crisis later, the country moved on. As regards air pollution, it has only got worse.

In March this year, the World Health Organisation announced that nine out of the top 10 most polluting cities in the world were in India. The Global Burden of Disease Study 2017 released recently on the effect of air pollution, for the first time, put the issue in greater perspective. One out of eight deaths in India is attributable to air pollution and in absolute terms that number, at 12.4 lakh people, is not small.

Also, country’s mean particulate matter (PM 2.5) of 90 micrograms/cubic metre is the worst in the world with as much as 77 per cent of the population exposed to significant air pollution. Energy Policy Institute, University of Chicago has estimated that residents of New Delhi will live nine years longer if the air quality in the Capital met the WHO standards (PM 2.5 of 25 micrograms per cu metre or less).

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