Boiling Frogs, Geographical Monopolies: On Delhi's Smog & Reasons for Optimism
Too Long; Didn’t Read (TL;DR):
The Air Quality issue hasn’t been solved in Delhi-NCR/North India for decade+. Politicians would care if it were a major electoral issue or a major ‘interest groups’ issue. Residents don’t have enough exit options (alternate cities to move to).
Optimism: More people aware of the fact that there’s a problem. People willing to pay. Money & people => possibility of and motivation for technological, political, or social solution.
Prediction: Delhi will halve its current PM2.5 particulate matter in 8 years. But, it requires for the issue to become a voter priority.
Long; Do Read: Introduction
For the past few years, starting in mid-October, a few things happen without fail in significant parts of North India (and especially Delhi):
Delhi skyline changes to the yellow-orangish tint, often seen in Hollywood/Netflix movies when they are depicting Mexico
countless (and much-needed!) think pieces around:
cause of the dangerously high AQI (at times touching the
eye-poppingeye-burning figures of 1,000 µg/m³ of PM2.5).impact of short- and long-term exposure on humans (not just to their respiratory systems but brain and other organ systems too).
skyrocketing sales of air purifiers and masks
politicians issuing the pollution equivalent of Covid era’s ‘sanitise the groceries’ type instructions — basically the theatre of action, independent of its usefulness
politicians of varying hues issuing statements ranging from:
“See here, the AQI is 0.02 units lower than what it was last year,” to
“See there, the government is diverting attention from the AQI to issue X”
Even from about a decade or so ago, this story has had many of the current beats.
In this piece, I don’t intend on covering the causes for the air pollution but mostly around the political and societal inaction leading to lack of a solution, and reasons for optimism despite that.
Frogs in a Pot of Heating Water
In early 2014, India already ranked 174th out of 178 nations in air quality (link: The Times of India), ranking just above Pakistan, China, Nepal, and Bangladesh. Later that year, a WHO report showed “Delhi, not Beijing” to have the worst air pollution (link: Firstpost). This is a particularly amusing bit:
The situation is so bad in Delhi that its air has PM2.5 concentrations of 153 micrograms and PM10 concentrations of 286 micrograms–much more than the permissible limits. In comparison, Beijing, which was once considered one of the most polluted cities, has PM2.5 concentration of 56 micrograms and PM10 concentration of 121 micro grammes
For context the corresponding figures of PM2.5 and PM10 are ~300µg/m³ and ~450µg/m³ respectively in Delhi now (Nov ‘25).
This Economic Times piece from Oct ‘14 talks of the unreliability of India’s AQI numbers, citing the incentives of the officials for avoiding more questions in the Parliament, having measuring devices of questionable quality, and throwing data that averages out (instead of showing the peaks). Here’s an interesting part from the ET piece (SPCBs = State Pollution Control Boards):
In practice, neither SPCBs nor industry has the incentive to report completely and accurately. “Every time readings spike, we receive Parliament questions,” says a senior DPCC official, on the condition of anonymity. “It’s why states don’t share their data or use their instruments.”
Even when Delhi’s monitoring system was being set up, he adds, officials debated on whether to cap emission numbers being put out. “But luckily, the member secretary insisted we report the correct data.”
Delhi’s emission numbers are the worst among cities that collect air-quality data in real time. Of the 10 pollutants, Delhi’s count is the highest on five, second highest on three and third highest on two. It’s worse than Kanpur, or Chandrapur, one of India’s critically polluted areas.
One way to report lower numbers, says the DPCC official, is by only reporting averages, where the peaks and troughs average out. “That is what most SPCBs are doing, giving the last 24 hours’ data,” he adds
For those following the Delhi Air Pollution news these days, this is all familiar territory. The exact methodology to ‘manage the data’ may have changed, but it follows the same beat and is considered of questionable reliability.
The best part: as a response to all of the above, India launched its own methodology for measuring its Air Quality Index. (link: Washington Post)
“There was a lot of hue and cry over claims made by some foreign people at that time that the air quality in Delhi was the worst,” said Susheel Kumar, chairman of the Central Pollution Control Board. “We want to come out with our own national air quality index. Our team of experts are second to none in the world.”
The patterns are not just repeating across years; they repeat across fields too (poverty and freedom indices come to mind).
And yet I say this is a post of mild optimism.
