On Wednesday (21 October 2026), Delhi’s air entered the ‘poor’ category for the first time this season. A day earlier, on 20 October, the AQI was 179, which falls in the ‘moderate’ category. On 21 October, it stood at 233 at 9 am and reached 244 at 2 pm. By evening, the Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) had invoked Stage I of GRAP across the whole of Delhi-NCR. The Commission said the AQI had risen sharply, and that forecasts from the India Meteorological Department and IITM also indicate the air will remain ‘poor’ over the coming days. According to the Air Quality Early Warning System, the air could stay poor until 23 October, and no significant improvement is expected in the six days after that either.
Stage I of GRAP comes into force when the AQI is between 201 and 300. Under it, dust-control measures become mandatory at construction and demolition sites. Burning garbage, leaves and other material in the open is prohibited. Coal and wood are banned in commercial kitchens and at roadside stalls. Diesel generators are also barred, except for essential services. Mechanised road sweeping, water sprinkling and inspections of industries, brick kilns and hot-mix plants are stepped up as well. Delhi Metro has announced 20 additional trips on working days from 22 October.
One point needs to be made clear here, because some recent reports have caused confusion. It is being said that ‘preparations begin on 1 November’. In fact, GRAP is triggered by the AQI, not by a date, and it has already come into force on 21 October. The ‘1 November’ date belongs to the Delhi government’s Winter Action Plan, which will run from 1 November to 28 February. From that date, petrol pumps will not dispense fuel to vehicles without a valid PUC certificate, and only BS-VI vehicles from outside will be allowed to enter Delhi (primarily targeted at interstate buses and commercial vehicles). Ambulances, electric vehicles and vehicles on essential services will be exempt.
There is also an interesting aspect to the timing. According to a report, a Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) analysis found that between 2015 and 2025, Delhi’s air reached the ‘poor’ category in the first fortnight of October. This year it happened on 21 October, the latest in the available data. Before that, ‘poor’ air had been recorded in Delhi on 13 July (AQI 246). On the other hand, according to another report, the start of October this year was the most polluted since 2020. In other words, the air was already heavier than usual, but the ‘poor’ threshold was crossed late.
Why has the air worsened now? According to the report, temperature inversion, weak winds, local emissions and early stubble burning have all had an effect together. Stubble’s share in Delhi’s PM2.5 is currently put at around 4 per cent, and it could rise to between 8 and 13 per cent over the next few days. In Punjab, 174 cases had been recorded by 13 October, against 126 by the same date last year. On 18 October, 208 fire incidents were recorded across seven states, more than half of them in Punjab.
The situation is similar across the border. Smoke from forest fires in Indonesia has reached Malaysia and Singapore, and PM2.5 levels in Singapore went up to 284. Schools have had to be shut in several Malaysian states. These include Johor, Melaka, Negeri Sembilan and Selangor, along with Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya. Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said Malaysia is ready to help Indonesia. He has asked his foreign minister to convene a meeting of ASEAN environment ministers.
Delhi is not alone in this. Even far wealthier, better-equipped cities have had to live through spells of choking haze, and sometimes the cause lies entirely beyond their control: Singapore, among the most developed cities in the world, is breathing smoke from fires burning in another country.
We are including this only as context, because it shows that the question of ‘who is responsible?’ for shared air arises everywhere. Our question is different and more direct: what is each source’s actual share in Delhi’s air?
Every year, from mid-October, the same debate begins in Delhi-NCR. Delhi points a finger at Punjab and Haryana. Punjab says the Centre and Delhi should look to their own responsibilities. On television, pictures of burning fields and of haze at India Gate run side by side. Slowly, the impression forms that Delhi’s air means stubble.
Looking at the figures, the first thing that emerges is that the word ‘share’ does not mean the same thing everywhere. When one person says stubble accounts for 35 per cent and another says 14 per cent, both may be right on their own yardstick. This depends on four things.
PM2.5 refers to the very fine particles in the air that are about thirty times thinner than a human hair. They travel deep into the lungs with each breath and can reach the bloodstream as well. In India, the annual limit for them is set at 40 micrograms per cubic metre and the 24-hour limit at 60 micrograms. The AQI categories are as follows: 0 to 50 ‘good’, 51 to 100 ‘satisfactory’, 101 to 200 ‘moderate’, 201 to 300 ‘poor’, 301 to 400 ‘very poor’ and 401 to 500 ‘severe’.
In this report, we will look for answers to three questions.
