Earlier this month, India’s Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan declared a “war against pollution” and launched the National Clean Air Programme (NCAP). The payoffs from the successful implementation of NCAP could be substantial—my research suggests that the average person in India could be expected to live 1.3 years longer and people in the most polluted areas, like Delhi, would live almost three years longer. For this reason alone, NCAP has the potential to become a historic and watershed moment in Indian environmental policy.

NCAP calls for a 20 to 30 percent reduction in particulate pollution over the next five years. Reaching this goal will require a mix of pollution reduction schemes, increased monitoring, tightened enforcement, financial resources, and political will. This is no small task. That’s why it helps to remind ourselves why this is so critical. What would breathing cleaner air mean for the health and life expectancy of India’s people?

I’ve been working to answer that question for two decades and the results are dramatic. A 25 percent reduction in particulate pollution in India (the midpoint of the NCAP’s goal) would yield vast improvements in life expectancy—as much as three years in the most polluted areas. That’s according to the Air Quality Life Index (AQLI), which I created along with my colleagues at the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago…

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