Every breath you take

Book review of Breathing Here is Injurious to Your Health

By October 2018, the Badarpur thermal power plant next to Delhi was closed. In a study, the Centre for Science and Environment had measured the plant as responsible for up to 40 per cent of the city's particulate matter pollution from the energy sector. Yet, reporting on Delhi’s air pollution in November 2019, Time  magazine described pollution levels as “off the chart”. So, what gives?

Jyoti Pande Lavakare in her book Breathing Here is Injurious to Your Health enters this complex territory. Ever since Andrei Tarkovsky’s film  Stalker where the protagonists enter the Zone, a beautiful yet toxic region, where the