First, what is stubble’s real share in worsening Delhi’s air, and how has it changed over the past seven years?
Second, who are the other culprits besides stubble burning, that is, vehicles, dust, construction, industry, garbage burning and particles formed in the air, and what is each one’s share?
Third, what steps has the government taken after identifying these causes, and how much impact have they had?
We will give the government’s steps full space, because many of them are genuinely big and have been taken for the first time. But the figures will be presented as they are, both where the picture favours the government and where questions remain.
Here is how to read it: This infographic carries two stories side by side. The first story is about the fields. According to Union Ministry of Environment data, 83,002 fire incidents were recorded in Punjab in 2020, and by 2023 the number had come down to 36,663. Punjab Pollution Control Board data show 10,909 cases in 2024 and 5,114 in 2025. That is a fall of about 94 per cent between 2020 and 2025. In Haryana, too, the 4,202 cases of 2020 came down to 2,303 by 2023. In Punjab, days with more than 2,000 fires in a single day numbered 16 in 2020 and only 4 in 2023.
The second story is about the air. In reply to a Right to Information request, CPCB said that stubble’s average share in Delhi’s PM2.5 between October and December was 13 per cent in 2020 and only 3.5 per cent in 2025. The years in between saw 13, 9, 11 and 10.6 per cent. There is a direct relationship between these two stories, but not a complete one. In 2024, fires were far fewer than in 2023, yet the average share remained almost the same. This is because wind direction, the timing of the fires and the weather change every year.
Two cautions. One, the 2026 figure is not for the full season, only up to 13 October. It should not be compared with full seasons of previous years. The right comparison is only with the same date last year, which was 126, meaning this year is slightly higher. Two, a separate 2019 figure (55,210) is available, but it belongs to a different data series, so it has not been included in this chart.
Now the real question. When farm fires have fallen so sharply, what is stubble’s share in Delhi’s air? There are three kinds of answers, and each should be read separately.
Another research paper, published in 2025, whose authors include people linked to CAQM, looked at the stubble season from 16 October to 30 November. It found that stubble’s impact on PM2.5 in Delhi-NCR was 18 per cent in 2022, 16 per cent in 2023 and 9 per cent in 2024.
So different studies give different numbers, but the story is the same. Stubble has a share, but on average it hovers around 10 to 18 per cent, spikes on some days, and was very low in 2025. The claim that ‘stubble is the real cause’ does not fully fit the figures. The claim that ‘stubble is no cause at all’ does not fit them either.
There is a subtle point in this story that must be stated honestly. CAQM’s 2026 directions themselves say that some people burn stubble late in the evening to escape satellite counts. The study published in 2025 also acknowledged that one reason stubble’s impact looked smaller in 2024 may be that the timing of fires shifted towards the evening, which current accounting does not capture. This does not mean the figures are wrong. It means that before treating the 2025 count as fully ‘real’, scientists should be asked how much of the evening burning is actually being captured.
The government’s stance on stubble has become tougher in 2026 than before.
In May 2026, CAQM set the goal of ending paddy stubble burning completely in Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. The directions include buying in-field stubble-management machines by August 2026, imposing red entries, collecting fines and sending monthly reports.
Earlier, in February 2026, CAQM had ordered strict action on wheat stubble as well. The reason was that in April-May 2025, satellites had recorded more than 12,000 fire incidents in the region. Under this order, it was proposed to set up a ‘Parali Protection Force’ and to patrol at night. CAQM’s May 2026 review noted that between 1 April and 6 May 2026, Punjab alone recorded 3,729 cases of wheat stubble burning.
And now a new draft on red entry has arrived. The 2023 rules provided for red entry, but did not say how long it would last. In the draft rules issued by the Ministry of Environment on 16 September 2026, it has been specified for the first time that a red entry will remain valid for 15 months from the date of the incident. The structure of fines by land size has not changed. The fine money is to be used for crop-diversification programmes, the use of biomass, research on stubble management and subsidies on machines. Two months have been given for objections and suggestions, that is, until roughly mid-November.
Red entry means a negative mark in the land records (khasra girdawari). This can make it difficult for a farmer to take a crop loan from a bank or to mortgage land. Analysts ask whether small farmers will be pushed towards the moneylender’s expensive credit. Another complicated question concerns sharecroppers and tenant farmers. If the previous farmer burned stubble, the burden of the red entry could fall on the next farmer.
There are enforcement figures too. According to a CPCB reply, around 8,600 FIRs have been registered over the past two years for stubble burning in Punjab and Haryana.