There’s the allegory of frogs and boiling water. If you place a frog in a boiling water, it’ll immediately jump out and escape. But, if you place it in a pot of water, and start heating from below, the frog never takes action. It dies in the boiling water instead. It’s a famous allegory.
Whether there’s some takeaway from this piece or not, I want you to at least take home the fact that the ‘frog in a heating water’ allegory is false. In actual tests, the frogs don’t end up getting boiled. They jump out, when the temperature starts getting dangerous.
Delhi’s Monopoly from Geography
People migrate to major cities from villages, other cities, or other regions in hopes of greater economic opportunities. The cities are better off as they get a good supply of willing labour, industries, and tax revenue and the people are better off as they get better economic opportunities.
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| Map of India’s night lights, 2023. via NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio. Moving upwards, you can easily make out the brighter-than-surrounding nodes as Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Delhi-NCR, Kolkata. Compare nightlights between 2012 and 2023. Very fascinating. |
The South has multiple major economic centres that people can gravitate to. It has Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai. To varying degrees, Vishakhapatnam, Cochin, Coimbatore too offer a reasonable back-up in terms of options that one can choose to move to, if there’s a major problem with the base city.
These cities compete for both the labour pool and the investment pool. That’s also why you’ll see Andhra Pradesh’s N. Chandrababu Naidu or Nara Lokesh wooing investors and labour from Bengaluru, by offering better infrastructure, facilities, and/or tax incentives.
The West has Mumbai/Navi-Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad followed by Surat and Vadodara.
The North has Delhi-NCR. Jaipur and Lucknow are still way behind. So are Ludhiana and Chandigarh.
So, Delhi-NCR faces less competition for labour and the labour already present here has higher barriers to move out. The politicians know that Delhi residents are more forgiving because they can’t just move to another city 4 hours away and expect similar opportunities. They probably would have to move regions altogether. (‘Delhi residents’ and ‘more forgiving’ — was probably not on your bingo list for today!)
And despite politicians’ rhetoric against high immigration, they definitely don’t want emigration as that would lead to fall in land prices. And a fall in land prices is bad for the tax revenue, builders, construction industry, and the state economy in general.
This limited net emigration is also the reason why we’ve not had a good, sustainable, lasting solution for Delhi’s (and North India’s!) pollution problem for over a decade. Clearly, the issue isn’t bad enough for people to be voting with their feet (nor bad enough to make their voices heard).
Politicians have strong incentives to read such signals and if there’s enough disgruntlement to lead to mass migration and fall in land prices, I would wager the politicians to act before it came to that.
The Incentives of Politicians
Politicians generally get a lot of grief from citizens for ‘just caring for the votes’ (or their vote bank). Well, I think that’s a good thing and keeps them far more accountable than what most public-facing roles hold. Their accountability to the voting population is a strong incentive for them to work towards the societal improvement.
In addition, there’s also the issue of interest groups holding undue sway over the politicians. Whether that’s a good thing or not is a longer aside and for another day, but for the purpose of the current argument, the interest groups (e.g., in real estate) would have their interests aligned with solving the pollution crisis. That’s because mass emigration (or elite emigration) due to pollution would depress the land prices. And that’s definitely not in their interest.
The self-interest of politicians is also actually something that can almost be relied on! For a rational actor, the inertia is overcome only when the cost of inaction becomes high.
Unlike with education or healthcare or even roads where the powerful or the rich can pay their way out of having to deal with it, (toxic) air is almost impossible to truly insulate oneself from 24X7. While you can be in the vicinity of an air purifier for significant periods of time, you would still be exposed to the toxic air for some part(s) of the day.
Learned Helplessness or Delusional Optimism
‘Learned Helplessness’ is a term, typically for an individual, when after repeated exposure to negative events, they lose agency and believe themselves to be powerless to control or change their situation. Sounds about what seems to be the case with the people of Delhi, you’d think?
What with 10+ years of consistent talk on pollution, high noise, and no change since; or the high barriers to mobility; or that air pollution has not been a high priority item from both the politicians’ sides (limited coverage in the manifestos) or that of the voters’ demands (I didn’t follow the exit polls following Feb ‘25 elections but anecdotally it didn’t seem high on priority list). Based on the discussions around and after, it definitely wasn’t a decisive factor that tilted the results one way or the other.
But, here I am. Mildly optimistic. At 400 AQI that things would not just be better, but significantly and noticeably be so, and in a short period (~5-8 years). Maybe it’s the loss of those 20 IQ points due to the air quality. I don’t know and I couldn’t tell.
