Clean up: Air, water crises in Delhi demand better fund deployment

The 'Control of Pollution' scheme was launched in 2018 to monitor the three kinds of pollution across India, and is fully funded by the government

Deteriorating pollution — air, water, and noise — in India has created headlines all over the world for several years in a row. In the light of this dismal reality, a parliamentary panel’s findings that the environment ministry spent less than 1 per cent of the Rs 858 crore allocated for the pollution-control fund in 2024-25 is concerning. More disturbing perhaps, when the alarm bells are ringing over the rapidly increasing severity of air pollution in Indian cities, is the committee’s “shocked” discovery that the money allocated for “Control of Pollution”, which accounts for a little over 27 per cent