Apart from such enforcement-focused measures against stubble burning, authorities have also started to focus on building an industrial ecosystem that treats paddy straw as a raw material and income source for farmers. The Commission for Air Quality Management (CAQM) has emphasised routing residue into pellet and briquette plants, thermal power co-firing, Compressed Bio-Gas (CBG) and ethanol production, while the central Crop Residue Management scheme continues to subsidise machinery such as balers and Super Seeders and support supply-chain projects.
Industries have responded with a mix of operational plants and proposed capacity. Indian Oil Corporation’s commercial-scale second-generation (2G) ethanol plant at Panipat in Haryana, which uses roughly 2 lakh tonnes of rice straw annually to produce ethanol for petrol blending, has been sourcing residue from nearby districts through custom hiring centres. In Punjab, partnerships involving GAIL, HPCL, and BPCL have led to multiple sanctioned CBG projects that can collectively consume several lakh tonnes of straw, while pelletisation units have grown to over 20 operational facilities processing residue for industrial boilers, brick kilns, and power plants. Thermal power stations such as Talwandi Sabo have also expanded biomass co-firing, supported by local pellet manufacturing. CAQM directives further mandate rising shares of paddy-straw pellets or briquettes in brick kilns (stepping up toward 50% by 2028) and biomass co-firing targets in thermal plants.
Additional proposals include paper and packaging pulp from rice straw, biomass industrial parks, and expanded use in industrial boilers, alongside private entrepreneurs converting residue into pellets, bio-coal, or boards. Challenges remain around logistics, storage losses, seasonal supply, and consistent pellet quality, but the stated policy direction is to scale these uses so that stubble becomes an economic asset rather than a disposal problem.
While farmers have been supplying stubble to such industrial units, there has been some opposition too. There have been several cases of farmers and local residents protesting against ethanol and related bioenergy plants that use agricultural residues, sometimes forcing shutdowns or construction halts. In Zira, Punjab, an ethanol distillery was shut down in 2022 after prolonged protests over alleged groundwater pollution and health impacts; the matter later reached the National Green Tribunal.
More recently, in December 2025, farmers in Tibbi (Hanumangarh, Rajasthan) clashed with police, demolished the boundary wall of an under-construction ethanol plant with tractors, and halted work amid fears of water contamination and soil damage. Farmers from Punjab, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh joined the agitation, and the project was subsequently put on hold or proposed for relocation. In Punjab, multiple Compressed Biogas (CBG) plants intended to absorb paddy straw, such as the one at Ghungrali in Ludhiana, have been forced shut or stalled by farmer unions and villagers citing foul smell, effluent risks, possible soil/water contamination, and loss of common land, with only a handful remaining partially operational at times. Similar local opposition has appeared against proposed ethanol units in places like Jhajjar (Haryana) and Ropar. Such incidents show that while some farmers supply residue where plants operate and payments are assured, many communities remain against industrial processing of farm residue.
The start to this year has been faster than last year’s. According to data up to 13 October, Punjab had 174 cases, against 126 up to the same day last year. Most of the cases are from Amritsar and Tarn Taran, where early-maturing paddy varieties were sown. In many districts, harvesting has not even begun, which means the real phase is yet to come. Paddy is grown on around 31 lakh hectares in Punjab, and 180 to 200 lakh tonnes of stubble is generated every year.
The answer to why farmers burn stubble lies in the farming calendar. In north India, wheat sowing begins in mid-September and runs until early December. The window between paddy harvesting and wheat sowing is very short. Setting fire is the cheapest and fastest route.
There is politics in this issue too. Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta has said that Punjab’s Aam Aadmi Party government has failed to help farmers.
Now let us set stubble aside and look at the other sources. The most reliable consolidated account is found in an expert report prepared on the Supreme Court’s direction, which CAQM discussed at its February 2026 meeting. Experts from the IITs and other research institutions were involved. They combined studies done between 2015 and 2025 into one common picture. In other words, this is not a single new survey but the distilled essence of ten years of studies.
Vehicles: the largest local source. Different studies give different shares for vehicles, because the methods of counting differ. In CAQM’s report it is 23 per cent in winter. A 2018 TERI-ARAI study put the transport sector’s share at around 28 per cent. According to CSE, across different studies vehicles consistently emerge as the largest ‘combustion’ source, and about 51 to 53 per cent of Delhi’s own local pollution comes from them. Here ‘local’ means excluding smoke that has come from outside and particles formed in the air. CSE also noted that, at the start of winter, gases such as nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide are rising along with PM2.5. These are directly linked to vehicles and combustion, and they also help form particles in the air. According to the Aaj Tak report, vehicles contribute around 23 per cent through the year, which matches CAQM’s figure.