Forces for Changing Winds
I am banking on a few factors that the situation will change.
Shame/International Prestige & Pressure: India is aiming for a bigger seat at the international table for a while now. To have your capital city as a gas chamber for significant parts of the year is not only a bad look but also an active reason that would go against your hosting bids. Even if these are temporary events happening outside of the peak pollution window, the presence of all the international embassies through the year in Delhi adds to the international pressure.
In fact, US Embassy in Beijing, just around/before the Beijing ‘08 Olympics, began putting out the air quality figures there. And played a key role in getting China to act on it. On an unrelated point, that program was killed off earlier this year during the funding cut in the US under DOGE, earlier this year. Wired’s piece on the program and how it got Beijing to act, “US State Department Kills Global Air Monitoring Program Researchers Say Paid for Itself”, Mar ‘25.
Willingness to Pay/Market Forces:
The first two pages of search on Amazon for ‘air purifier’ yields 15+ unique brands of air purifiers, priced at INR 3.3k to INR 57k.
Insurance companies are already seeing higher claims related to respiratory illnesses, and have submitted proposals to the regulator seeking hike in health premium by 10-15% for those living in Delhi-NCR.
There’s clearly high willingness to pay among Delhi-NCR residents and many brands are tapping that. If the government had a mechanism to tax the residents and put in place a solution — to compensate the farmers in Punjab or place massive public air purifiers (if technologically possible!) — the residents would make a happy trade for it. This is something that the government and companies would be aware of.
Cost Elasticity: People understand the higher costs of living in a city and accept it for the higher opportunities and incomes. But, at some point on that price premium, despite the high (monetary and non-monetary) barriers to exit, the emigrants will outnumber the ones coming in. It becomes a bigger problem if the rich are the ones emigrating.
Innovation/Capitalism to the Rescue: One can solve the problem of bad air quality through solving the underlying causes (and that’s a sociological problem, changing behaviours of a vast number of people, working on incentives of different groups — a legit hard problem) or solving through an engineering solution or through economic incentives.
Given the vast sums of money on the table, a good engineering solution is definitely something that can be expected.
Economic Incentives: Success of Emission Trading Scheme in Surat has the potential to be replicated. It is a market for firms to trade their permits for particulate matter emissions; has yielded 20-30% reduction by participating plants and proved more effective than the ‘command and control’ alternate. Based on the early success it is now being attempted in Ahmedabad and Maharashtra (University of Chicago study on it and The Economist piece).
These are the underlying forces that imbue some optimism in me, despite the decade+ history of no change.
But, why now? Simply because something has got to give. The political and economic cost to inaction are rising. The water in the pot is heating, and the frog should ideally jump out sooner than later. The frog jumping out here would be making the voices heard that this is indeed a serious enough problem that you want the politicians to act on.
I see about 15% of people on the streets or in Delhi metro, wearing a mask. And, chatter in different Whatsapp groups about people moving out of Delhi for a few months, around this time. These are the positive signals that the issue is not a fringe one that only a few care about, but there’s a wider acknowledgement of the problem.
Prediction & Pre-Mortem (or What If I am Wrong)
This is November 2025. Without a falsifiable prediction, all this is just cud-chewing. Any scenario playing out can be justified one way or the other.
I predict that by Nov ‘33, average AQI of Delhi would be significantly lower than of today. Not Switzerland levels. I predict PM2.5 for Nov-Dec averaging at 150-200µg/m³.
And what if I am wrong? What model of the world would I be incorrect about, if the prediction turned out false? That depends on how wrong I am but a few possibilities I can think of:
The emigration or the international prestige angle didn’t play out as I thought it would.
Semi-learned helplessness — “the city is beyond saving, but I can get by just fine with my personal air purifier or personal ‘air-filtration-machine’.”
It neither became a top 3 issue for the 20% of the swing voters nor the biggest reason for a dedicated voter to shift away.
The politicians sold a different narrative, that convinced people of evidence otherwise.
It was a much harder problem than I assumed it to be.
I hope I do turn out to be correct and we do get to a better solution than the present one and I hope it is sooner than later. I do hope that it becomes a thing of voter priority. The Delhi winters were a thing of beauty. Enough to warrant a song too in a Rohit Shetty movie from 2003.
Edited to add the 5th point on the predictions & pre-mortem section
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