Schools closed and the Taj Mahal darkened as smog enveloped Delhi

The Indian capital Delhi has ordered all primary schools to suspend in-person classes until further notice due to rising pollution in the sprawling megacity, while 220 kilometers away the monument of love, the Taj Mahal, was also shadowed by toxic smog.

Delhi and the surrounding metropolitan area, home to over 30 million people, consistently top the world rankings for winter air pollution.

The smog is blamed for thousands of premature deaths every year and is an annual source of misery for the capital’s residents, with various fragmented government initiatives failing to measurably tackle the problem.

“Due to rising pollution, all primary schools in Delhi will switch to online classes until further notice,” Prime Minister Atishi, who goes by one name, announced on social media platform X on Thursday.

Schools are often closed during the worst weeks of the annual smog crisis, which also causes a host of other disruptions in the city.

The government also banned all non-essential construction work on Thursday and called on citizens to make greater use of public transport and avoid using coal and wood for heating, without saying how long the measures would remain in place.

Air quality in northern India has deteriorated over the past week. Levels of PM2.5 pollutants – dangerous cancer-causing microparticles that enter the bloodstream through the lungs – were recorded more than 50 times above the World Health Organization’s recommended daily maximum on Wednesday.

The smog is mainly attributed to the burning of stubble by farmers elsewhere in India to clear their fields for plowing, but also to factories and traffic fumes.

Lower temperatures and slow-moving winds worsen the situation by trapping deadly pollutants each winter, stretching from mid-October to at least January.

India’s Supreme Court ruled last October that clean air is a basic human right and ordered both the central government and state-level authorities to take action.

But critics say arguments between rival politicians heading neighboring states – and between central and state-level authorities – have exacerbated the problem.

Politicians are accused of not wanting to anger key figures in their constituencies, especially powerful farmers’ groups.

Delhi authorities have launched several initiatives to tackle pollution, but these have yielded little in practice.

A new plan unveiled this month to use three small drones to spray water mist was derided by critics as yet another “Band-Aid” solution to a public health crisis.

A study in the medical journal The Lancet attributed 1.67 million premature deaths to air pollution in the world’s most populous country in 2019.

The choking smog in Delhi came as researchers warned that fossil fuel emissions would reach a record high this year, according to new findings from an international network of scientists from the Global Carbon Project.

With Agence France-Presse and Reuters