Dust and construction: Dust is 15 per cent in winter and 27 per cent in summer. It includes road dust, soil dust and construction-demolition debris. In the 2018 TERI-ARAI study, road dust was found to be around 8 per cent and construction around 6 per cent of coarse particles (PM10) in Delhi. The special thing about dust is that controlling it can be the cheapest and quickest. Road cleaning, paved roads, green belts, water sprinkling and curbs on construction have a direct effect. The Aaj Tak report has an interesting point. According to it, in surveys people name construction dust and garbage burning as the biggest problem. In other words, in the public’s eyes, things in their own surroundings are as big an issue as stubble.
Industry and power plants: Industry and thermal power plants together account for 9 per cent in winter and 14 per cent in summer. This is less than vehicles and dust, but it cannot be ignored, because their gases also form particles in the air. In its May 2026 review, CAQM spoke of six thermal power plants that were not complying with the rules on the use of stubble. In other words, the work of monitoring here is still pending.
Local versus outside: Another question is how much of Delhi’s air is its own and how much comes from outside. A CSE analysis showed that in 2025 the share of local sources rose from 27.3 per cent in 2024 to around 35 per cent. In other words, even when the stubble smoke coming from outside decreased, the local share went up. That is why experts speak of the “airshed”. It means air has no state boundaries. Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and parts of Uttar Pradesh share the same air. CAQM’s expert report also considers both local emissions and pollution transported within the region to be influential.
There is one shortcoming as well. Many of these studies are old. That is why CAQM has spoken of commissioning a new, integrated emissions assessment and source analysis, for which 2026 is proposed as the base year. Until that new study arrives, we are working on the average of ten years of studies.
So far we have looked at what is put into the air. An equally big question is how much the air holds it in. The haze of 21 October is the latest example.
Understand this infographic in 3 layers. As October wears on, Delhi’s nights begin to turn cold. Normally, warm air near the ground rises and carries smoke and dust up with it. But on cold nights, the opposite happens. The air near the ground becomes cold and heavy, and a layer of warm air settles above it. This is called temperature inversion. This layer works like a lid, and the air below it, that is, the pollution, gets trapped close to the ground. This effect is most visible in the morning, because the pollution accumulated overnight has not yet dispersed.
The speed of the wind matters too. When the wind moves slower than 10 kilometres per hour, pollution cannot travel away. Delhi’s early warning system also lists a low ventilation index and slow winds as factors that raise pollution. As far back as 30 September, the ventilation index was reported to be below 6,000 square metres per second, which meant conditions were not favourable for pollution to disperse. This week, the weather department said there would be no rain in Delhi until 23 October. On 22 October, under the influence of a low-pressure area over the Bay of Bengal and other systems, rain alerts are in place for 15 states and regions, and the report also speaks of a change in weather in some areas around NCR, such as Ghaziabad and Noida. This may bring some relief, but a big effect will come only when the wind blows. The same day, snowfall in the mountains and the cold air coming from there are lowering temperatures in the plains, which means conditions for inversion are building further.
When it comes to pollution, geography also works against Delhi. Because of the Himalayas, the Gangetic plains work like a bowl, from which pollution does not easily escape. When temperatures fall at night, particles become denser. This is why morning haze begins to appear even before Diwali.
Dussehra needs to be mentioned in this infographic, because many people were asking whether the burning of Ravana effigies created this much smog. According to the report, effigies contain bamboo, cloth, plastic and fireworks, and when burned, they release PM2.5, PM10 and sulphur dioxide. Where many effigies are burned together, pollution can rise for a short while, which experts call ‘hyperlocal’. But it is not the main cause of the smog over the whole city. The haze on the day after Dussehra is mostly the result of inversion, weak winds and pollution that had already accumulated.
The January 2025 study gave one more indication. In 2023, night-time carbon monoxide in Delhi-NCR was 67 per cent higher than in the daytime, whereas in 2022 the difference was 48 per cent. If stubble were the main cause, CO would be almost the same day and night. The rise at night suggests that local sources, such as vehicles and burning activities, are accumulating in cold, still air. CSE’s analysis of the early winter of 2025 also showed the same. That year, farm fires were fewer and the peak levels of early winter were lower than in the previous three years, but the average level remained the same as before, and for almost the whole of November the AQI stayed between ‘very poor’ and ‘severe’.
