Air pollution and the National Clean Air Programme

Air pollution in India is dominated by fine particles, PM2.5 and PM10, particles small enough to enter the lungs and bloodstream. Their sources vary by place and season: vehicles and road dust in cities, construction dust, industrial emissions, crop residue burning in agricultural regions, household cooking with solid fuels, and dust from arid regions. Because particles travel across city and state boundaries, a city cannot clean its air by acting alone, and winter weather, which traps pollutants near the ground, makes the problem worse in northern India.

The legal base is the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act of 1981, which empowers central and state pollution control boards to set standards and regulate polluting activities. National Ambient Air Quality Standards set limits for major pollutants, and monitoring stations run by the Central Pollution Control Board and state boards measure whether cities meet them. Cities that repeatedly missed the standards were termed non-attainment cities, a label that became the basis for targeted action.

The National Clean Air Programme, launched on 10 January 2019, was the first national framework with time-bound targets for air quality. It initially covered 102 non-attainment cities identified from air quality data for 2011 to 2015, and set a target of reducing PM10 and PM2.5 concentrations by 20 to 30 per cent by 2024, taking 2017 as the base year. The list was later expanded, and in September 2022 the target was revised to a 40 per cent reduction in particulate matter by 2026 for covered cities. Each city was to prepare an action plan covering transport, dust, waste burning, industry and other local sources.

Delhi's winter crisis led to additional machinery. The Commission for Air Quality Management, created by an Act of 2021, coordinates action across Delhi and neighbouring states, and the Graded Response Action Plan triggers staged restrictions, such as controls on construction and vehicles, as air quality worsens. These emergency measures can reduce peaks, but they do not replace year-round action on vehicles, fuels, industry and waste.

Progress is mixed and contested. Some cities have recorded falls in particulate levels, while others have not, and analysts disagree about how much of any change reflects policy, weather, or monitoring changes. The deeper lesson is that air quality is a multi-sector problem: cleaner fuels and vehicles, dust control, waste management, crop residue alternatives and regional coordination must move together, and the public must be able to see monitoring data to judge whether they are.