Blurry skyline: Businesses hold their breath in Mumbai's smog-choked skies

With project execution and commercial office operations unaffected, city hopes for its air troubles to blow over

If filmmaker Basu Chatterjee’s iconic Mumbai movies were to be filmed today, they would lack their double-decker buses, Premier Padmini taxis, and clear skies.

Mumbai’s air quality recorded last week was the second most polluted in the world.

Ironically, clues to the city’s deteriorating air quality also lie in those iconic movies  — the delayed withdrawal of monsoons, real estate, and transport systems.

Post-pandemic, Mumbai appears to be in a mad rush to complete its Metro transit system and other transport projects in a bid to decongest and depollute the city. Under execution is a 300-plus-kilometre (km) Metro system project to be commissioned