So here is how to understand the relationship between weather and sources. Sources determine how much pollution is being put into the air. Weather determines how much of it will accumulate. When emissions come down, bad-air days will also become less bad. That is why blaming only the weather is not right, and blaming only stubble is not right either.
This infographic is the most important page in the seven-year story. The panel on the left shows an achievement. Farm fires fell 94 per cent, and stubble’s average share in Delhi’s air dropped from 13 to 3.5 per cent. This is a big thing for both the government and farmers, and the role of CAQM, state governments and the promotion of machines can be credited with it.
The panel on the right shows a different picture. According to CSE’s assessment, Delhi’s PM2.5 average in winter 2024-25 (1 October to 31 January) was 174 micrograms per cubic metre, about one per cent higher than the average of the previous three winters. On 18 November 2024, the highest daily level reached 602, the worst since 2021. That winter saw 8 days of ‘severe plus’, 12 days of ‘severe’ and 68 days of ‘very poor’ air, and not a single day of ‘good’ air. Based on CSE’s analysis, Delhi’s average in winter 2025-26 was 163, and Delhi ranked third in the country. In first place was Ghaziabad (172). This winter had 18 days of ‘severe’, 87 days of ‘very poor’, 24 days of ‘poor’, 15 days of ‘moderate’, 6 days of ‘satisfactory’ and only 1 day of ‘good’. In the annual average, the 2024 figure was 104.7, more than double the national limit of 40. Between 2018 and 2020 there had been a steady decline, but it stalled after 2022.
First, the argument that stubble is the real reason for Delhi’s bad air does not fit the figures. Fires fell 94 per cent, and the average winter air stayed almost as bad. The real cause lies elsewhere as well.
Second, it would not be right to say either that Delhi has seen a big improvement. The winter 2025-26 average fell from 174 to 163, which is a slight improvement, but the difference of one winter does not make a trend. The number of severe and very poor days is still very high.
Third, it is not right to pit stubble and the other causes against each other. A stubble fire can make the air truly severe over a few days, as happened several times between 2019 and 2022. The other causes keep the air bad all year round. Both have to be tackled together.
This year the Delhi government and the Centre have together made bigger preparations than before. These include the ‘Air Pollution Mitigation Action Plan’ of April 2026, the new EV Policy 2026, the Winter Action Plan 2026-27 announced on 29 September, and CAQM’s GRAP framework.
On 28 September 2026, Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav and Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta held a review meeting on this plan. The government calls it a ‘whole-of-government’ approach, in which agencies such as CAQM, CPCB, local bodies, Delhi Police and Delhi Metro are on board together.
The biggest figure in this infographic is 5,238. On 13 October, 150 new electric buses were put on the road, after which the number of electric buses in Delhi became 5,238. The total fleet is around 6,988 buses, of which 1,750 are CNG buses. In other words, three out of every four buses are electric. At the end of September, the figure was 5,088 out of 6,840, which means a full 150 added in two weeks. It should be made clear here that not all buses are electric yet. About a quarter run on CNG.
The road ahead is long. The government’s target is to take the fleet to roughly 14,000 buses by 2028-29, with new buses being only electric. In June 2026, it was announced that 3,300 more AC electric buses would be added in phases under the Centre’s PM E-DRIVE scheme. Charging arrangements are also expanding. New high-capacity charging stations have opened at four depots, and the plan targets 32,000 charging points. There are daily ridership targets too: Metro from 65 lakh to 72 lakh and DTC from 37 lakh to 42 lakh. The picture is weaker on private vehicles, because the Chief Minister herself told the Assembly that electric vehicles are only about 11 per cent of vehicles sold in a year, and most of them are two-wheelers. EV policy 2026 sets out a roadmap until March 2030. Under it, from 1 April 2028, only electric new two-wheelers will be registered in Delhi, and school transport has been included for the first time. In other words, the path is right, but the destination is still far.
This timeline shows that winter preparedness in Delhi does not run on a single date but in several layers. The first layer is GRAP, which runs according to the AQI. As soon as the air turned ‘poor’ on 21 October, the first stage came into force. The second layer is the Delhi government’s Winter Action Plan, which will run from 1 November to 28 February. According to Chief Minister Rekha Gupta, it includes curbs related to construction, AI-assisted monitoring of construction sites, a proposed 50 per cent work from home, staggered office hours and steps to promote clean transport. According to one report, parking fees have been doubled under the first stage of GRAP, while Metro parking is not covered. The installation of 608 anti-smog guns and 1,150 mist-spray units in the city has also been mentioned.
