Air as an electoral issue: Cricket pullouts may push action in North India

Foreign cricket teams refusing to play in North India could spur government to act

Cyclones in Odisha, landslides in Uttarakhand, floods in Assam, pollution in Delhi. These are seasonal phenomena Indians live with. But unlike floods and cyclones, pollution in Delhi — and more broadly across North India — is entirely caused by human activity. By the inverse logic, it is possible that it could be vastly mitigated by effective intervention. 

Any resident of North India is aware that air pollution has got worse over the decades and it “should” be possible to identify the causative variables and to formulate effective policy to reverse it. Indeed, it isn’t hard to identify the causes. 

India runs on thermal power generated by burning fossil fuels. As incomes have risen, so has vehicular traffic, which is also largely powered by fossil fuels. Switching to electric vehicles (EVs) won’t make too much of a difference, unless the share of thermal is reduced in the energy mix. 

Industrial activity further contributes to poor AQI (air quality index). Farmers burn stubble because it’s the cheapest way to clear fields for replanting. Construction is another creator of particulate pollution, and construction sees a seasonal surge after monsoons. Diwali causes another surge in pollution. When temperatures drop, inversions lead to worsening AQI. It doesn’t rain much in winter so the air doesn’t clear either. 

However, tracking the causes of pollution is only the first step. Changing patterns of human activity to mitigate pollution runs into roadblocks. India is going to be stuck with thermal for decades to come; construction cannot be stopped without large negative economic impacts; Diwali will not be wiped from the calendar; nor will vehicular traffic cease to operate. 

When it comes to cooking and domestic heating, switching to gas and electrical power has led to significant improvement (which has been offset by increased pollution from other sources). Construction technology can be improved to cut down particulate matter but this will involve new technology and re-skilling a vast workforce. 

Blaming farmers is a mug’s game — if they aren’t offered cleaner, cheaper alternatives, they will continue with age-old practices. Other parts of the country are warmer in winter leading to less inversion, and farmers elsewhere deploy other means of clearing stubble, involving livestock, ducks, and so on. But AQI everywhere deteriorates in winter, although it’s worst in the north Indian plains. 

Measures such as the Graded Response Action Plan are band-aids at best. Plans for biomass collection, as has been suggested to clear stubble, involve massive logistical and engineering issues to clear millions of acres, and deployment of innovative technologies to compact and incinerate biomass to generate power while minimising pollution impact. There would be a cost and it may take decades to roll out such a system. 

Any policy on this front would require coordination across multiple states as well as a central initiative. That makes it even more difficult, given political constraints. Every winter sees a blame game where various state governments hurl accusations at one another. Getting them to agree on the implementation of a coordinated policy seems a practical impossibility. 

Data is also presented badly. For example, headline data usually refers to the number of days when AQI was acceptable. This is useful only if benchmarked against the number of days it rained. North India had an extended monsoon in 2025, which led to cleaner air on more days. A deficient monsoon could change the picture in 2026. A year with high rainfall doesn’t indicate if policy, such as it is, is making a difference. Monthly average AQI levels as presented are not very illuminating either, as averages downplay peak values, and peak values are critical. 

Claiming Delhi had acceptable AQI on 200 days, for example, doesn’t tell us how bad it may have been on the days when AQI was high. To take a catastrophic example where similar data would be misleading, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were only bombed on one day each during World War II, compared to London, Tokyo and Berlin, which were bombed hundreds of times. 

Bad data presentation makes it hard to critique policy. Ultimately, the push to clean up must come from civil society turning it into an electoral issue, or from politicians concerned about India’s international image. China started to clean up only in conjunction with a bid to host the Olympics. In India, the equivalent might be a refusal by overseas cricket teams to play in North India. That might actually be a lever worth examining since it could affect the sentiment of voters.