Two major rules will come into force from 1 November. First, petrol pumps will not dispense fuel without a valid PUC certificate. Second, only BS-VI vehicles will be allowed to enter Delhi, except ambulances, electric vehicles and essential services. According to a video report of 16 October, there had also been news of a ban on the entry of BS-IV commercial vehicles. Amid all this, the stubble phase will also intensify. According to the Aaj Tak report, the 4 per cent share at present could go up to 8 to 13 per cent over the next few days. In other words, the first two weeks of November will be the days of real testing for this whole framework.
This infographic shows the Delhi government’s new effort, in which technology will be tried out with the help of private companies and start-ups. The Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) is running this pilot project, and ₹104 crore is planned to be spent on it. Forty sites in the city have been chosen, each covering roughly one to one and a half acres. They have been divided into five categories: markets, commercial areas and centres, transport hubs, tourist sites, and hospitals and educational institutions. The largest number, 29 sites, or 72.5 per cent, are in commercial areas. These include areas such as Khan Market, Connaught Place and Defence Colony. Stretches of three major roads have also been taken, where road dust and vehicle exhaust are considered the main cause.
The special feature of this project is that adopting any one technology is not mandatory. Companies will try to meet the target with their own technology. Open-air air purifiers, scrubbers that remove dust from roads, and electrostatic precipitators for industrial units may be tried. This precipitator separates dust particles in the air using an electric charge. The conditions for companies are that equipment must be certified by a government laboratory, reduce pollution according to the set standards, and not create new problems such as ozone or excessive noise. After sites are handed over to companies, they will get four weeks to install the equipment. Sensors will be installed at all sites and DPCC will monitor, while an independent committee will assess which technology was how effective.
One thing to keep in mind here. This project is for one year, and its real result will become clear only after an analysis of a year’s data. In other words, one should not expect it to have a big effect on this winter’s air. The target of a 20 per cent reduction is also only for the chosen small sites, not for the whole city. Even so, the step is important in that it will test, with independent evaluation, which technology truly works in open spaces.
Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav said at Anand Vihar on 13 October 2026 that various departments in Delhi are working together to reduce pollution, and that the implementation of all 11 suggested steps at Anand Vihar shows political will.
Delhi’s Environment Minister Manjinder Singh Sirsa said that many strict steps have been taken over the past year to curb pollution.
Announcing the measures on X, Chief Minister Rekha Gupta said Delhi was ‘acting early and firmly’ against winter pollution. From 1 November to 31 January, non-Delhi vehicles below BS-VI norms will be barred from entering the city, and vehicles without a valid PUC certificate will get no fuel. The Winter Action Plan, running until 28 February, adds construction curbs, AI-based site monitoring, 50 per cent work from home and staggered office hours. Her full post is embedded below for reference.
CSE researchers Anumita Roychowdhury and Sharanjeet Kaur wrote, on the 2024 figures, that farm fires fell by around 71 per cent that winter, yet the peak level of Delhi’s air rose. In their view, the annual average rising for two consecutive years shows that deep structural changes are needed to reduce pollution coming from different sources throughout the year.
To keep this report honest, it is necessary to see where work remains.
It is also necessary to say that some things have genuinely changed. Farm fires have fallen by 94 per cent. Air-monitoring stations have risen to 60. Electric buses have crossed 5,000. The average PM2.5 in winter 2025-26 was slightly lower than in the previous winter. These achievements are real.
At the start, we spoke about Indonesia as context. There, smoke from fires has crossed borders, and the debate over ‘whose responsibility’ has reached the stage of legal statements. Delhi’s picture is somewhat different. Here, farm fires have indeed fallen sharply, and the government now has more data, monitoring and plans than before. But the air-quality account has not changed as much as had been hoped. That is the most important thing about this story. It is not right to use stubble as an excuse to look away from the other causes, and it is not right either to wholly ignore stubble in the name of the other causes.
Over the next three months, three things should be watched. First, the fires in Punjab in November, especially in the evening hours, and whether stubble’s share goes beyond the estimate of 8 to 13 per cent. Second, the air on those days when stubble’s share is low and yet the AQI is ‘severe’. Third, whether this time the count falls from the roughly 18 to 20 severe days of the previous two winters.
Air does not recognise the boundaries of a state or a country. So the answers, too, must be shared and concrete.
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